Remember Erin Brockovich? Two-Thirds Of U.S. Tap Water Still Contains Carcinogen From Famous Case

Remember Erin Brockovich? Two-Thirds Of U.S. Tap Water Still Contains Carcinogen From Famous Case

By Kurtis Bright

Alarming New Study Shows that over 60 Percent Of U.S. Tap Water Tainted with Chromium-6

Nothing ever changes, at least that’s what they say. And when it comes to the carcinogen found in U.S. tap water that was made famous in the film “Erin Brockovich,” that sure seems to be the case.

Turns out that a feel-good Hollywood movie depicting the little guy fighting back and winning against big corporate polluters is strictly fiction: nearly two-thirds of Americans still drink tap water tainted with chromium-6. That’s the deadly carcinogen that was at the heart of the lawsuit in the case that made Erin Brockovich famous. In that case, residents of Hinkley, California sued and won against Pacific Gas & Electric for its guilt in poisoning the groundwater in the region.

But film awards and self-congratulation aside, the reality is that in a new study performed by the Environmental Working Group, it turns out that two-thirds of Americans may still be exposed to the dangerous carcinogen through their tap water every day.

In the study, which ran from 2013 to 2016, EWG took over 60,000 water samples from various locations around the U.S., with a result that over 66 percent of them tested positive for the chemical.

And this not a trivial thing, yet another nasty chemical in a plethora of them to which we are subjected every day, something to be ignored with a shrug. In fact, the National Toxicology Program has stated that ingesting chromium-6 is strongly linked to cancer in lab rats and mice. In addition to being identified as a source of lung cancer, it can also cause liver damage, damage to the reproductive system, and problems with brain development.

As of this writing, California is the only state that regulates chromium-6 levels, mandating that there can be no more than ten parts per billion in state drinking water. However, even the state’s own Environmental Health Hazard Assessment says that amount is dangerously high. That study dating from 2008 recommended levels no higher than 0.02 parts per billion, which means that the state’s actual rate of 10 ppb is some 500 times too high.

Chromium is used in the manufacture of metal plating and stainless steel, and it is a key ingredient in wood preservation and textile manufacturing. Some of the cities that tested highest for chromium-6 were Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona, as well as Oklahoma City.

And the sad fact is that we’ve known for over 20 years that hexavalent chromium (the six in chromium-6) causes lung cancer when inhaled. However the most recent mice and rat studies have shown conclusively that it is also a source of malignant tumors of the mouth and small intestines when ingested, for instance in water.

“I think it’s resolved, as much as it can be resolved,” said George Alexeeff, deputy director of scientific affairs at California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in an interview with Scientific American.

For its part, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving with the utmost urgency as usual: the EPA has released a statement saying it is studying the matter and may issue national guidelines “soon.”

Meanwhile, millions of children and adults consume a dangerous carcinogen on a daily basis. Thanks, EPA.

The Brockovich case won a record-setting jury award of over $300 million dollars for people living in Hinkley. So one has to wonder what might the consequences be nationwide were the EPA to admits that the current chromium-6 levels allowed are much more dangerous than previously thought.

With so many businesses not to mention the government itself on the brink of losing perhaps billions in the inevitable deluge of lawsuits that would follow, its no wonder they’re slow-rolling any changes.

At least it is crystal clear that they no longer are concerned with protecting the health of the people so much as they care about protecting the fiscal health of business--and covering their own asses.

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Monsanto-Funded Glyphosate Study Pleased to Inform the World That Glyphosate Is Completely Safe

Monsanto-Funded Glyphosate Study Pleased to Inform the World That Glyphosate Is Completely Safe

By Kurtis Bright

Thanks For Clearing That Up, Monsanto

 

They just won’t give up, will they?

Once again Monsanto is in the news, and this time it isn’t about their proposed merger with Bayer, a troubling enough development to anyone who thinks food and the means to feed ourselves shouldn’t be controlled by a half-dozen chemical corporations.

And weirdly the news isn’t about their genetically modified seeds either, the seeds that the rural people of India call “suicide seeds” due to the rate at which impoverished farmers in hock to the corporation because of their usurious patent fees kill themselves.

For once it isn’t even about their lawyers continuing to avoid the corporation’s culpability in the poisoning of millions of acres of U.S. wetlands and waterways with their PCB chemical runoff.

No, Monsanto is in the news this time around due to something they actually want to see in the news--which is there thanks no doubt to their massive PR department. The chemical concern-turned-seed-company recently made headlines due to the release of a study that has shown that glyphosate, the active ingredient in their signature herbicide Roundup has been determined to be perfectly safe.

If you’re wondering why that doesn’t sound quite right, given that the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm found that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, or because you’re aware of the mounting evidence that keeps piling up indicating that glyphosate is largely responsible for the massive bee die-offs of recent years, well, you wouldn’t be alone in your confusion.

What you should probably know is that Monsanto funded the research and paid the scientists who reached this conclusion, so there’s that.

Miracle of miracles, they sided with Monsanto’s long-time claims.

Of course disclosing their financial interest in the results isn’t something Monsanto’s pet scientists felt compelled to do, at least not in any clear, transparent way. Published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, the study conveniently didn’t mention these blatant industry ties until the very end of the article, in an obscurant “Declaration of Interests.”

And those confessions were anything but candid. In part:

“...it should be recognized that each individual participated in the review process and preparation of this paper as an independent professional and not as a representative of their employer.”

And who are those employers? Well you’d have to read on to find the Monsanto name on there. But at any rate, how big-hearted, how clear-eyed and objective of them to dig deep and find their independence while working on this study--despite living in homes paid for by Monsanto, sending their kids to high-end schools financed by Monsanto, and eating food put on the table by their Monsanto paychecks.

And in case you didn’t take the point about how liberated the scientists were from the constraints of pleasing their bosses in their day jobs, there were multiple, prominent  references to the “independence” of the study’s authors, a curious use of the word to say the least.

And this “independent” study couldn’t have been released at a better time for Monsanto, as the company attempts to justify its sale to Bayer. Given the current ongoing cultural context of glyphosate being found in more and more consumer products, including baby food, wine, beer and oatmeal, and more and more people questioning GMO farming versus organic methods, and expressing an overwhelming preference not to eat these chemicals, Monsanto could be viewed as somewhat desperate to make sure the deal goes through.

But another place the company has found more of that much-vaunted “independent” corroboration that glyphosate is as safe as mother’s milk is at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recently the EPA announced that it would be holding a four-day open forum with public meetings to address citizen concerns over the cancer risk of glyphosate.

Luckily, just to keep things crystal clear, the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs was able to reach the conclusion that glyphosate is “...not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses relevant to human health risk assessment” just before the hearings began.

Such a convenient “independent” conclusion to come to for both Monsanto and the EPA, especially given that the EPA is complicit in allowing billions of pounds of glyphosate to be dispersed all over the planet over the course of the last 20 years.

Imagine how ashamed they would be if some independent study were to find that glyphosate causes cancer.

Oh, wait. That already happened, and neither entity has shown the least scrap of shame.

But then that’s one of the traits of great liars: their inability to be ashamed of what they’ve done.

When the government agency in charge of protecting people from corporate poisons is providing cover for those same corporations, we’re no longer living in a liberal democracy nor even a free-market capitalist society.

That is what you call fascism (from Wikipedia):

“Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production. Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector, and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state. Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.”

The only difference between the economic side of this neo-fascism and that of pre-World War II Italy and Germany is that back then, the state called the shots and controlled the corporations.

Today the corporations control the state.

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