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Corporate Corruption News Stories

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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Sort articles by: Article Date | Date Posted on WantToKnow.info | Importance

J&J unit, P&G, Walgreens misled consumers about decongestants, lawsuits say
2023-09-15, Reuters
Posted: 2023-10-16 01:28:08
https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-pg-sued-after-fda-panel-ruling-cold-medicine...

Procter & Gamble (PG.N), Walgreens (WBA.O) and Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) former consumer business are among several companies accused in lawsuits of deceiving consumers about cold medicines containing an ingredient that a unanimous U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel declared ineffective. Proposed class actions were filed on Wednesday and Thursday, after the panel reviewed several studies and concluded this week that the ingredient phenylephrine marketed as a decongestant was essentially no better than a placebo. According to an agency presentation, about 242 million products with phenylephrine were sold in the United States last year, generating $1.76 billion of sales and accounting for about four-fifths of the market for oral decongestants. The first lawsuit appeared to have been filed in Pensacola, Florida, federal court. It said Johnson & Johnson Consumer and Procter & Gamble should have known by 2018 that their marketing claims about products with phenylephrine were "false and deceptive." That year was when new FDA guidance for evaluating symptoms related to nasal congestion demonstrated that earlier data about phenylephrine's effectiveness could no longer be relied upon, the complaint said. The plaintiff Steve Audelo, a Florida resident, said he bought Johnson & Johnson's Sudafed PE and Benadryl Allergy Plus, and Procter & Gamble's Vicks NyQuil, based on the companies' claims that the products worked.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Google User Data Has Become a Favorite Police Shortcut
2023-09-27, Bloomberg
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:49:22
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-28/google-user-data-is-police...

Google maintains one of the world’s most comprehensive repositories of location information. Drawing from phones’ GPS coordinates, plus connections to Wi-Fi networks and cellular towers, it can often estimate a person’s whereabouts to within several feet. It gathers this information in part to sell advertising, but police routinely dip into the data to further their investigations. The use of search data is less common, but that, too, has made its way into police stations throughout the country. Traditionally, American law enforcement obtains a warrant to search the home or belongings of a specific person, in keeping with a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Warrants for Google’s location and search data are, in some ways, the inverse of that process, says Michael Price, the litigation director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Fourth Amendment Center. Rather than naming a suspect, law enforcement identifies basic parameters—a set of geographic coordinates or search terms—and asks Google to provide hits, essentially generating a list of leads. By their very nature, these Google warrants often return information on people who haven’t been suspected of a crime. In 2018 a man in Arizona was wrongly arrested for murder based on Google location data. Google says it received a record 60,472 search warrants in the US last year, more than double the number from 2019. The company provides at least some information in about 80% of cases.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones
2023-10-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:47:59
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/03/techscape-geofence-warrants

From Virginia to Florida, law enforcement all over the US are increasingly using tools called reverse search warrants – including geofence location warrants and keyword search warrants – to come up with a list of suspects who may have committed particular crimes. While the former is used by law enforcement to get tech companies to identify all the devices that were near a certain place at a certain time, the latter is used to get information on everyone who’s searched for a particular keyword or phrase. It’s a practice public defenders, privacy advocates and many lawmakers have criticised, arguing it violates fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches. Unlike reverse search warrants, other warrants and subpoenas target a specific person that law enforcement has established there is probable cause to believe has committed a specific crime. But geofence warrants are sweeping in nature and are often used to compile a suspect list to further investigate. Google broke out how many geofence warrants it received for the first time in 2021. The company revealed it received nearly 21,000 geofence warrants between 2018 and 2020. The tech giant did not specify how many of those requests it complied with but did share that in the second half of 2020, it responded to 82% of all government requests for data in the US with some level of information. Apple has taken steps to publish its own numbers. In the first half of 2022 the company fielded a total of 13 geofence warrants and complied with none.

