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stern clarence monsanto

https://journals.law.harvard.edu/elr/wp-content/uploads/sites/79/2022/04/46.1-Stern.pdf

As debate roils over Justice Clarence Thomas’ involvement in election-related cases, one environmental lawyer is exploring another time the Supreme Court justice has faced recusal calls.

In a new Harvard Environmental Law Review article, lawyer Scott Stern delves into Thomas’ history as a Monsanto Co. attorney in the late 1970s during the dawn of the modern environmental movement — and his resistance over the years to bow out of cases involving the agrochemical giant.

Based on his research of archival materials, Stern purports that Thomas’ three years at Monsanto early in his legal career helped transform him from registered Democrat at age 18 to one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative members at 73.

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“[T]he effect Monsanto and the broader chemical industry had on [Thomas] was profound,” wrote Stern, a recent Yale Law School graduate who is now a clerk for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The effect he, in turn, has had on the environment and on our environmental rights is undeniable.”

Stern’s article comes as Democratic lawmakers and some ethics experts have called for Thomas to step back from cases related to the 2020 election and for the Supreme Court — or Congress — to strengthen its recusal rules.

The calls follow reporting on March 24 by The Washington Post and CBS News that the justice’s wife — Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni — had urged then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to push baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from former President Donald Trump.

In January, Clarence Thomas was the sole vote against the Supreme Court order that blocked Trump’s request to withhold White House communications from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.

“This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions, and all I hear is silence from the Supreme Court right now,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, during a March 27 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have come to Thomas’ defense.

“Washington Democrats are now trying to bully this exemplary judge of 30-plus years out of entire legal subjects or off the Court entirely,” McConnell said during a March 30 speech on the Senate floor.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Supreme Court recusals are a controversial subject, as they are left to the discretion of the justices, who rarely explain their decisions to step back from cases.

Judicial disqualification law requires justices to bow out of cases in which their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned” — including in disputes presenting family or financial conflicts or where a jurist has served as a private practice attorney “in the matter in controversy.”

Recusals can also sometimes cause problems for the court if the remaining eight justices cannot form a majority.

While recusals from cases involving former employers depend on the particular facts of a dispute, debate over Thomas’ participation in Monsanto cases “highlights another deficiency in the current ethics regime,” said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“Even when judges recuse themselves or are asked to recuse themselves, they don’t typically give reasons for their decisions,” she said. “In instances where there could potentially be a case for recusal — but it’s very fact-dependent — having the justices give reasons for their decisions is very important for accountability.”

Questioning impartiality

During his 30 years on the nation’s highest bench, Thomas has faced calls to stay out of Monsanto cases but has routinely helped issue rulings in favor of the company and other chemical industry litigants, Stern found in his paper.

He cited one document in a polychlorinated biphenyls contamination case in which a plaintiffs’ lawyer said a search for records related to Thomas’ role at Monsanto might be “useful to induce settlement and/or head off appeal from final judgment.”

Monsanto manufactured the chemicals, known as PCBs, from 1935 until they were banned in the United States in 1979. While he was at Monsanto, Thomas was responsible for negotiating contracts for PCB disposal, Stern wrote.

“Clearly, it would appear that members of the public as well as litigants are questioning Justice Thomas’s impartiality, or are at least well aware that others could raise such questions,” Stern wrote. “Whether such questioning is ‘reasonable’ is, per the statute, up to Justice Thomas himself.”

Thomas has weighed in on PCB contamination cases that have come before the Supreme Court.

In the 1997 case General Electric Co. v. Joiner, for example, Thomas was part of the court’s unanimous rejection of a claim related to electrician Robert Joiner’s case that GE and Monsanto should be held liable for his exposure to PCBs while working with machinery at a Georgia utility plant.

Joiner said the chemicals “promoted” the lung cancer he later developed.

The Supreme Court has taken up many more Monsanto cases since Thomas arrived on the bench in 1991 — and the justices could soon consider a petition from the company that has the potential to upend a landmark cancer settlement related to its Roundup weedkiller (Greenwire, Dec. 9, 2021).

In his paper, Stern cited instances of other justices recusing in similar circumstances. As one example, Justice John Paul Stevens — whose son, a Vietnam war veteran, died from cancer — did not participate in former military members’ challenges against Monsanto and other manufacturers of the lethal herbicide Agent Orange.

