Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories
A new Roundup trial starts this week in St. Louis. We have that story, along with new warnings about PFAS exposure, and a lead problems in the US you may not have heard about.
Upcoming: watch the Roundup trial in St. Louis
A new Roundup trial is scheduled to get underway this week, as three cancer patients face off against Monsanto in the company’s former hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, alleging exposure to the company’s weedkilling chemical caused their illnesses.
July selection in the case is set to start August 1 in St. Louis County Circuit Court in Clayton, the seat of St. Louis County government. The three plaintiffs were chosen for the trial from the dozens of plaintiffs represented in a case titled Alesi v Monsanto.
Jurors will hear about the health problems of plaintiff Cheryl Davis, 70, who has suffered through two bouts with follicular lymphoma her doctors have told her is considered incurable, as well as the case of 65-year-old Marty Cox, who is in remission from diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Both of their lymphomas are types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Cox has a host of other medical issues including diabetes and has been a smoker. The third plaintiff is 75-year-old Gary Gentile who also has suffered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
All three were longtime users of Monsanto herbicides, such as Roundup, that were made with the active chemical ingredient called glyphosate. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen with a positive association to NHL.
St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May issued an order July 27 allowing the trial to be livestreamed by Courtroom View Network from Aug. 3 through the completion of the trial, subject to certain conditions. The approval for the broadcast came despite objections from Monsanto.
“A clear injustice,” hearing calls for leaded aviation fuel ban
Just five blocks away from the Reid-Hillview Airport in Santa Clara County, California, Maricela Lechuga lives among a community of 52,000 residents who are predominantly Latino, many also immigrants.
The general aviation airport does not serve commercial air travel, but does serve a range of other public aviation activities; in 2019 it had more than 200,000 take-offs and landings.
It is also known as one of the highest lead emitting airports in the United States, a fact spotlighted Thursday in a U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing called to examine health harms associated with leaded aviation fuel.
Despite petitions calling to ban leaded aviation fuel that date back to 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to address the issue through regulation, a delay that is creating injustice and danger for people living not just near Reid-Hillview Airport, but numerous others around the country, according to critics.
Lechuga was among those testifying before Congress on Thursday in a new push for regulatory action.
Challenges seen in US plan to replace lead pipes
An ambitious plan by the Biden Administration to replace all lead service pipes in the United States faces a number of hurdles, a US official charged with helping oversee the sweeping project said on Thursday.
“One of the biggest barriers to getting this work done is the lack of knowledge of where the lead service lines currently are, and how many we have in the United States,” said Karen Dettmer, managing director for infrastructure implementation at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water.
States need inventories of where lead service lines currently exist to replace them, but that information could be incorrect or completely missing for many communities, Dettmer said.
Dettmer was a featured speaker at the Environmental Council of the States’ 2022 State Environmental Protection Meeting held in Arlington, Virginia. She joined panelists from individual states to discuss priorities, progress, and challenges with meeting lead line replacement goals.
The lead line replacement program is part of the White House’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. As part of that the EPA is allocating $3 billion to states, Tribes and Territories for lead service line replacement in 2022, and has specified an aim to prioritize “underserved communities.”
PFAS testing needed for people with elevated exposures, US science advisors warn
US government health agencies need to move quickly to launch broad testing of people exposed to types of toxic chemicals known as PFAS to help evaluate and treat people who may suffer PFAS-related health problems, according to a report issued today by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
The report recommends that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advise clinicians to offer PFAS blood testing to their patients who are likely to have a history of elevated exposure to the toxins. Those test results should be reported to state public health authorities to improve PFAS exposure surveillance, NASEM said.
The testing should be done for people with occupational exposure, as well as those who have lived in communities with documented contamination, and those who have lived where contamination may have occurred — such as near commercial airports, military bases, wastewater treatment plants, farms where sewage sludge may have been used, or landfills or incinerators that have received waste containing PFAS, according to the report.
People found with PFAS in their blood at levels higher than 20 ng/ml potentially face a higher risk of serious problems, the report states.
“Our report shows that we are going to need robust and effective collaboration between local communities, states, and federal agencies in order to respond to the challenge of PFAS exposure,” Ned Calonge, chair of the NASEM committee that authored the report, said in a statement.
Guest column: When climate is a “damn emergency,” can California move fast enough?
In September 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood amid the devastation of a wildfire that ultimately burned more than 300,000 acres, incinerated entire towns, and killed 16 people. His voice hoarse in a ghastly gray air, the governor spoke angrily.
“This a climate damn emergency,” Newsom said. “Mother Nature bats last and she bats 1,000. The debate is over around climate change.” Newsom said the state’s ambitious goals for slashing greenhouse emissions were “nice,” but not enough: “We have to step up our game.”
California has long been lauded as a leader in the fight against the most severe harms of the climate crisis — and rightly so. On multiple fronts, the state has been outpacing its neighbors for years in pursuing a range of protective strategies.
In June, Newsom signed a state budget allocating $54 billion — more than a sixth of total spending — to programs to “protect Californians from the impacts of climate change, help forge an oil-free future and tackle pollution.”
But while the talk is strong, the implementation is not and the disturbing fact is that California has fallen well behind on achieving its climate goals.