Note: The legal world is struggling to keep up with the rise of tech firms building ever more sophisticated means of surveilling people and their devices. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


Garbage In, Toxics Out: They Promised “Advanced Recycling” for Plastics and Delivered Toxic Waste
2023-09-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-10-08 19:44:48
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/28/braven-plastic-recycling-toxic-waste/

Braven Environmental [is] a company that says it can recycle nearly 90 percent of plastic waste through a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis. Traditional recycling is able to process only about 8.7 percent of America’s plastic waste; pyrolysis uses high temperatures and low-oxygen conditions to break down the remaining plastics, like films and Styrofoam, ideally turning them into feedstock oil for new plastic production. The American Chemistry Council, the country’s leading petrochemical industry trade group, claims that chemical recycling will create a “circular economy” for the bulk of the world’s plastic, diverting it from oceans and landfills. Plastic giants have gone so far as to dub the process “advanced recycling,” but environmentalists say this is a misnomer because the majority of the plastic processed at such facilities is not recycled at all. In fact, researchers have found that the process uses more energy and has a worse overall environmental impact than virgin plastic production. Despite these challenges, lawmakers nationwide are now embracing the technology, thanks to a massive lobbying push from ... petrochemical groups. One list of warnings in a Braven air permit application reads like a toxicologist’s worst nightmare: The pyrolysis oil may cause cancer and genetic defects, as well as damage to organs, fertility, and unborn children. Other hazards included being “extremely flammable” and “very toxic to aquatic life” with “long lasting effects.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Why has France banned sales of Apple's iPhone 12?
2023-09-15, Reuters
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:30:48
https://www.reuters.com/technology/why-has-france-banned-sales-apples-iphone-...

France's radiation watchdog has banned sales of Apple's iPhone 12 after tests that it said showed the smartphone breached European radiation exposure limits. The Agence Nationale des Frequences (ANFR) said on Tuesday the model's Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) - a measure of the rate of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body from a piece of equipment - was higher than legally allowed. Jean-Noel Barrot, France's junior minister for the digital economy, told newspaper Le Parisien a software update could fix the problem. If Apple does not resolve the issue, the ANFR said it would order a recall of the device across France. "Specific Absorption Rate" refers to the dose of energy that the body absorbs from any source of radiation. It is expressed as watts per kilogram of body weight. The radiation from mobile phones is a result of the way they work, by transmitting radiofrequency waves, creating electromagnetic fields. The ANFR said it recently carried out random tests on 141 phones, including iPhone 12, bought from shops. In independent laboratory tests, two iPhone 12s did not comply with EU standards, the office of the Digital Minister told Reuters. Smartphone radiation tests have so far led to 42 imposed sale stops in the country, it said. The ANFR said accredited labs had found an SAR of 5.74 watts per kilogram during tests of the iPhone 12 being held in the hand or kept in a trouser pocket. The EU standard is 4.0 watts per kilogram.

Note: Explore an excellent investigation into how the FCC shields cell phone companies from valid safety concerns. This Wired article quotes the result of a mega-study that reveals there is “significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumor risk.” Unlike the U.S., many countries have regulations in place to protect people from cell phone radiation exposure. Check out this comprehensive list of countries with official recommendations and policies on cell phone radiation exposure. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on wireless technology risks from reliable major media sources.


The real data behind the new COVID vaccines the White House is pushing
2023-09-14, New York Post
Posted: 2023-10-03 15:24:35
https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/the-real-data-behind-the-new-covid-vaccines-the...

What if I told you one in 50 people who took a new medication had a “medically attended adverse event” and the manufacturer refused to disclose what exactly the complication was — would you take it? And what if the theoretical benefit was only transient, lasting about three months, after which your susceptibility goes back to baseline? And what if we told you the Food and Drug Administration cleared it without any human-outcomes data. That’s what we know about the new COVID vaccine the Biden administration is firmly recommending. COVID vaccines are very different from flu vaccines. COVID vaccines have higher complication rates, including severe and life-threatening cardiac reactions. Flu shots have a 50-plus-year safety record whereas COVID vaccines have been associated with a serious adverse event rate of one in 5,000 doses, according to a German study by the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. Another study, published last year in the medical journal Vaccine, estimated the rate of serious adverse events to be as high as one in 556 COVID vaccine recipients. And for young people, the incidence of myocarditis is six to 28 times higher after the vaccine than after infection, even for females, according to a 2022 JAMA Cardiology study. That’s one of the reasons a study that we and several national colleagues published last year found that college booster mandates appear to have resulted in a net public health harm.

Note: The above was written by Marty Makary, MD, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Anecdotals is a powerful documentary that follows the lives of many people who stepped up to get vaccinated for themselves or the greater good, yet whose lives changed drastically as a result. Instead of having their stories of vaccine injuries heard and seen, they were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems.


How American Institutions Went From Trust to Bust
2023-09-08, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:11:28
https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-institutions-went-from-trust-to-bust-me...

