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As Midterms Near, MAHA Anger Over Pesticides Reaches Boiling Point
South Dakota farmer Jonathan Lundgren was perplexed last month while he was in the Oval Office. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Lundgren recalled, indicated that an hours-old Supreme Court ruling that limits lawsuits over a popular weed killer’s possible health impacts was a win for farmers.
Regenerative farmers like Lundgren view the active ingredient in the pesticide Roundup, glyphosate, as a harmful chemical that helped inspire the Make America Healthy Again movement. Tens of thousands of plaintiffs have alleged it causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which Roundup’s manufacturer, Bayer, denies. Rollins’s logic “didn’t really add up, in my opinion,” said Lundgren, who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The exchange during the June 25 meeting — which also included President Donald Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., other administration officials and several farmers — has not been previously reported. It reveals the extent to which MAHA activists, who initially viewed Trump’s 2024 victory as a surefire way to reform the nation’s food system by reducing the use of pesticides, have found themselves blocked from rapidly achieving one of their most important policy goals.
Five days after the White House meeting, the Environmental Protection Agency approved several new pesticides. Many environmentalists and MAHA activists argue these compounds should not be widespread, contending they could harm human health.
Blood Samples Mid-Heart Attack Found With Disproportionately More Microplastics
Among people undergoing coronary angiography for suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), heart attack patients stood out for having higher microplastics and nanoplastics in their blood, a small Italian study found.
People with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), chronic coronary syndromes (CCS), and normal coronary arteries had distinct findings when it came to blood sampled during the invasive procedures:
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- Frequency of any detection of microplastics and nanoplastics: 84.2%, 40%, and 31.8%, respectively (P=0.002)
- Concentration of microplastics and nanoplastics in coronary blood: median ~1.2 µg/ml vs 0.3 µg/ml vs 0.3 µg/ml (P<0.001)
- Concentration of microplastics and nanoplastics in peripheral blood: median ~1.4 µg/ml vs 0.3 µg/ml vs 0.3 µg/ml (P<0.001)
- Polymer diversity: median of three polymers vs 0 vs 0 (P<0.001)
Polyethylene was the predominant polymer detected (97%), followed by polyvinylchloride (PVC), polyethylene terephthalate, and Nylon 66. The same polymers were consistently identified in peripheral and coronary blood samples from individual patients, with the highest concentrations in coronary blood (P<0.001), reported Emanuele Barbato, MD, PhD, of Sant’Andrea University Hospital in Rome, and colleagues in the European Heart Journal.
“These findings do not prove that microplastics cause heart attacks, but they reveal a strong association between environmental exposures, microplastics in the blood, and cardiovascular disease,” said Barbato in a press release.
Fracking Ban in the Delaware River Basin Survives a Republican Challenge (For Now)
A Republican-led effort to end the Delaware River Basin’s ban on fracking fell short on Tuesday after an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act was not brought before a congressional committee, allowing the longstanding restriction to stand for now.
The amendment, authored by U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, would have stripped the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulator, of its authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing in the 330 mile-long watershed that stretches from upstate New York to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, a region that supplies drinking water to millions of people.
The measure would also have pre-emptively stopped any fracking bans imposed by two other regulators, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in central Pennsylvania, and the Potomac River Basin Compact in Washington, D.C., and surrounding states.
‘The Precipice of an Emergency.’ Ohio Residents Worry Drinking Water Could Become Contaminated.
Ohio Capital Journal reported:
Washington County residents are raising concerns that injection wells in southeastern Ohio leaking brine waste will eventually pollute Marietta’s drinking water. Brine waste traveled underground from the Redbird #4 injection well in Marietta to active oil and gas wells about five miles away in 2019 and pressure on those wells has increased significantly ever since.
Citizens are now concerned it’s only a matter of time until the radioactive waste infiltrates Marietta’s aquifer at the bottom of the Muskingum River Valley. “I think eventually (brine waste) will get to the city of Marietta’s water wells,” said Bob Lane, an oil well producer in Washington County. “I actually believe this may take a few years before you lose your water well,” he said at a recent press conference.
“I would like to see the injection company instantly put a bond, made out to the city of Marietta, for $18 million or $20 million because what are you going to do 10 years from now when you have no drinking water? You’re going to have to spend a bunch of money.” This is a serious environmental problem, said David Jeffery, a professor at Marietta College. “It’s clear that it’s expanding as we’re speaking,” he said.
And if nothing prevents it from happening, it will require lots of work and money to fix the city’s water.
Families Like Mine Industrialized the South. We Paid the Price in Air Pollution.
Yale Climate Connections reported:
As a kid, I remember the mornings when the air carried a metallic smell, before I had the language to understand what it meant. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in a family of generations of steel and domestic workers. As the city expanded through mines and plants that produced fuel for the rest of the country, my ancestors labored. They helped build the industrial backbone that made the city prosperous.
But like too many Black families who have roots in this region, we were segregated into specific neighborhoods, often closest to coke fuel plants, steel facilities, and contaminated sites. From slavery to steel production, growth in this country has too often required Black communities to bear disproportionate risk. The geography of pollution was not accidental — it was policy.
These neighborhoods, largely Black and working class, have endured decades of toxic exposure. Here, the increased risk of cancer and chronic respiratory illness is an accepted reality. Air quality is among the worst in the nation. The dirt below people’s feet is contaminated with heavy metals. Children grow up near Superfund sites. This is not distant history. This is happening now.
Revealed: How Europe’s Most Powerful Farming Lobby Killed EU’s Pesticide Law
Newly revealed documents from inside the most powerful farming lobby in Europe show how it delayed, gutted and overturned some of the most sweeping farming reforms in EU history, including a plan to cut pesticide use in half. Copa Cogeca describes itself as the voice of 22 million farmers across the continent, and enjoys unrivalled access to EU lawmakers. It has even been described as a “partner in policymaking”.
So when the EU launched plans for radical farming reforms in 2020 in response to concerns about climate breakdown and the nature crisis, Copa Cogeca swung into action and in February 2021 set out its lobbying strategy. Controversial animal products — such as foie gras and fur — would be defended, Copa Cogeca’s then secretary general, Pekka Pesonen, told members, “in the same way as tobacco”. A key EU target was cutting pesticide use by half to protect biodiversity.
Copa Cogeca’s response, the documents show, was to combine delay tactics with an intensified lobbying drive. “The European parliament elections are in 2024,” the note from September 2022 reads. “Perhaps it is worth delaying until then. We must force the [European] Commission to abandon its objectives.” That same meeting, the lobby group decided to demand a new impact assessment for the policy, which the commission undertook at the end of year, slowing the policymaking process by six months.
