“Our mission is to provide the highest quality scientific information and analysis to enable a healthy food system and a healthy world”
The Bioscience Resource Project provides scientific and intellectual resources for a healthy future. It publishes Independent Science News, a media service devoted to food and agriculture, and their impacts on health and the environment. It also offers resources for scientists and educators and internships and training for students. Through its innovative scientific journalism and original biosafety review articles, the project provides unique and revealing perspectives on issues that are fundamental to the survival of people and the planet. The project does not accept advertising or corporate funding and is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. It is completely dependent on individual donations.We invite you to join the Project as a contributor or a donor.
Bioscience Resource Project News and Views
‘Poison Papers’ Reveal Chemical Industry Secrets
ClassAction.com interviewed Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), about the “Poison Papers” and why CMD and the Bioscience Resource Project joined together to get the documents online and available to the public. Graves also discusses some of the issues documented in the Poison Papers and their relevance today.
“And there’s an array of documents from studies that show harms by a number of chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins, and more. What we’re left with is a situation in which many of these chemicals remain on the market, are in products that are being used by consumers and by government agencies, and continue to pose a risk to human health and to the health of our ecosystem.”
Original article posted here
“‘Poison Papers’ Reveal Chemical Industry Secrets” published on ClassAction.com on September 6, 2017 can be found at https://www.classaction.com/news/chemical-industry-poison-papers/
These Documents Show How BASF, Bayer & Co Have Played Down Dangerous Substances for Years
A new article based on papers in the Poison Papers DocumentCloud database has just been published in German on Buzzfeed. The article: “Diese Dokumente zeigen, wie BASF, Bayer & Co gefährliche Stoffe über Jahre verharmlost haben: US-Aktivisten haben 100.000 zum Teil vertrauliche Seiten über die Chemieindustrie veröffentlicht: die Poison Papers.”, ursprünglich veröffentlicht auf 24. August 2017, 12:17, Petra Sorge, BuzzFeed Contributor.
The English translation reads: “These documents show how BASF, Bayer & Co have dealt with dangerous substances for years: US activists have published 100, 000 partly confidential pages about the chemical industry: the Poison Papers.” The article was originally published on 24 August 2017, by Petra Sorge, BuzzFeed Contributor.
The article can be read in German at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/petrasorge/diese-dokumente-zeigen-wie-basf-bayer-co-gefahrliche-stoffe?bffbdenews&utm_term=.fwDv3Pqpb#.qy6Z240Mw.
How an Oregon activist’s barn produced the ‘Poison Papers’ that aids in a lawsuit against Monsanto
St. Louis Public Radio has published a new article about The Poison Papers and Carol Van Strum. Van Strum is an activist who collected the documents during her past 40 years involved in lawsuits against chemical companies and the federal government. Making the Poison Papers available to the public on DocumentCloud is a project of The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy.
“It began in the early 1970s, when Van Strum’s family saw an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle and moved to a farm in the Siuslaw National Forest.
Soon after, she said, they were sprayed by a helicopter with 2,4,5-T — a component of Agent Orange — that was meant to treat a timber crop on nearby public land.
She banded together with neighbors, sued and won an injunction to stop the spraying.”
The hope is that the newly digitized Poison Papers will aid in current efforts to protect the public from toxic exposure.
“Bill Sherman, assistant attorney general for the state of Washington, said he was reviewing the new documents and expected they would be involved in the state’s lawsuit against Monsanto.
‘They confirm that Monsanto was aware of the harms that their PCBs were causing and continued to sell them without telling the public or their customers,” Sherman said of the documents.’”
Monsanto sold banned chemicals for years despite known health risks, archives reveal
“Monsanto continued to produce and sell toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs for eight years after learning that they posed hazards to public health and the environment, according to legal analysis of documents put online in a vast searchable archive.”
The Poison Papers archive has been analyzed by Bill Sherman, the assistant attorney general for the US state of Washington. Washington state and various west coast cities are suing Monsanto for PCB contamination. Sherman is quoted as saying that Poison Paper documents provide “damning evidence” that was previously unknown to the state.
Due to their extreme toxicity to human and environmental health, by 1979 PCBs were banned in many countries.
“Yet a decade earlier, one Monsanto pollution abatement plan in the archive from October 1969, singled out by Sherman, suggests that Monsanto was even then aware of the risks posed by PCB use.”
To learn more about what Monsanto knew and hid about PCB toxicity read the full article “Monsanto sold banned chemicals for years despite known health risks, archives reveal” by Arthur Neslen on The Guardian (10 August 2017) go to: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/09/monsanto-continued-selling-pcbs-for-years-despite-knowing-health-risks-archives-reveal.
The Swamp: Newly Released Monsanto and Government Documents Show Why Toxic Pesticides Stay on the Market
Evaggelos Vallianatos worked at the EPA and knew Adrian Gross, whose letter exposing the fraudulence of the chemical testing company IBT features in the Poison Papers. Vallianatos describes Gross’s initial experience of IBT in 1976:
“You wait but no one shows up. You decide to explore the place. You enter a large room with the infrastructure of a lab: tables loaded with knives, glass tubes, chemicals, and equipment for operations and pathology studies. You immediately react, wishing to get out of the room. An awful stench is hanging in the air. A broken water sprinkler is throwing water over cages full of mice, rats, and dogs. Rats are running into a swamp: water mixed with animal excrement covering the floor. Then, astonishingly, you see a technician holding a canister of sleeping gas running after rats. You back off in horror and reenter the reception room where the calm receptionist is on the phone calling the police for an intruder, you.”
Read the full article “The Swamp” by Evaggelos Vallianatos (4 August 2017) on The Huffington Post at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-swamp_us_5984c3bde4b00833d1de27c4
Radio Interview: Newly Released Documents Shed Light on Years of Environmental Lies
Todd Zwillich of WNYC interviews Dr Jonathan Latham on the meaning of the Poison Papers