At the heart of America’s political and cultural turmoil is a crisis of trust. In the space of a generation, the people’s confidence in their leaders and their most important institutions to do the right thing has collapsed. The federal government, big business, the media, education, science and medicine, technology, religious institutions, law enforcement and others have seen a precipitous decline. Since 1979 Gallup has measured trust among the public in the most important American institutions. Its latest survey ... found that across the nine key institutions Gallup has tracked consistently, the proportion of Americans who said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” averaged out at 26%. That is the lowest figure ever recorded. Some institutions have forfeited more trust than others. In 1979 Gallup found that 51% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers. This year the number was 18%. The biggest factor driving mistrust ... is surely the widening cultural gap between the people who have led and thrived in our major institutions and the rest of the population. The past 20 years have seen the rapid emergence of a new elite—expensively educated, versed in progressive nostrums, increasingly distant from and disdainful of the rest of America and its values. This crowd comprises much of the nation’s permanent government classes, almost its entire academic establishment, most of the people who control its news and cultural output, and a good deal of its corporate elite.

Note: About half of Americans lost faith in the scientific community after this "new elite" repeatedly misled the public on issues related to the pandemic. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Rumble Had Exclusive Rights To Stream Republican Debate — Yet Was Buried In Google Search
2023-09-20, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:06:44
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/20/republican-debate-google-search-rumble/

Leading up to the August Republican presidential primary debate ... An RNC official told Google via email that the debate would be streaming exclusively on the upstart video platform Rumble. The August 23 debate was broadcast on Fox News and streamed on Fox Nation, which requires a subscription, while Rumble was the only one to stream it for free. On the day of and during the debate, however, potential viewers who searched Google for “GOP debate stream” were returned links to YouTube, Fox News, and news articles about the debate, according to screen recordings. Rumble was nowhere on the first page. For Rumble, which is currently in discovery in an antitrust lawsuit against Google in California, this is a case of Google suppressing its competitors in favor of its own product, YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google, and it has regularly been the subject of anticompetitive allegations from rivals, who charge that Google unfairly and illegally favors YouTube in its search algorithm. Google, in fact, is in the middle of a landmark antitrust trial, charged with anticompetitive practices by the Department of Justice. The company would not have been required by antitrust law to promote [Rumble's] link. It would, however, be barred from suppressing the competitor’s link from organic results. The fact that Rumble’s link did not appear on the first page even though it was the most relevant link the search could return means either the search engine failed at its task or the link was suppressed.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


New York Times Doesn’t Want Its Stories Archived
2023-09-17, The Intercept
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:04:59
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/17/new-york-times-website-internet-archive/

The New York Times tried to block a web crawler that was affiliated with the famous Internet Archive. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has long been used to compare webpages as they are updated over time, clearly delineating the differences between two iterations of any given page. Several years ago, the archive added a feature called “Changes” that lets users compare two archived versions of a website from different dates or times on a single display. The tool can be used to uncover changes in news stories that have been made without any accompanying editorial notes, so-called stealth edits. The Times has, in the past, faced public criticisms over some of its stealth edits. In a notorious 2016 incident, the paper revised an article about then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. ... drastically after publication — changing the tone from one of praise to skepticism. More recently, the Times stealth-edited an article that originally listed “death” as one of six ways “you can still cancel your federal student loan debt.” Following the edit, the “death” section title was changed to a more opaque heading of “debt won’t carry on.” A service called NewsDiffs — which provides a similar comparative service but focuses on news outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and others — has also chronicled a long list of significant examples of articles that have undergone stealth edits, though the service appears to not have been updated in several years.

Note: The manipulation of media coverage for Bernie Sanders' campaign was widespread, as discussed in an WantToKnow.info interview with media activist Tony Brasunas. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


Google wanted to ‘manipulate choices’ to become default search engine, behavioral expert testifies at antitrust trial
2023-09-14, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:03:27
https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/google-wanted-to-manipulate-choices-to-become-d...