Monsanto, which is now owned by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer AG, did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Limited role for agencies

As a member of the Supreme Court, Thomas has repeatedly expressed skepticism of broad powers for federal agencies like EPA — an attribute Stern links back to the justice’s early environmental work.

When Thomas left Monsanto in 1979 for a two-year stint advising then-Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.) on environmental issues, Thomas worked with corporate lobbyists fighting new federal laws like the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Shortly after former President Ronald Reagan was elected, Thomas urged Danforth to pursue a position on the Environment and Public Works Committee to “limit the impact of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts,” according to the lawmakers’ archived documents, which Stern reviewed for his research.

“After all,” Stern wrote, “reining in these laws could cripple the regulatory authority of EPA and liberate companies like Monsanto to operate unencumbered.”

From Danforth’s office, Thomas eventually joined the Reagan team as assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education — but two of his biographers say the administration originally eyed him for an environmental position.

He went on to serve as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

That move eventually catapulted Thomas to the nation’s highest bench.

Stern wrote in his paper that he aimed to offer a fuller view of Thomas’ environmental work at a time when the justice’s “once-fringe positions” are gaining mainstream acceptance by the court’s newly bolstered conservative wing.

Challenges seeking to limit the reach of both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act are currently before the Supreme Court — as is a case that could upend Chevron deference, which gives agencies like EPA leeway to interpret ambiguous statutes (Greenwire, Feb. 14).

“[H]is environmental ideology matters because, as numerous commentators have argued, Thomas — the senior Associate Justice on an increasingly conservative Court — is arguably the nation’s most influential justice,” Stern wrote.

Reporter Niina H. Farah contributed.

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http://www.ecowatch.com/orca-lulu-monsanto-pcbs-2404432231.html

Monsanto PCBs May Leave Orca Pod 'Doomed to Extinction'

By Carey Wedler

The Guardian reported last Tuesday that Lulu, the full-grown whale who died, "was a member of the UK's last resident pod and a postmortem also showed she had never produced a calf. The pollutants, called PCBs, are known to cause infertility and these latest findings add to strong evidence that the pod is doomed to extinction."

The levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, found in Lulu's blubber were "more than 100 times the 9mg/kg limit above which damage to the health of marine mammals is known to occur," the Guardian noted. Lulu had 950mg/kg in her blubber. The average orca in the North-Atlantic ocean has 150mg/kg.

Polychlorinated biphenyls were first used in the 1930s until they were banned by the U.S. government in 1979. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), PCBs are synthetic organic chemicals found in "old fluorescent lighting fixtures, electrical devices or appliances containing PCB capacitors made before PCB use was stopped, old microscope oil and old hydraulic oil." When released into the environment, they take long periods of time to break down.

They have been found to cause damage to human health. As ATSDR notes, "Some studies in workers suggest that exposure to PCBs may also cause irritation of the nose and lungs, gastrointestinal discomfort, changes in the blood and liver and depression and fatigue."

The Guardian explained the effects these chemicals have on marine life, as well:

"PCBs, which cause cancers and suppress the immune system, are especially harmful to top predators because they accumulate in fat up the food chain. Killer whales can live for many decades, meaning they can end up with very high levels of PCBs."

Though Lulu died after getting caught in ropes used for fishing, according to Andrew Brownlow, head of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, "Given what is known about the toxic effects of PCBs, we have to consider that such a high-pollutant burden could have been affecting her health and reproductive fitness."

"Lulu's apparent infertility is an ominous finding—with no new animals being born, it is now looking increasingly likely that this small group will eventually go extinct. One of the factors in this group's apparent failure to reproduce could be their high burden of organic pollutants," he said.

According to Monsanto's website, the company was deeply involved in the proliferation of the chemicals:

"The former Monsanto Company produced and sold PCBs to manufacturers—such as General Electric and Westinghouse—that incorporated the fluid into their products. The former Monsanto's PCB products bore the trade name 'Aroclor' (although not all Aroclor products were PCB products).

"Although the former Monsanto Company was the principal manufacturer of PCBs in the United States, its share of the global production was about 45 percent. There were many manufacturers in other countries, including West Germany, East Germany, Japan, France, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia and China. Production and use of PCBs continued in many of these countries into the 1990s."

