The Biden EPA has put a stop to use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food crops, thereby reversing a decision by the Trump administration to allow it to continue to be sprayed on vegetables and fruit in spite of an Obama administration order in 2015 to ban the pesticide for public health reasons.
This is but one of many examples of Trump’s public health plans ignoring science and debilitating federal programs that safeguard the public, prompting the idea of whether Trump and his henchmen should be locked in pillory, as the pillory device was commonly used in the Middle Ages for moral and political crimes. People can throw tomatoes at them or commit other devious acts not mentionable herein.
Moreover, in April 2019 Trump’s EPA refused to ban asbestos, disregarding the advice of its own experts. Fifty-five industrial nations have already banned it.
Did the Trumpeters know their decision to ignore the Obama ban on the toxic pesticide would inflict harm on American citizens?
What scientific evidence did Trump follow to ignore peer-reviewed science that connected the dots of chlorpyrifos to serious irreparable damage to the human genome.
In fact, Trump’s EPA twice refused to honor banning chlorpyrifos in both 2016 and 2019, a remarkably similar trajectory back in time to chlorpyrifos’ origin and founders as first developed by the Nazis in the 1940s for chemical warfare, Trump evidently fell in love with the persistent human destructive capabilities of the chemical. Spraying toxic chemicals on food with foreknowledge of its danger is metaphorically awkwardly similar to an organized gas chamber.
In 2016 the EPA released a revised human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos that confirmed: “There are no safe uses for the pesticide.” (Source: Update: Human Health Risk Analyses for Chlorpyrifos, for release: November 10, 2016, EPA – United States Environmental Protection Agency).
Trump violated that EPA confirmation, which states: “There are no safe uses for the pesticide.” It couldn’t be any clearer! He violated it twice, thereby demonstrating serious intent to ignore the science. What can or should be done about Trump knowingly putting the public in harm’s way?
According to food residue-monitoring data obtained by the USDA Pesticide Data Program (PDP) “chlorpyrifos is widespread on food products sold in the U.S.” (Source: Poisoned Food, Poisoned Brains: Mapping Dangerous Pesticides in the Foods We Eat, Earthjustice, August 2021)
How many people did Trump put at risk?
Was it thousands or tens of thousands or more, or was it millions?
Environmental groups stood behind the appeal process of Trump’s actions and the court ordered the EPA to either prove the pesticide harmless or ban its use. Now, it is banned! As a consequence, America’s families dodged a deadly toxic bullet on November 3, 2020.
Subsequently, following the court decision to ban chlorpyrifos, EPA administrator Michael S. Regan exclaimed: “Today EPA is taking an overdue step to protect public health.” (Source: EPA Finally Bans Dangerous Pesticide, Grist/The Beacon, August 19, 2021)
It should be noted that Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, contributed $1 million to Trump’s infamous inauguration funding scheme. Inquisitive parties continue asking about the money, where’d it go?
Still, the toxic poisoning of America goes much deeper than Donald Trump’s ignorance, stupidity, and callousness. According to Earthjustice: “Chlorpyrifos is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of exposures to organophosphate pesticides, which all act in the same way and cause the same type of harm.”
Accordingly, Stephanie Seneff, PhD has written a new book that focuses on our pesticide-enriched world: Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment, subtitled: One Scientist’s Determined Quest to Reveal the Truth, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021.
Her book covers the grand scale of pesticide toxicity poisoning the planet and its inhabitants. It’s an important book.
Toxic Legacy focuses on the kingpin of chemicals, glyphosate, which is the primary ingredient in herbicides used throughout the world, like Roundup, AquaMaster, Aqua Neat, Polado, Accord, Rodeo, Touchdown, Backdraft, Expedite, EZ Jet, Glyfos, Laredo, Buccaneer Plus, and Wrangler among many others.
According to Dr. Seneff: “Something terrible seems to be affecting every living thing on the planet — the insects, the animals, and the health of human beings, including children. Something hiding in plain sight. While we can’t reduce all environmental and health problems to one insidious thing, I believe there is a common denominator. The common denominator is glyphosate. My goal, by the end of this book, is to prove to you that I am right.” (p. 7)
Seneff’s argument is based upon connecting the dots of peer-reviewed science. Her analysis is imperative for almost every living person because: “We are all being exposed to glyphosate — primarily from the food we eat but also from the water we drink… When a chemical is so pervasive, so ubiquitous, so nearly impossible for even the most diligent person to avoid, it is especially incumbent on regulatory agencies and elected officials to ask tough questions… But in the case of glyphosate, this hasn’t happened.” (p. 12)
Yet, scientific evidence of glyphosate’s enormous range of impact is mind-boggling; for example, when human liver cells are exposed to low doses of glyphosate, DNA damage ensues, and when human white blood cells are exposed to glyphosate, DNA damage occurs, including the gene that suppresses cancer tumors, the p53 promoter gene, which paves the way for invasive leukemias and lymphomas. (p. 21)
“Anyone who has read the scientific literature, even the most conventional medical doctors, understands now that glyphosate is carcinogenic, priming the body to fall prey to cancer. Throughout the book, I address evidence that glyphosate causes physical damage….” (p. 8)
Seneff’s book not only follows the science of perhaps the world’s most dangerous chemical of everyday use throughout the entire world, but according to her book, it destroys ecosystems and alters human DNA and likely spikes chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, autism, celiac disease, diabetes, encephalitis, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity and other chronic diseases.
Interestingly enough, it’s nearly impossible to watch television without seeing an ad selling a product to combat one of those debilitating chronic diseases. The origin of chronic disease is still a study in progress, but connecting the dots, like Seneff’s book exposes, opens the public’s eyes to a chemical monster lurking in the shadows.
How influential is glyphosate’s role? Seneff addresses that very question in great detail, and she explains how best to avoid it.
Robert Hunziker
Los Angeles