Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

Toxic Education: Monsanto and the 26,000 Poisonous Public Schools it Poisoned

By Kurtis Bright

How Monsanto Is on the Hook for 26,000 Toxic Schools

You just can’t outrun your past. Wherever you go, there you are, complete with the litany of all the bad things you have ever done locked inside you.

It is a simple truism of life that we come to grips with more and more the older we get--or maybe it’s just that we have more accumulated past to contend with.

Either way, the big bosses at agrichem giant Monsanto are finding this to be more true than ever as scrutiny of the company is heating up with the news proposed merger with Bayer.

And any way you cut it, the company has had a rather...colorful past, shall we say. Ranging from their early days in the late 1800s and early 1900s when they worked tirelessly at popularizing saccharin despite its false promise of weight loss as a sugar substitute--and in the process fighting a decades-long court battle against allowing the proof of saccharin’s cancer-causing properties to force it from the market.

Then there’s the assist they provided on the Manhattan Project, from which experience working with the military they then pivoted to developing other tools of war, such as Agent Orange and white phosphorus. And of course there’s today, with the company gleefully blanketing the earth and everything growing on it with cancer-causing glyphosate and replacing natural systems with genetically modified crops.

There are not many companies that have wreaked so much havoc on the lives of so many people for so long.

But one oft-overlooked slice of the toxic cake that is Monsanto’s checkered history is now coming into the limelight once again: the company’s association with the manufacture of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Once widely used in electronics and as an industrial sealant, PCBs have long been the cause of numerous municipal lawsuits as cities try to force the company to pay for the cleanup of the now-toxic wetlands it has befouled with the stuff.

But the latest is that Monsanto may be on the hook for the clean up of at least 26,000 U.S. schools that still have PCBs in their caulking, sealants, and other building materials--PCBs that could still be leaching out in affecting students nationwide.

 By some estimates, nearly 14 million students may be affected by the leaks, which represents some 30 percent of the total student population.

That could spell big lawsuits for Monsanto.

PCB is an endocrine disruptor and cancer-causing agent, exposure to which is known to cause skin conditions, liver damage, ocular lesions, lowered immune response, fatigue, headaches, and coughs, and in the children of women who are exposed it can cause cognitive development issues and motor control problems in their offspring.

Despite the fact that the company’s decades-long battle to keep PCBs legal (boy, does that ever sound familiar) ended in 1979 when the Environmental Protection Agency finally banned their manufacture, numberous older buildings across the nation still contain construction materials and wiring containing PCBs.

The angle on schools in particular comes out of the offices of U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass), the Environmental Working Group, and America Unites Kids.

And the news ain’t good: at minimum some 12,960 schools contain PCB-laden caulk, and that number could be as high as 25,920.

“That number comes by looking back at those periods of time where public schools were most extensively built. About 60 percent of the schools were built from 1950 to the early '80s, the time when PCBs were most commonly used in building materials,” wrote primary author and researcher at Harvard School of Public Health Robert Herrick.

Studies have shown that people can be exposed to PCBs by simply touching contaminated surfaces, and possibly even by inhaling PCB-laden dust. In schools that were constructed so long ago, it is a near-certainty that some such dust exists.

One can only hope that this latest round of Monsanto PCB disclosures and pending lawsuits will finally put a stake in the heart of this vile company that has visited so much evil on humankind.

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Would You Like Carboxymethyl Cellulose With Your Shrimp?

Would You Like Carboxymethyl Cellulose With Your Shrimp?

By Kurtis Bright

Disgusting Video: Injecting Shrimp With Toxic Chemical Goo to Add Weight

Would You Like Carboxymethyl Cellulose With Your Shrimp?

By Kurtis Bright

Disgusting Video: Injecting Shrimp With Toxic Chemical Goo to Add Weight

We are all aware, at least in a vaguely unsettling way, that factory farming methods come with a host of problems. The endemic overuse of antibiotics, and hormone treatments, along with GMO feed for the animals are immediate health threats to humans, not to mention problems like disease, massive environmental impact, and cruel conditions for the animals--the list goes on.

But many people don’t realize that almost all the above problems not only relate to hoofed animal facilities--they also apply to farmed fish and especially to shrimp farming.

The only difference with seafood is you should multiply these issues by a thousand.

Some of the most toxic, filthy, poison-laden product ever created as a foodstuff for human consumption is the result of modern shrimp farming methods. The fact that humans actually ingest this vile product--which, as you may or may not know, is grown in foul cesspools of feces-saturated, toxic water that is then doused with insane amounts of antibiotics, some of which are so problematic they are banned in the U.S. and E.U.--is testimony to the monumental ability of the modern advertising and media industries to disguise the true nature of things.

But see for yourself just how bad it gets. A viral video is currently making the rounds that may well have an effect on not only the farmed shrimp industry, but also on international trade agreements and may even go as deep as the roots of neoliberal capitalism itself.

What is money worth? What are increased sales and ever-higher profits worth to you in terms of selling people toxins disguised as food?

Shrimp producers are shown in the video hard at work operating a sophisticated machine that has as many as 30 stations where workers take the shrimp that has been harvested from the pits and then are seen injecting it with a clear jelly-like substance. This goo they are injecting contains carboxymethyl cellulose or CMC, as well as gelatin and glucose, all of which give the shrimp added heft when it comes time to weigh them for market.

This massive operation is of course driven by money, and greed. The substance in question doesn’t appear at first glance to be radically different from the uncooked shrimp’s own gelatinous body structure, and the additional weight given to each of the crustaceans will transform a kilo of shrimp into 1.15 to 1.2 kilos when it comes time to sell them to exporters. The injections are also said to make the shrimp “look fresher,” according to the producers.

It is the system in the shrimp farms of Southeast Asia, and it is perfectly acceptable to the locals. One worker said, “Every day I buy around 30-50 kilograms of shrimp. After I inject the substances, I sell them to seafood export companies in Ca Mau, Vietnam.

“I have to do this,” he added, “because all the other shrimp suppliers do this.”

For his part, the facility owner claims to buy the CMC his workers inject from China, and he claims that is true of “...all the other shrimp suppliers.”

The fact that the chemical glop comes from China should immediately raise red flags among those who value their lives and their health; China isn’t exactly known for enforcing strict quality control standards on their own food, nor on food for export, let alone on chemicals.

The thing is that CMC comes in three distinct grades: purified (food quality), technical grade and industrial.

Circling back around to the profit motive and how far it has been twisted, you get one guess as to whether the Chinese wholesalers selling this chemical blend to the shrimp farms are scrupulous enough to ensure that the CMC they provide is purified grade.

And that’s not all: imported shrimp have long been known to be among the dirtiest, least-rigorously inspected food product to enter the food system of the U.S. Alarmingly, imported shrimp make up over 90 percent of the product available, yet another reason to run screaming from this product. If you aren’t sure you’re buying an organic, clean shrimp, just skip it.

The implications this disgusting video makes in its implicit critique of the demand for profit uber alles, as well as showing just how far people will go in pursuit of filthy lucre, not to mention the dangers that open-door trade policies directly pose to our health and well-being are all topics that should rightly come under scrutiny as well.

The massive list of ways in which we allow corporations to sicken us every day in order to pad their bottom line is, frankly, sickening.

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