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/26/monsanto-losses-pcb-lawsuit/

Chow | May 26, 2016

A St. Louis jury has awarded three plaintiffs a total of $46.5 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Monsanto and three other companies were negligent in its handling of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a highly toxic and carcinogenic group of chemicals.

This case, which went on trial April 28, involved only three of nearly 100 plaintiffs claiming that exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Yesterday’s 10-2 verdict in St. Louis Circuit Court awarded $17.5 million in damages to the three plaintiffs and assessed an additional $29 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, Solutia, Pharmacia and Pfizer, the St. Louis Dispatch reported.

PCBs were used to insulate electronics decades ago. Before switching operations to agriculture, Monsanto was the sole manufacturer of the compound from 1935 until 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned PCBs in 1979, due to its link to birth defects and cancer in laboratory animals. PCBs can also have adverse skin and liver effects in humans. PCBs linger in the environment for many decades.

The lawsuit claims that Monsanto continued to sell the compounds even after it learned about its dangers and falsely told the public they were safe. Indeed, internal documents have surfaced showing that Monsanto knew about the health risks of PCBs long before they were banned. A document, dated Sept. 20, 1955, stated: “We know Aroclors [PCBs] are toxic but the actual limit has not been precisely defined.”

The verdict is the first such victory in the city of St. Louis and a seemingly rare win overall. Monsanto has historically prevailed in similar lawsuits filed against the company over deaths and illnesses related to PCBs, as MintPress News noted.

“This is the future,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Kherkher of Houston told EcoWatch.

“The only reason why this victory is rare is because no one has had the money to fight Monsanto,” explaining that his law firm, Williams Kherkher, and other law firms pooled their resources to get the case off the ground.

“It’s not going to be rare anymore,” he said as his law firm has accumulated about 1,000 plaintiffs surrounding PCBs.

As more cases mount against the company, Kherkher said, “every judge allows us to acquire more and more information from Monsanto and discover their documents. There is a lot more information out there that has yet to be mined.”

...

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UNC Press - Baptized in PCBs

www.uncpress.unc.edu/.../boo...

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Paper. ISBN 978-1-4696-2729-8. Published: February 2016. Baptized in PCBs. Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town. By Ellen Griffith Spears ...

http://www.amazon.com/Baptized-PCBs-Pollution-Justice-AllAmerican/dp/1482970155

In the mid 1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice, exposing how systemic racial and class inequalities reinforced during the Jim Crow era played out in these intense contemporary social movements. Spears focuses attention on key figures who shaped Anniston from Monsanto's founders to white and African American activists to the ordinary Anniston residents whose lives and health were deeply affected by the town's military industrial history and the legacy of racism. Situating the personal struggles and triumphs of Anniston residents within a larger national story of regulatory regimes and legal strategies that have affected toxic towns across America, Spears unflinchingly explores the causes and implications of environmental inequalities, showing how civil rights movement activism undergirded Anniston's campaigns for redemption and justice.

Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-

...

www.amazon.com › Books › History › Americas

Amazon.com, Inc.

Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-... and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. ... Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an AllAmerican Town MP3 CD – Audiobook, MP3 Audio. ... Save Big On Open-Box & Pre-owned: Buy "Baptized in ...

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/04/book-review-ellen-griffith-spears-baptized-in-pcbs-race-pollution-and-justice-in-an-all-american-town

...

Ellen Spears’ new environmental history of the chemical industry in Anniston, Alabama is a worthy addition to the literature on environmental justice. She tells the story of Anniston, a city noted for the burning of the Freedom Riders bus in 1961, through both the narrative of civil rights and also the narrative of a modern postwar New South city dominated by the military-industrial complex. Monsanto sited one of its largest plants in Anniston and poisoned the poor and African-American part of the city with massive PCB production. Yet even as the environmental movement fought against PCB production and succeeding in ending the production of these extremely toxic substances in Anniston, Monsanto never got around to telling the local people what was in their soil and water. This quite readable story of race, environmental justice, and chemical corporate greed in one southern city is well worth the time of interested general readers.

Anniston was more of a postbellum southern city and as a representative of the New South, it cultivated both an industry-friendly pose and a city leadership that attempted moderation on racial issues, albeit well within a Jim Crow framework. Even during the bus bombings, the city’s leadership attempted to distance itself from this violence, although without granting rights to African-Americans. Like other New South cities, it attempted to cultivate a reputation of civility, even as its white citizens acted violently toward blacks. In the early 20th century, it began attracting attention from the growing chemical industry.