Google fought hard to be the default search engine on smartphones and browsers so it “can manipulate your choices,” an expert on human behavior testified for the government at the closely watched antitrust trial. Antonio Rangel, a behavioral economist ... took the stand for the second day and said Google has leaned heavily on default settings to keep users hooked on its search engine and other lucrative services. The Justice Department is arguing ... that the Alphabet unit sought agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search. The antitrust case – the largest of its kind in more than two decades – will ultimately hinge on whether Google is determined to have taken anticompetitive steps to cut off rivals while building its search behemoth. In testimony on Wednesday, Rangel questioned Google’s argument that users could easily switch their default search engine, telling the court that he acquired an Android smartphone and found that it took 10 steps for the owner to switch Google for Microsoft’s Bing. “That is considerable choice friction,” Rangel said. Justice Department attorneys said Google paid “more than $10 billion per year” to major companies, including smartphone makers Apple and Samsung, browser operators like Mozilla and wireless providers such as AT&T, to secure a 91% share of the search market. The case’s outcome won’t be determined by a jury. Instead, US District Judge Amit Mehta will reach a determination on the outcome.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.


In our blood: how the US allowed toxic chemicals to seep into our lives
2023-09-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-24 17:01:23
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/us-environmental-protecti...

For decades, it was the secret behind the magic show of homemaking across the US. Applied to a pan, it could keep a fried egg from sticking to the surface. Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, was ... seeping into the blood and organs of hundreds of millions of people who used products containing the chemical. PFOA is just one of dozens of modern-day chemicals that are found in the bodies of the majority of Americans. Research has also shown that more Americans are facing a growing number of ailments and disorders, from autoimmune disease to developmental disorders such as autism and some cancers. Scientists are increasingly concerned these two truths are linked. Scientists have accumulated enough data to conclude with confidence that humans face significant health risks from exposure to common commercial chemicals, and that regulations designed to protect them are failing. Due to flaws in federal regulation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is perennially playing catch up. The majority of the 86,000 consumer chemicals registered with the agency have never received vigorous toxicity testing. Kyla Bennett, a former EPA employee [said] that at recent rates of review, it would take thousands of years to assess all 86,000 chemicals currently approved for use. EPA staff ... say the agency’s chemical programs remain understaffed, overwhelmed and burdened by still-ineffective regulations and a persistent culture that enables the chemical industry instead of counterbalancing it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health issues from reliable major media sources.


Revolving door redux: The DEA’s recently departed No. 2 returns to a Big Pharma consulting firm
2023-09-20, Associated Press
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:59:56
https://apnews.com/article/dea-opioids-fentanyl-cocaine-drugs-pharmaceutical-...

Louis Milione retired from the DEA a second time this summer amid reporting by The Associated Press on potential conflicts caused by his prior consulting for the pharmaceutical industry. Less than three months later, Milione again landed a plum job at Guidepost Solutions, a New York-based firm hired by some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating when he returned to the DEA in 2021. Milione had spent four years at Guidepost prior to his return, leveraging his extensive experience and contacts from a 21-year DEA career. Milione is the most senior of a slew of DEA officials to have traded their badge and gun for a globe-trotting consulting job. His career stands out for two cycles through the revolving door between government and industry, raising questions about the potential impact on the DEA’s mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths. Milione’s private-sector clientele also included Morris & Dickson Co., the nation’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, as it tried to stave off DEA sanctions for disregarding thousands of suspicious, high-volume orders. The DEA allowed the company to continue shipping drugs for nearly four years after a judge recommended its license be revoked for “cavalier disregard” of rules aimed at preventing opioid abuse. It was not until AP began asking questions this spring that the DEA moved to finally strip the Shreveport, Louisiana-based company of its license to distribute highly addictive painkillers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the pharmaceutical industry from reliable major media sources.


How “windfall profits” from AI companies could fund a universal basic income
2023-07-28, Vox
Posted: 2023-09-24 16:57:46
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23810027/openai-artificial-intelligence-go...

There’s a lot of money in AI. Economists are predicting a massive boom in productivity as AI use takes off, buoyed by empirical research showing tools like ChatGPT boost worker output. Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, sold his company to Google in 2014 only after the latter agreed to an independent ethics board that would govern how Google uses DeepMind’s research. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is structured as a nonprofit that owns a for-profit arm. Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, is divesting control over a majority of its board to a trust composed not of shareholders, but independent trustees meant to enforce a focus on safety ahead of profits. Those three companies, plus Microsoft, got together ... to start a new organization meant to self-regulate the AI industry. There are three broad ways the profits reaped by AI companies could make their way to a more general public. The first ... is taxes. The second, considerably less important, is charity. The third is if the companies themselves decide to donate a large share of their profits. This was the key proposal of a landmark 2020 paper called “The Windfall Clause.” The idea is simple: The clause is a voluntary but binding commitment that AI firms could make to donate a set percentage of their profits in excess of a certain threshold to a charitable entity. They suggest the thresholds be based on profits as a share of the gross world product (the entire world’s economic output).

