By Peter Montague
An eye-opening new book describes the nearly complete failure of all our attempts to regulate the behaviour of the chemical corporations. Toxic Deception, by Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, is subtitled "How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health".
Fagin and Lavelle are award-winning investigative reporters, and this book shows why: it is thorough and thoroughly documented, even handed, careful in its conclusions, and absolutely astonishing in how grim a picture it paints of our corporatised democracy.
The book is organised as a case study of only four dangerous chemicals: atrazine, alachlor, perchloroethylene and formaldehyde.
- <~>Atrazine is a weed killer used on 96% of the US corn crop. Introduced in 1958, some 31-33 million kilograms were used in 1995, making it the best-selling pesticide in the US.
Atrazine interferes with the hormone systems of mammals. In female rats, it causes tumours of the mammary glands, uterus and ovaries. Two studies have suggested that it causes ovarian cancer in humans. The Environment Protection Agency categorises it as a "possible human carcinogen". Atrazine is found in much of the drinking water in the midwest, and it is measurable in corn, milk, beef and other foods.
- <~>In 1989, Monsanto introduced alachlor, a weed killer that complements atrazine. Atrazine is best against weeds and alachlor is best against grasses. Often both are applied at the same time.
Alachlor causes lung tumours in mice, brain tumours in rats, stomach tumours in rats and tumours of the thyroid gland in rats. It also causes liver degeneration, kidney disease, eye lesions and cataracts in rats fed high doses. Canada banned alachlor in 1985. EPA's Science Advisory Board labelled alachlor a "probable human carcinogen" in 1986. In 1987, EPA required that farmers who apply it first take a short course of instruction. Much of the well water in the midwest now contains alachlor, and its use continues unabated.
- <~>Perchloroethylene ("perc") is the common chlorinated solvent used in dry cleaning. In the early 1970s, scientists learned that perc causes liver cancer in mice. Workers in dry cleaning shops get cancer of the oesophagus seven times as often as the average American, and they get bladder cancer twice as often.
A few communities on Cape Cod in Massachusetts have perc in their drinking water; a study in 1994 revealed that those communities also have leukaemia rates five to eight times the national average. Perc is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen", and we all take it into our homes whenever we pick up the dry cleaning.
- <~>Formaldehyde is a naturally occurring substance present in the human body in very small quantities. Mixed with urea, formaldehyde makes a glue that holds plywood and particle board together. Mixed with a soap, urea-formaldehyde makes a stiff foam that has excellent insulating properties.
After the oil shortage of 1973, people in the US began to conserve fuel oil by tightening and insulating their homes, and it was then that people discovered that formaldehyde can be toxic. In tens of thousands of individuals, urea-formaldehyde has caused flu-like symptoms, rashes and neurological illnesses.
In some people, it triggers multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a life-long, debilitating sensitivity to many other chemicals, including fragrances and perfumes.
In recent years, scientists have confirmed that formaldehyde causes rare nasal tumours in mice and in industrial workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde gas. It is also linked to brain tumours in people exposed to it on the job (embalmers and anatomists). It is ranked as a "probable human carcinogen" in humans, and we are all widely exposed to it through cabinets, furniture, walls and flooring.
Toxic Deception documents how the manufacturers of these chemicals — and thousands of others like them — have managed to keep their dangerous, cancer-causing products on the market despite hugely expensive government regulatory efforts, civil litigation by citizens who feel victimised, investigative news reports, congressional oversight of the regulators, right-to-know laws and hundreds of scientific studies confirming harm to humans and the environment.
The book documents how corporations buy the complicity of politicians; offer jobs, junkets and sometimes threats to regulators; pursue scorched-earth courtroom strategies; shape, manipulate and sometimes falsify science; and spend millions of dollars on misleading advertising and public relations to deflect public concerns.
In sum, the book shows how corporations have turned the regulatory system — and those who devote their lives to working within that system — into their best allies.
After reading this book, one realises that the purpose of the regulatory system is not to protect human health and the environment. The purpose is to protect the property rights of the corporations, using every branch of government to thwart any serious attempts by citizens to assert that human rights should take precedence.
"At the most fundamental level", write Fagin and Lavelle, "the federal regulatory system is driven by the economic imperatives of the chemical manufacturers — to expand markets and profits — and not by its mandate to protect public health".
After 27 years of unremitting, well-meaning attempts to regulate corporate polluters, here is our situation:
- <~>The government does not screen chemicals for safety before they go on the market.
- <~>Chemicals are presumed innocent until members of the public can prove them guilty of causing harm. This guarantees that people will be hurt before control can even be considered. "The agency usually relies on research conducted by or for manufacturers when it is time to make a decision about regulating a toxic chemical."
- <~>Industry manipulates scientific studies. According to Fagin and Lavelle, when chemical corporations paid for 43 scientific studies of any of the four chemicals, 32 studies (74%) returned results favourable to the chemicals involved, five were ambivalent, and six (14%) were unfavourable. When independent non-industry organisations paid for 118 studies of the same four chemicals, only 27 of the studies (23%) gave results favourable to the chemicals involved, 20 were ambivalent, and 71 (60%) were unfavourable.
- <~>As of 1994, after 24 years of trying, EPA had issued regulations for only nine chemicals. EPA has officially registered only 150 pesticides, though there are thousands of others in daily use awaiting review. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has done only slightly better, setting limits on 24 chemicals after 18 years of effort.
- <~>Close to 2000 new chemicals are introduced into commercial channels each year in the US, virtually none of them screened for safety by government. All together, about 70,000 different chemicals are now in commercial use, with 2.7 trillion kilograms produced annually in the US for plastics, solvents, glues, dyes, fuels and other uses. All 2.7 trillion kg eventually enter the environment.
More than 80% of these chemicals have never been screened to learn whether they cause cancer, much less to discover if they harm the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system or the reproductive system. It's a huge corporate experiment on the public.
The corporations use a single line of defence: we don't know for sure how dangerous these chemicals are.
We have to prove that we have been harmed. Because we are all exposed to hundreds if not thousands of chemicals each day, pinpointing the source of a rash, a headache or a brain tumour is next to impossible. Meanwhile the exposures continue.
[From Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Like Green Left Weekly, Rachel's is a non-profit publication which distributes information without charge on the internet and depends on the generosity of readers to survive. If you are able to help keep this valuable resource in existence, send your contribution to Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, Maryland 21403-7036, USA. In the United States, donations to ERF are tax deductible.]