Deregulate!

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In February the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) warned that poor olive harvests are likely to lead to a big increase in such adulterated oil this year. And it's far from the only product affected, with the European Union's Knowledge Centre for Food Fraud and Quality recently highlighting wine, honey, fish, dairy products, meat and poultry as being frequently faked. Moreover, 40% of food companies believe traditional methods of countering food fraud aren't working any more, according to research from PwC.

How do you know where your olive oil really comes from? - BBC News

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Price increases at double the rate of inflation for 14 years, certain unscrupulous funeral directors targeting bereaved customers’ vulnerability, people left unable to afford to bury loved ones due to vicious benefits cuts. No wonder the Competition and Markets Authority has announced it will launch an in-depth market investigation into the funerals sector. Frankly, it’s dystopian..

The funeral industry is preying on grieving people. This must stop | Claire Brandon | Opinion | The Guardian

One of the world’s most common pesticides will soon be banned by the European Union after safety officials reported human health and environmental concerns. Chlorothalonil, a fungicide that prevents mildew and mould on crops, is the most used pesticide in the UK, applied to millions of hectares of fields, and is the most popular fungicide in the US. Farmers called the ban “overly precautionary”.

But EU states voted for a ban after a review by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) was unable to exclude the possibility that breakdown products of the chemical cause damage to DNA. Efsa also said “a high risk to amphibians and fish was identified for all representative uses”. Recent research further identified chlorothalonil and other fungicides as the strongest factor linked to steep declines in bumblebees.
Regulators around the world have falsely assumed it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes, according to a chief scientific adviser to the UK government. Other research in 2017 showed farmers could slash their pesticide use without losses, while a UN report denounced the “myth” that pesticides are necessary to feed the world..

EU bans UK's most-used pesticide over health and environment fears | Environment | The Guardian

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Dangerous cars, electrical goods and toys could flood into the UK after Brexit unless the government urgently reforms the current “failing” safety enforcement system, a consumer group warned on Monday. Which? says the public will be vulnerable to delays in spotting and dealing with unsafe products unless continued access to the European Safety Gate system is negotiated. Concern over food safety as US seeks greater access to UK markets Read more

Its new analysis shows the scheme, under which 31 European countries alert each other to products with serious safety problems, issued 34% more notifications in 2018 than a decade ago. In recent months, alerts have included a toxic children’s putty that could damage youngsters’ reproductive systems, and clothing which posed a strangulation risk. Recall notices have also appeared for fire-risk HP laptop batteries, explosive Honda airbags and a flammable children’s Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit.

Last year the system flagged 2,064 dangerous non-food products – 500 more than in 2008, when the figure stood at 1,542. While part of the increase may be attributed to better reporting by authorities, the increase highlights the scale of unsafe products that must be tackled, Which? said.

Dangerous products could swamp UK after Brexit, warns Which? | Politics | The Guardian

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A new study finds that drinking tap water in California over the course of a lifetime could increase the risk of cancer. Researchers from the environmental advocacy group Environmental Working Group estimated that the contaminants found in public water systems in California could contribute to about 15,500 cancer cases there over the course of a lifetime. These contaminants include chemicals such as arsenic, hexavalent chromium and radioactive elements such as uranium and radium. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health.

Contaminants in California tap water could result in over 15,000 additional cancer cases, study says - CNN

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But in St. John, the case had already been precisely made by the very entity that had the power to change it. At the end of 2015, a report from the Environmental Protection Agency showed that the census tract in St. John had by far the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the nation. Nationwide the risk of cancer from chemicals emitted by industrial facilities was about 30 for every million people. But in this small neighborhood, it was more than 800.

A vast majority of that risk, according to the report, was coming from a colorless gas called chloroprene that the nearby synthetic rubber factory has been emitting since 1969. For most of that time, there was no official government recognition of the chemical’s harms. But in 2010, a little-known division of the E.P.A. called the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, had assessed chloroprene to be a likely human carcinogen and calculated a new safety limit for it. Five years later, the agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment report used that threshold and emissions data from the plant to estimate the local cancer risk...

In St. John and other places with toxic air pollution, residents are running into a hard truth: The companies that release the carcinogens often have more sway than they do. The manufacturers of all three chemicals responsible for most of the elevated cancer risk from air pollution have been working hard to make sure their products stay in regulatory limbo. Denka asked IRIS to “correct” its assessment of chloroprene by changing its classification from a “probable” to “suggestive” human carcinogen and replacing the safety limit for chloroprene with one that is 156 times higher. IRIS denied that request in January 2018; Denka has since asked the agency to again reconsider its assessment. Though the E.P.A. has stood by its science, local authorities have cited the industry efforts as a reason not to limit emissions. The American Chemistry Council, which represents several ethylene oxide manufacturers, has also requested that the E.P.A. raise the safety levels IRIS set for that chemical and change the values that were used to calculate the air toxicity report.

The third-biggest contributor to the elevated cancer risk nationwide, formaldehyde, is also the subject of intense pressure within the E.P.A. According to a report that the Government Accountability Office released in March, the assessment of that chemical, which is used in building materials, glue and fabrics, and has been linked to cancers, was withheld from publication — along with 10 others. It’s worth noting that the Trump appointee who now oversees IRIS, David Dunlap, used to represent formaldehyde manufacturers on a panel of the American Chemistry Council as the director of policy and regulatory affairs for Koch Industries. In an administration that has been defined by its science denial and regulatory rollbacks, the assessments that haven’t led to enforceable protections — or have been kept from the public entirely — are in one sense just another example of a government captured by industry. But for some in St. John, the failure to act is a matter of life and death.