This growing chemical industry merged with the militarization of the United States after World War II, as national sacrifice zones developed to develop the weapons the U.S. wanted to fight the Cold War. Of course, most of these places took advantage of those who were poor and people of color. So the Mormon and Paiute downwinders of Nevada and Utah, the poor whites living outside of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the African-Americans of Anniston became those who would have to live with the impact of this production. As Spears notes, “pollution is related to other forms of inequality,” and disadvantaged people struggling for basic rights in this nation also struggled to maintain control over their bodies from the vast pollution around them because they were so poor. For wealthier and whiter Anniston in most of the 20th century, pollution was simply the price of progress. And with nonexistent or limited regulation, the corporations simply had no need to tell local people what was happening.

Monsanto developed in St. Louis in 1901 and became a major player in the synthetic chemical industry by World War I. It began expanding its product lines after World War I and entered the nascent PCB market in the 1930s. From very early, Monsanto knew of PCBs dangers because some of its workers got sick and died from exposure. But many of the laborers in the Anniston plant were African-American and so the need to tell them about any of these health issues was essentially nonexistent. Instead, Monsanto tried to shape public relations around the chemicals, assuring the public of their safety and value. That worked for awhile locally, but nationally, the environmental movement began organizing against DDT, PCBs, and other chemicals poisoning the nation. The company had a lot of lose with PCB regulations and bans and its hired scientists went so far as to commit outright fraud in their scientific reports about the safety of PCBs. It worried about being held legally responsible for all its pollution as early as 1970, as up to 80 pounds of PCBs were coming out of the plant in a single day. Finally, PCB production was banned in the United States in 1979 and Monsanto adjusted very nicely.

Through all of this, even as Monsanto was warning its industrial customers about handling PCBs, the company said absolutely nothing to the people who lived near the plant. As public knowledge of the dangers of PCBs built in the nation, activist groups began in Anniston. These usually developed out of the civil rights movement, as activists by the late 1970s started noticing the correlation between impoverished black parts of the country and where corporations and the government sited toxicity. African-Americans in Anniston had long been concerned about the impact of the factory on their community. They soon built upon the nascent environmental justice movement and began organizing to keep themselves and their neighborhoods safe. Making this all the more important was U.S. Army plans to build an incinerator in Anniston to burn chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot as the Cold War ran down. Both corporate and government entities were actively degrading the bodies of the largely African-American population living near these facilities.

With the discovery of deformed fish in nearby streams, the movement to hold Monsanto accountable really took off in the early 1990s. The activists took Monsanto to court both for compensation for the PCBs and to stop the development of the incinerator. Of course, Monsanto contested every claim. When one scientist based his expert opinion of Monsanto’s culpability by noting the high rates of PCBs in local residents’ blood, the company’s lawyers called him a “fringe scientist.” The company claimed it simply had no idea how contaminated west Anniston was and besides, it was “not a liability issue anymore because it happened so long ago”(257). But in 2003, the lawsuits finally ended with Monsanto agreeing to a $400 million settlement. Yet the attorneys received 40 percent of this money because they were working on a percentage, leaving a great deal of resentment over the attorney fees and a continuing struggle to recoup some of that money today. Plus the cleanup procedures uprooted people from their homes, disrupted ways of life, and destroyed communities. There was no real win for the people who Monsanto had made suffer.

This review is a bit unbalanced compared to the focus of the book. If I have any criticism of the book, it’s that the in depth discussions of the trials and aftermath might be a bit lengthy, taking up about third of the book. Yet while not every detail might be of particular use to scholars, it probably does engage general readers who are interested in how the case developed and who wins and who loses in these struggles. Overall, it’s a very good book, a quality addition to the literature, and likely on my syllabus the next time I teach a graduate seminar in Environmental History.

Book Review: Ellen Griffith Spears: Baptized in PCBs: Race ...

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com › General

Apr 25, 2015 - Ellen Spears' new environmental history of the chemical industry in Anniston, Alabama is a worthy addition to the literature on environmental ...

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3 Toxins Found in the Cord Blood of Every One of the 10 Newborns Tested National media outlets, public health officials and Congress have all focused recently on lead contamination in drinking water. The tainted water in Flint, Michigan, Newark, New Jersey and many other communities around the country poses a serious, potentially lifelong public health threat to millions.