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.


Nissan, Kia can collect data on drivers’ ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sex lives’: privacy watchdog
2023-09-06, New York Post
Posted: 2023-09-18 14:20:00
https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/nissan-kia-collect-data-about-drivers-sexual-ac...

Car makers Nissan and Kia can collect data on their drivers’ “sexual activity” and “sex lives” — and may sell the info to third-party advertisers, according to a shocking study by an internet privacy watchdog. The creepy collection of personal information by the two auto companies earned them failing grades from The Mozilla Foundation, maker of the Firefox web browser, which ran privacy checks on 25 car brands. The foundation said most car companies can comb through a variety of sources to glean personal information about drivers after they pair their smartphones with a vehicle’s connected services. “This invasive harvesting of information is collected via a web of sensors, microphones, cameras and the phones, apps, and connected services you use in your vehicle,” according to Mozilla Foundation. The car firms can then take that data and sell it to or share it with vendors, insurance companies and others. Of the 25 car brands that were reviewed, Nissan’s privacy policy “is probably the most ... messed up privacy policy we have ever read,” according to Mozilla Foundation. “They come right out and say they can collect and share your sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information and other sensitive personal information for targeted marketing purposes,” the foundation wrote. Mozilla Foundation also flagged other car companies such as Chrysler, Chevrolet, Toyota, Audi, Jeep, and Honda for “brazenly collecting deeply personal information from the moment they get into a car.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


JPMorgan allegedly processed more than $1bn for Epstein over 16 years
2023-08-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:50:15
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/31/jeffrey-epstein-jpmorgan-1-bi...

JPMorgan Chase told US authorities it processed more than $1bn for Jeffrey Epstein over 16 years. JPMorgan reported the transactions as suspicious to the US treasury department following Epstein’s suicide in 2019, Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the territory, said at a hearing concerning its lawsuit against the largest US bank. Epstein had been a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013, when the bank dropped him. The disgraced financier had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges at the time of his death. The US Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned two private islands, is suing JPMorgan for at least $190m and likely much more, saying it ignored red flags that Epstein was running a sex-trafficking operation because he was a lucrative client. Liu mentioned the $1bn amount, which had not been previously disclosed, in arguing that the US district judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan should find before the case goes to trial that the bank participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking. She said no reasonable juror could find that JPMorgan was in the dark about its jet-setting client. “JPMorgan was a full service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Liu said. Felicia Ellsworth, a lawyer for JPMorgan, said it was not appropriate for the judge to determine the question of the bank’s knowledge before trial because current and former employees have testified that they were unaware of Epstein’s sex trafficking. In June, Rakoff preliminarily approved JPMorgan’s $290m settlement with women who say Epstein abused them.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption and Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.


EPA approved fuel ingredient with sky-high lifetime cancer risk, document reveals
2023-08-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:48:26
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/04/epa-boat-fuel-cancer-risk...

The Environmental Protection Agency approved a component of boat fuel made from discarded plastic that the agency’s own risk formula determined was so hazardous, everyone exposed to the substance continually over a lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. Current and former EPA scientists said that threat level is unheard of. It is a million times higher than what the agency usually considers acceptable for new chemicals and six times worse than the risk of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking. Federal law requires the EPA to conduct safety reviews before allowing new chemical products on to the market. If the agency finds that a substance causes unreasonable risk to health or the environment, the EPA is not allowed to approve it without first finding ways to reduce that risk. But the agency did not do that in this case. Instead, the EPA decided its scientists were overstating the risks and gave Chevron the go-ahead to make the new boat fuel ingredient at its refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Though the substance can poison air and contaminate water, EPA officials mandated no remedies other than requiring workers to wear gloves, records show. The EPA division that approves new chemicals usually limits lifetime cancer risk from an air pollutant to one additional case of cancer in a million people. That means that if a million people are continuously exposed over a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of cancer on top of those from other risks people already face.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


EPA’s new definition of PFAS could omit thousands of ‘forever chemicals’
2023-08-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:46:03
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/18/epa-new-definition-pfas-f...

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of “forever chemicals” from regulation and largely benefit industry. Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a “case-by-case” approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations. Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, a current EPA employee in the toxics office said the chemical’s definition has been evolving for several years. “EPA can’t get its act together on what PFAS are,” they added.