Opinion | When Pollution Is a Matter of Life and Death - The New York Times

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The list of concerns includes withering land, chronic illnesses, water shortages and an opioid drug epidemic that has wreaked havoc on village life. Over the past two years, more than 900 Punjabi farmers have killed themselves, and the state has the highest rates of cancer in India. A government survey estimates that more than two-thirds of households have at least one drug addict in the family. Added to this is the burden of paying off loans that many farmers take out from unofficial lenders at exorbitant interest rates. Locals blame it all on “zeher” – poison.

“Our lives are being destroyed because of the contamination of the land and people,” says Surinder Kumar, the “sarpanch” or village head of Langroya. “There are so many problems facing us that I don’t even know where to begin. The politicians make a lot of promises, but the reality is that little is being done to help us. The very fabric of our existence is under threat.” In an attempt to address Punjab’s plight, a new film explores the roots of its problems. Directed by Rehmat Rayatt and Leva Kwestany, Toxification tells the moving stories of farmers at the sharp end of the chemical epidemic engulfing the state... 

The film traces the roots of Punjab’s demise to the state’s green revolution of the 1970s, when new farming practices were introduced to increase production and profits. This involved the sustained use of chemical pesticides, insecticides and fertilisers, which has continued unchecked and without adequate guidance from experts. Punjab utilises the highest amount of chemical fertilisers in India. Many of the pesticides sprayed on the state’s crops are classified as class I by the World Health Organization because of their acute toxicity and are banned in places around the world, including Europe.

The Indian state where farmers sow the seeds of death | Global development | The Guardian

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The US regulator of food and drug safety has seen steep declines in several markers of enforcement under the Trump administration, according to a new analysis in the journal Science. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sends “warning letters” for tainted food, improperly advertised dietary supplements or even violations of human subjects’ protections in clinical trials. The number of letters issued has fallen by 33% under Donald Trump, compared with the most recent equivalent period under the Obama administration. They fell from 1,532 under Obama to 1,033 under Trump, according to the analysis published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “They’re a very serious and central part of how the FDA manages compliance and enforcement … it basically is an expectation that corrections will be made and made rapidly,” said the investigation’s author, Charles Piller.

Enforcement of food and drug safety regulations nosedive under Trump | US news | The Guardian

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In October 2015, a fragile well casing ruptured at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in Los Angeles, California—and no one could figure out how to stop it. For 118 days, 100,000 metric tons of methane and other hazardous pollutants seeped into the atmosphere. The single worst natural gas leak in American history was not only a disaster for the climate; it displaced thousands of nearby residents for months. Even after returning home, many complained of headaches, rashes, nosebleeds, and other symptoms they blamed on the lingering airborne chemicals.  And most of these people didn’t see it coming. The majority of residents near Aliso Canyon claimed they had no idea they lived near a natural gas storage field until the 2015 blowout happened. They didn’t know that if any of the wells ruptured, they were at risk of exposure to a host of toxic chemicals, which could cause serious neurological and respiratory problems and even certain kinds of cancer. They could also be at risk of death from a pipeline explosion, like the victims of the Colorado blast in 2017.

The Toxic-Gas Catastrophe Hiding Beneath Your Home | The New Republic

And we don't even know what's in the fracking fluids, as these are trade secrets.

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The right devised cost-benefit analysis to discredit regulation. Now this technique is showing massive net benefits, and the foes of environmental regulation are in a panic. Everyone in communications knows how to bury a news story: release it late on a Friday. So it was with the White House’s annual report on federal regulations, released months behind schedule on a Friday in February. As it has for many years, the report pegged the benefits of federal regulation in the hundreds of billions of dollars, swamping the calculated costs of compliance by at least 2 to 1 and possibly as much as 12 to 1—awkward results for the Trump communications team, to say the least.

How to square these numbers with the “job-killing regulations” trope was a real head-scratcher. It might seem like good news that regulatory safeguards actually do save a lot of lives, not to mention preventing a lot of diseases, accidents, and other bad things. But these big numbers on the benefits of federal regulations are driving the right wing crazy. Industry lawyers and lobbyists along with their allies at right-wing think tanks have been hard at work trying to discredit them for years now. The irony is that these are the same people who tried to sell us on the notion that government regulations should be subject to a cost-benefit test to begin with.

The Cost-Benefit Boomerang

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More than 50 years ago, Rachel Carson warned of a “silent spring”, the songs of robins and wood thrush silenced by toxic pesticides such as DDT. Today, there is a new pesticide specter: a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. For years, scientists have been raising the alarm about these bug killers, but a new study reveals a more complete picture of the threat they pose to insect life.

First commercialized in the 1990s, neonicotinoids, or neonics for short, are now the most widely used insecticides in the world. They’re used on over 140 crops, from apples and almonds to spinach and rice. Chemically similar to nicotine, they kill insects by attacking their nerve cells. Neonics were pitched as an answer to pests’ increasing resistance to the reigning insecticides.

But in an effort to more effectively kill pests, we created an explosion in the toxicity of agriculture not just for unwanted bugs but for the honeybees, ladybugs, beetles and the vast abundance of other insects that sustain life on Earth. What we now know is that neonics are not only considerably more toxic to insects than other insecticides, they are far more persistent in the environment. While others break down within hours or days, neonics can remain in soils, plants and waterways for months to years, killing insects long after they’re applied and creating a compounding toxic burden.

America's agriculture is 48 times more toxic than 25 years ago. Blame neonics | Kendra Klein and Anna Lappe | Opinion | The Guardian