Share
Pesticide Maker and Trump Donor Dow Chemical Asks To Ignore Study, Loosen Regulations
Scott Pruitt has called for the dissolution of much of the EPA's authority yet now runs the Environmental Protection Agency. He is a seasoned legal opponent of the agency and is unfortunately an effective tool for Trump's efforts to dismantle regulations on climate change and clean water and "get rid" of the agency. In general, Pruitt and the administration are waging a war against science, safety, and common sense in order to benefit their favored corporate interests. Private profits in the hundreds of billions over health and safety of hundreds of millions of human beings and the future of our Planet. At a time when our nation and the world would benefit from a more supported EPA, the exact opposite has occurred; an impossible pill to swallow.
Dow Chemical is pushing a Trump administration open to scrapping regulations to ignore the findings of federal scientists who point to a family of widely used pesticides as harmful to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species. Lawyers representing Dow, whose CEO is a close adviser to Trump, and two other manufacturers of organophosphates sent letters last week to the heads of three of Trump’s Cabinet agencies. The companies asked them “to set aside” the results of government studies the companies contend are fundamentally flawed.
Over the past four years, government scientists have compiled an official record running more than 10,000 pages indicating the three pesticides under review — chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion — pose a risk to nearly every endangered species they studied.
The industry’s request comes after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced last month he was reversing an Obama-era effort to bar the use of Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide on food after recent peer-reviewed studies found that even tiny levels of exposure could hinder the development of children’s brains.
ACTION: Organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Coucil, 350.org, the Sierra Club will be fighting hard against this administration. Read up on their work at their web sites, follow them on Twitter, and give a donation to them or similar groups. We need environmental groups to be well funded to fight this fight. Their web sites have concrete ways you can get involved beyond giving them money if this fighting for this cause drives you.