Most of us encounter chemicals that can cause brain damage, cancer and other serious health problems in a place critical to human development—the mother’s womb. But industrial pollution in people happens long before they take their first sip of water. Most of us encounter chemicals that can cause brain damage, cancer and other serious health problems in a place critical to human development—the mother’s womb.

In 2009, Environmental Working Group (EWG) conducted a pioneering study testing the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies for toxic chemicals. In all, the tests found more than 230 industrial pollutants across the 10 samples. Among those that were in the cord blood of every one of the 10 newborns were lead, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). 4/16

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/15/robert-kennedy-jr-monsanto-rider/

:{The New York Times reported last month that Congressional Republicans have clandestinely inserted a provision into the :{Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reauthorization}: bill that will give :{Monsanto permanent immunity from liability}: for injuries caused by its toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The long

awaited and grievously needed bill is now in the Conference Committee

for reconciliation with a companion Senate bill. The so-called “Monsanto

Rider” would shield the chemical colossus from thousands of lawsuits by cities, towns, school districts and individuals, who have been injured by exposure to PCBs.}:

:{PCBs are known human carcinogens and

potent endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with physical,

intellectual and sexual development in children. PCBs persist in the

environment and bio accumulate in animals and humans. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA), children exposed to PCBs can suffer damage to their immune,

reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. Two recent publications

from U.S. EPA and the National Institute Environmental Health Science

Children’s Center at UC Davis report that PCBs can disrupt early brain development,

by hijacking the signals that promote normal neuron branching which

increase the risk of brain damage, including autism. Between 1935 and 1977, Monsantowas the exclusive manufacturer of PCBs in the U.S. Congress banned the manufacturing of PCBs in 1979 over concerns about its potential to cause severe health and environmental injury.}:

:{I’ve been sparring over PCBs since

the start of my 32-year career as an environmental lawyer. For more

than three decades I have been litigating and campaigning against

General Electric (GE) to force the clean-up of the Hudson River. PCBs

manufactured by Monsanto and dumped by GE have contaminated 200 miles of

the Hudson, which is the country’s largest superfund site. GE’s long

awaited Hudson River clean-up is now ongoing, but the Hudson is not

America’s only PCB contaminated waterway.}:

Monsanto’s PCBs have poisoned 80,000 river miles elsewhere in our nation from Washington state’s Duwamish River to Connecticut’s Housatonic. Seattle and six other cities are currently in litigation with Monsanto to force the company to clean up local rivers and bays. The GOP’s TSCA’s shield provision would dismiss all those lawsuits. Congress would have the public, not the polluters pay to clean up Monsanto’s monumental mess.

Of even greater concern is the burgeoning issue of PCBs in our public schools.

:{Monsanto marketed PCB-based caulking to schools and other municipal buildings throughout the U.S beginning in 1950, touting the chemical’s ability to contract and expand with

changing temperatures. Studies suggest that any school built or

renovated between 1950 and 1977 may contain PCBs. As the scientific

evidence about PCB hazards to human health accumulated in the early

1970’s, and regulatory agencies and Congress began moving toward a ban,

Monsanto amplified its aggressive marketing of}::{plasticizer

PCBs for use in caulk that was applied throughout America’s public

schools. Despite Monsanto’s own internal conclusion in 1969 that PCBs

were becoming “global environmental contaminants,” Monsanto increased

its production of PCBs which peaked in 1970 at 85 million pounds.}:

:{The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 45 percent of all schools in the U.S. (approximately 45,000) were built during this era. About 27 to 54 percent of all these

schools—12,000 to 25,000 nationwide—may contain PCBs with little

variation among U.S. regions. The costs of mitigation and remediation

ranges from $750,000 to $3.1 million per building. The total costs to

school districts across the nation could be upwards of $80 billion. As

the exclusive manufacturer of PCBs in the U.S., Monsanto is responsible

for these damages. I am representing school districts across the country

who are suing Monsanto to pay the costs of removing contaminated caulking and PCB laden light bulb ballasts.}:

:{:{TSCA

section 15 U.S.C. 2605(e), which was enacted in 1977, requires that

every school district with PCBs in caulking and lighting ballasts

greater than 50 parts per million, immediately remove these contaminants

to safeguard school children’s health.}:}::{:{However,

in 2009, the EPA implemented an informal policy allowing school

districts to delay remediation until such time as there were major

renovations or demolition of the contaminated structure. The EPA told

the school districts that it would not enforce that law if the school

district chose to wait.}:}:

