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December 9, 2022

Postcard from California: Food waste law fights hunger and climate change

By Bill Walker

California produces far more food than any other US state, but we throw a lot of it away. Meanwhile, more than one in five Californians don’t always know where their next meal is coming from. Food insecurity is higher among Black and Latino households, and inflation is making the problem worse.

Now the state is aiming to relieve hunger by reducing food waste – and at the same time, help to address climate change.

A state law that was passed in 2016 but took effect this year, requires businesses and facilities that sell or serve food to donate edible food they would otherwise throw out to local food banks. Grocery stores, wholesalers and distributors had to start donating earlier this year. Restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, state office cafeterias and event venues must comply by January 2024.

According to the state agency CalRecycle, Californians send more than 11 billion pounds of food to landfills every year. Nationally, about 80 billion pounds of wasted food goes to the dump yearly, making food the single largest constituent of municipal landfills.

Food rescue
While not all discarded food is fit to eat, the newly implemented law – SB 1383 – requires that by 2025 California will recover 20% of wasted food to feed people in need. Washington State has the same goal, but by mandating fines for non-compliance, California’s is the strongest “food rescue” measure in the country.

Rescuing edible food is only one front in the war on food waste.

November 16, 2022

Guest column: EPA has lost its way

By Tim Whitehouse

It has been more than 20 years since I worked as a senior attorney at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using my legal training to help enforce the Clean Water Act, and advise agency managers on a range of hazardous waste issues.

When I joined the regulatory agency in 1992, I felt my work would matter; that I would play a small role in protecting public and environmental health. And during the ten years I worked there, I always felt I was making a positive difference and my managers were usually able to apply the law in ways that balanced the interests of various stakeholders.

Over the years, however, it has become more apparent that this is often no longer the case, and that powerful corporate interests have taken too much control over EPA’s decision-making processes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in EPA’s chemicals and pesticides programs.

The last 30 years have brought countless examples of EPA’s appalling incompetence and willful corruption as the agency routinely capitulates to the interests of the chemical industry and ignores or minimizes human health and environmental risks.

Newly unearthed documents regarding one such chemical – the weed killer paraquat – provide just the latest example of how inept the agency has become in protecting public health.

At the organization I work for now – Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – we are currently representing EPA scientists who have bravely put their careers on the line to speak out publicly about the wrongdoing they’ve witnessed with the agency.

Through a series of disclosures to EPA’s Inspector General and Congress these scientists have provided extensive evidence of a system that operates in a black box where threats to human health from chemicals are routinely deleted from risks assessments, where agency managers routinely bow to industry wishes, where key managers move back and forth between jobs at the EPA and the chemical industry with scant scrutiny, and where managers ignore risk indicators and intimidate staff into signing off on assessments with insufficient data to reach a conclusion.

October 20, 2022

Secret “Paraquat Papers” reveal corporate tactics to protect weed killer linked to Parkinson’s disease

By Carey Gillam and Aliya Uteuova

For more than 50 years, Swiss chemical giant Syngenta has manufactured and marketed a widely used weed killing chemical called paraquat, and for much of that time the company has been dealing with external concerns that long-term exposure to the chemical may cause the dreaded, incurable brain ailment known as Parkinson’s disease.

Syngenta has repeatedly told customers and regulators that scientific research does not prove a connection between its weed killer and the disease, insisting that the chemical does not readily cross the blood-brain barrier, and does not affect brain cells in ways that cause Parkinson’s.

But a cache of internal corporate documents dating back to the 1950s obtained by The New Lede in a reporting collaboration with the Guardian suggests that the public narrative put forward by Syngenta and the corporate entities that preceded it has at times contradicted the company’s own research and knowledge.

And though the documents reviewed do not show that Syngenta’s scientists and executives accepted and believed that paraquat can cause Parkinson’s, they do show a corporate focus on strategies to protect product sales, refute external scientific research and influence regulators.

In one defensive tactic, the documents lay out how the company worked behind the scenes to try to keep a highly regarded scientist from sitting on an advisory panel for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency is the chief US regulator for paraquat and other pesticides. Company officials wanted to make sure the efforts could not be traced back to Syngenta, the documents show.

And the documents show that insiders feared they could face legal liability for long-term, chronic effects of paraquat as long ago as 1975. One company scientist called the situation “a quite terrible problem,” for which “some plan could be made….”

September 14, 2022

Court smacks USDA for lack of transparency in GMO labeling

By Carey Gillam

Years of legislative and court battles over the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food took another turn this week when a federal court determined on Tuesday that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) erred in allowing food companies to label GE products simply with digital codes that consumers have to scan, without any accompanying disclosure options.

Under USDA rules that took full effect earlier this year, food made with genetically modified crops can be labeled simply as “bioengineered” (BE), or come with a QR code guiding consumers to more information online, among other options.

But the court said those rules did not comply with the law, and found that the USDA knew that allowing “standalone electronic disclosure” would not provide consumers “sufficient access” to disclosures about bioengineering involved in creating certain products.

September 1, 2022

Jury finds for Monsanto in St. Louis Roundup cancer case

By Carey Gillam

After brief deliberations, a St. Louis jury on Thursday sided with Monsanto in the latest Roundup cancer trial. The win puts Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG at five trials won versus three won by plaintiffs. The jury took only a few hours to reach the defense verdict.