Note: These chemicals have contaminated 41 percent of US tap water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


Chemical industry used big tobacco’s tactics to conceal evidence of PFAS risks
2023-06-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:44:33
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-dupont-chemical-i...

In 1953, a paper developed for cigarette maker RJ Reynolds detailed possible cancer-causing agents in tobacco, but the document would remain hidden from public view for decades. In the interim, the industry told the public: “We don’t accept the idea that there are harmful agents in tobacco.” The chemical industry, it seemed, took note. Just a few years later, DuPont scientists found PFAS enlarged lab rats’ livers and likely caused birth defects in workers. Still, the company told its employees the cancer-linked compounds are “about as toxic as table salt”. Like the tobacco industry before it, the chemical industry managed to keep PFAS’s health risks hidden from the public for decades. A new peer-reviewed study dissecting PFAS producers’ public relations strategies provides a smoking gun timeline composed of industry studies and comments from DuPont and 3M officials showing they knew the dangers, but publicly insisted the chemicals were safe. Between 1961 and 2006, the authors identified dozens of instances where DuPont or 3M scientists discovered or acknowledged PFAS toxicity internally, but did not publish the findings or report them to the EPA, as required under federal law. DuPont’s chief toxicologist in 1961 found rats’ livers enlarged at very low doses of exposure, a health impact recognized as “the most sensitive sign of toxicity.” The report recommended PFAS be handled “with extreme care” and that “contact with the skin should be strictly avoided.”

Note: These chemicals have contaminated 41 percent of US tap water. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.


Hospitals Improperly Refuse to Allow Ivermectin for COVID and Yet Defend Right to Do So, according to Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
2023-06-19, Yahoo News
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:42:41
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hospitals-improperly-refuse-allow-ivermectin-1...

A number of hospitals have been sued for refusing to allow patients dying of COVID to receive treatment with ivermectin. If the hospital lost, it appealed the decision, even if the patient did receive ivermectin and recover, according to attorney Andrew Schlafly in the summer issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “Hospitals wanted to establish precedents for their side, so that next time they could deny treatment by pointing to appellate decisions in their favor,” Schlafly writes. They adopted a “strategy of seeking to establish precedents that increased their authority, and to remove any precedents against unlimited power for them.” Ivermectin is a long-established safe drug that is widely used to treat parasitic infections. It has also been shown to have antiviral activity. Many physicians have reported successful use in COVID patients, and many though not all studies have shown safety and benefit. Many state appellate courts cite the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) disparagement of ivermectin as a legal basis for hospitals to deny access by dying patients to this drug, long approved by the FDA as safe. Schlafly writes that the FDA has “been able to evade judicial review for too long. The more the FDA avoids submitting to discovery procedures that are commonplace for every other defendant, the bigger the mushrooms can grow in the dark at this federal agency.”

Note: Explore a comprehensive look into the benefits and uses of ivermectin, despite establishment media's concerted effort to discredit its efficacy and safety. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Glyphosate Linked to Severe Depression and Cognitive Decline in U.S. Adults
2023-08-29, The Defender
Posted: 2023-09-10 20:37:36
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/glyphosate-depression-cognitive-d...

A new peer-reviewed study released by a group of scientists in Taiwan has revealed an astonishingly strong link between severe depression, cognitive decline and exposure to the world’s most used herbicide, glyphosate. The study was fully published on Aug. 22 in the highly respected Elsevier Journal, Environmental Research. It was met with silence by the manufacturers of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Bayer/Monsanto, who produce the infamous weedkiller Roundup. The study authors stated that they: “Conducted analyses on existing data collected from 1532 adults of the 2013–2014 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to explore the possible relationship between glyphosate exposure and cognitive function, depressive symptoms, disability, and neurological medical conditions.” The proportion of individuals with detectable levels of glyphosate was 80.4%. The scientists concluded: “Our study provides important evidence of an association between urinary glyphosate levels and adverse neurological outcomes in a representative cohort of U.S. adult population. “Specifically, we observed lower cognitive function scores, greater odds of severe depressive symptoms, and increased risk of serious hearing difficulty in individuals with higher glyphosate exposure.” Some other recent independent studies ... suggest that both glyphosate alone and glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup are neurotoxins.

Note: A 2019 study found that glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and health from reliable major media sources.


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