:{:{While

this unpromulgated and illegal EPA policy seemed like a concession to

financially pressed school districts, it was actually a monumental gift

to Monsanto. Most schools, low on cash flow, chose to delay the

expensive and logistically challenging remediation projects

indefinitely, despite the danger to children. When delays stretch past

the five year}:}::{statute of

limitations (which begins running when the school district becomes

aware—or should have been aware—of the contamination), Monsanto is off

the hook. Those $80 billion in Monsanto’s costs are then transferred to

local school districts. As predicted, school districts given the option

to delay, mostly did just that despite the awful consequences to future

taxpayers.}:

:{It’s important to understand that if a

single school district in a state files a class action lawsuit against

Monsanto to recover remediation costs, the statute of limitations is

tolled for every district in that state. In most states, no district has

filed a class action lawsuit. However, one courageous, pioneering district in Massachusetts chose to file,

and that suit had the effect of tolling the statute for every school in

that state—creating a deep pool of potential liability for Monsanto.

GOP’s new shield provision is designed to abolish Monsanto’s liability

as a favor to the company, which has donated $39 million to politicians

over 30 years.}:

:{Documents uncovered during our litigation have confirmed Monsanto’s

sickeningly corrupt corporate culture. Instead of being a good corporate

citizen, Monsanto’s decision making matrix puts greed before public

health and welfare.}:

As early as the 1930’s and 1940’s, Monsanto was aware that prolonged occupational exposure to PCBs might cause liver damage in humans. A Monsanto memorandum dated Sept. 20, 1955, stated:

“We know Aroclors [PCBs] are toxic but the actual limit has not been precisely defined.”

In late 1968, Monsanto learned that Japanese citizens were becoming ill from eating rice oil contaminated with:{:{Japanese

manufactured PCBs. The company responded with a draft Oct. 2, 1969 }:

directive stressing a preeminent focus on its bottom line:}:

:{“The

objective of the [PCB] committee was to recommend action that will: 1.

Protect continued sales and profits of Aroclors; 2. Permit continued

development of new uses and sales, and; 3. Protect the image of the

Organic Division and the Corporation as members of the business

community …”}:

An internal draft document dated Oct. 2, 1969, illustrates the moral bankruptcy of the company:

:{:{“The

committee believes there is little probability that any action that can

be taken [that] will prevent the growing incrimination of specific

[PCBs] (the higher chlorinated—e.g. Aroclors 1254 and 1260) as nearly

global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food

(particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and

the possible extinction of several species of fish-eating birds.}:There are, however, a number of actions which must be undertaken in order to prolong the manufacture, sale and use of these particular Aroclors as

well as to protect the continued use of other members of the Aroclor

series.”}:

:{:{:{:{A document dated Jan. 26, 1970, The PCB-Pollution Problem,

describes a Jan. 21 and 22, 1970 meeting between representatives of GE and Monsanto. This document appears to make a commitment by Monsanto

science and safety division to fraudulently massage scientific data to

make their dangerous product appear safe. The document states (emphasis

added):}:}:}:}:

:{:{:{:{“In

essence, results reported by Mr. Wheeler on chronic animal toxicity

tests and animal reproducibility studies underway are not as favorable

as we had hoped or anticipated.  Particularly alarming is evidence of

effect on}:}:}:}::{hatchability

and production of thin egg shells regards white leghorn chickens. The

studies involved Aroclor 1242, 1254 and 1260. }:Some of the studies will be repeated to arrive at better conclusions.”

The GOP is currently working to rewrite TSCA to assure that no jury will ever see these or the many other damning documents in our possession.

If Monsanto gets its way, the American people will pay a high price for corporate greed and political corruption.

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France, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands Rebel Against Relicensing of Monsanto’s Glyphosate

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/seattle-sues-monsanto-pcb-lawsuit/

...e complaint,

filed on Monday with the U.S. District Court in Seattle, alleges that

Monsanto knew that the chemicals were polluting the environment and

causing harm to people and wildlife, as Seattle City Attorney Pete

Holmes explained to The Seattle Times.

“When the profit motive overtakes concern for the environment, this

is the kind of disaster that happens,” Holmes added. “I’m proud to hold

Monsanto accountable.”