The decision in favor of the company came after a lawyer for three cancer patients failed to convince jurors that his clients’ exposure to Monsanto herbicides caused their illnesses, as a lawyer for the company insisted that scientific evidence proves the products are safe.

The five-week trial closed as it began – with starkly different presentations about decades of scientific studies about glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer and other herbicides, and with evidence about Monsanto efforts to thwart concerns that its products might cause cancer.

The case is part of the sprawling nationwide litigation that began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. More than 100,000 people in the US have brought claims alleging they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) after long-term use of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides, including Roundup.

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, has settled the majority of the cases, but this was the eighth to go to trial. Many more are scheduled over the next several months and into next year.

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August 23, 2022

Bayer facing long line-up of new Roundup trials as cancer takes toll

Cancer has taken an unrelenting toll on 72-year-old Mike Langford. After being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in 2007 he suffered through five recurrences despite multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Now he struggles with chemo-related neuropathy in his arms and legs, and new tests show the cancer is back.

Langford blames his cancer on his longtime use of the popular weed-killing product Roundup, which he applied countless times over decades using a backpack sprayer around his five-acre California property and a vacation lake home. He alleges in a lawsuit that Monsanto, the longtime Roundup maker now owned by the German company Bayer AG, should have warned of a cancer risk.

Last month, a San Francisco judge ruled that Langford’s health is so poor that he is entitled to a speedy hearing of his claims. A trial is set for Nov. 7 in San Francisco County Superior Court.

“I’ve had it so long. I’m very angry,” Langford said in an interview, a day after doctors biopsied an enlarged lymph node. “The future doesn’t look too terribly promising,” he said, trying to hold back tears. He learned last week that the preliminary biopsy results show a return of NHL.

August 12, 2022

House vote on Inflation Reduction Act sets stage for big climate gains

With the US House of Representatives positioned to approve on Friday the largest investment by the US government to combat climate change, some analysts are projecting the measures contained in the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more than the government has projected.

The measure, which passed the US Senate on Sunday, contains $369 billion earmarked for a range of energy and climate investments over the next decade.

The bill could slash emissions from the electricity sector by as much as 75% below levels seen in 2005 by 2030, according to Kevin Rennert, a fellow at Resources for the Future, based on an initial analysis. Absent the new investment, their forecast predicted that current policies would cut emissions more modestly — about 48.5%. Rennert shared these numbers during a seminar this week sponsored by Resources for the Future.

The US government has said the measures would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.

The bill expands a tax credit for carbon capture, incentivizes the production of sustainable aviation fuel, provides for grant programs aimed at decarbonizing emissions-heavy sectors, and includes a methane reduction program for oil and gas facilities, among other provisions.

August 9, 2022

Biden’s Justice40 initiative picking up speed after slow start

More than a year and a half after the Biden administration unveiled a sweeping commitment to bring opportunities and aid to disadvantaged communities, environmental justice advocates are calling on the White House to move faster with its implementation of its Justice40 Initiative.

Advocates fear some programs targeted in the initiative could be jeopardized if Democrats lose the White House in the 2024 presidential elections; and that some programs could be impacted even sooner if mid-term elections this November hand control of the House of Representatives to Republicans.

“My big hope is that the administration prioritizes and senses the urgency that we have to capture this opportunity to redirect investments,” said Ana Baptista, associate director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School in New York. Her research focuses on climate and environmental justice issues.

The Justice40 initiative, which President Joe Biden initiated through a January 2021 executive order, calls for delivering 40 percent of overall benefits of certain types of federal investments to disadvantaged communities around the country.

August 5, 2022

Guest column: Prioritize children’s health above agribusiness profits

Many decades ago, my mother-in-law set an example I aim to follow: As an activist challenging certain government policies, she centered all her work on a foundational question: Is it good for the children?

Now I’m doing the same, working through a group in the San Francisco Bay area to raise awareness about ties between childhood diseases and pesticides and the growing economic and social burdens we all bear from overuse of these chemicals.

In 2012, The American Academy of Pediatrics urged policymakers to do more to protect children from pesticides. Yet, a decade little, our regulators have virtually ignored this plea.

July 29, 2022

“A clear injustice,” hearing calls for leaded aviation fuel ban

Just five blocks away from the Reid-Hillview Airport in Santa Clara County, California, Maricela Lechuga lives among a community of 52,000 residents who are predominantly Latino, many also immigrants.

The general aviation airport does not serve commercial air travel, but does serve a range of other public aviation activities; in 2019 it had more than 200,000 take-offs and landings.

It is also known as one of the highest lead emitting airports in the United States, a fact spotlighted Thursday in a U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing called to examine health harms associated with leaded aviation fuel.

The Clean Air Act banned leaded gas for passenger cars in 1996 after phasing in an unleaded gasoline. However, lead fuel continues to power over 170,000 piston-engine aircrafts mainly flown for hobbyist, private, emergency, or training purposes. These planes and helicopters contribute about 70% of all lead emissions to the air in the United States, according to a 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Despite petitions calling to ban leaded aviation fuel that date back to 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to address the issue through regulation, a delay that is creating injustice and danger for people living not just near Reid-Hillview Airport, but numerous others around the country, according to critics.