According to Seattlepi.com, the suit concerns PCB contamination in 20,000 acres that drain into the lower Duwamish, which is a federal Superfund site (meaning

it’s so polluted that that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has

to help with cleanup). It also concerns areas that drain to the East

Waterway adjacent to Harbor Island, also a federal Superfund site.

The lawsuit also states:

PCBs were detected in 75 percent of more

than 1,000 samples collected from catch basins and drainage lines in the

Lower Duwamish drainage area. In the East Waterway drainage areas, PCBs

were detected in 82 percent of samples collected with “in-line grabs”

of sediment in drainage pipes and PCBs were detected in 73 percent of

samples collected from catch basins in street right-of-ways.

The city is likely seeking millions of dollars from Monsanto to pay

for the cleanup. “The ultimate cost depends on how far you go in

cleanup,” Holmes told Seattlepi.com, adding that it would be

“impossible” clean up all the PCBs found mainly in the city’s industrial

zone.

Under a consent decree issued by the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) and the Washington Department of Ecology, Seattle already needs to

spend at least $27 million to build a treatment plant to remove

pollutants, including PCBs, from stormwater.

However, as The Seattle Times pointed out, the plant will only cover a

mere 1.25 percent of the 20,000 acres that drain to the Lower Duwamish.

Monsanto has faced a spate of PCB contamination lawsuits over the decades and several this year alone. In 2015, the cities of Spokane, San Diego, San Jose and Oakland also sued the company over PCB-contaminated sites....

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endocrine

http://www.alternet.org/environment/pesticide-exposure-linked-abnormal-sperm

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl

A polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB; CAS number 1336-36-3 ) is a synthetic organic chemical compound of chlorine attached to biphenyl, which is a molecule composed of two benzene rings. There are 209 configurations of organochlorides with 1 to 10 chlorine atoms. The chemical formula for a PCB is C12H10-xClx. 130 of the different PCB arrangements and orientations are used commercially.[1][2]

Polychlorinated biphenyls were widely used as dielectric and coolant fluids, for example in electrical apparatus, cutting fluids for machining operations, carbon paper and in heat transfer fluids. [3] Due to PCBs' environmental toxicity and classification as a persistent organic pollutant, PCB production was banned by the United States Congress in 1979 and by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.[4] According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals, and there is also evidence that they can cause cancer in humans.[5]

Concerns about the toxicity of PCBs are largely based on compounds within this group that share a structural similarity and toxic mode of action with dioxin. Toxic effects such as endocrine disruption and neurotoxicity are also associated with other compounds within the group. The maximum allowable contaminant level in drinking water in the United States is set at zero, but due to water treatment technologies, a level of 0.5 parts per billion is the defacto level.[6]

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PCBs is the acronym for Polychlorinated biphenyls which are complex chlorinated compounds. [1] In the 1935 Monsanto bought Swann Chemical Company, the company that invented PCBs and became the source of all PCBs in the United States. [2] [3] Monsanto PCB customers like General Electric and Westinghouse also released massive amounts into the environment. [4]

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) states "There are no known natural sources of PCBs. PCBs are either oily liquids or solids that are colorless to light yellow. Some PCBs can exist as a vapor in air. PCBs have no known smell or taste." [5]

"PCBs have been used as coolants and lubricants in transformers, capacitors, and other electrical equipment because they don't burn easily and are good insulators. The manufacture of PCBs was stopped in the U.S. in 1977 because of evidence they build up in the environment and can cause harmful health effects. Products made before 1977 that may contain PCBs include old fluorescent lighting fixtures and electrical devices containing PCB capacitors, and old microscope and hydraulic oils," ATSDR states. [6]

Indeed as the book Our Stolen Future notes PCB's "might be found virtually anywhere imaginable: in the sperm of a man tested at a fertility clinic in upstate New York, in the finest caviar, in the fat of a newborn baby in Michigan, in penguins in Antarctica, in the bluefin tuna served in a sushi bar in Tokyo, in the monsoon rains falling in Calcutta, in the milk of a nursing mother in France, in the blubber of a sperm whale cruising in the South Pacific, in a wheel of ripe brie cheese, in a handsome striped bass landed off Martha’s Vineyard on a summer weekend. Like most persistent synthetic chemicals, PCB’s are world travelers." (Our Stolen Future, p. 91-92)"

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