The Highwire with Del Bigtree - EPA ISSUES FIRST EMERGENCY ORDER IN 40 YEARS

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

The EPA has called for an emergency suspension on the common pesticide Dacthal for its harmful effect on fetuses when exposed to pregnant women, 15 years after being banned from European markets. Jefferey details the decades of foot dragging on the part of the EPA in protecting the public from this harmful weed killer and the trickle down effect these pesticides have on food products including baby food.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Now to an emergency order from the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA issuing an emergency ban of a common weed killer. The EPA is demanding this weed killer be pulled from store shelves immediately. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued an emergency suspension of the common weed killer DCPA. It's also known as dactyl. The agency's risk assessment found handling DCPA products while pregnant could expose fetuses to between 4 to 20 times the chemical level considered safe. PA says exposure can alter fetal thyroid hormone levels, which is linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life.

A lot of women that now have kids with special needs because they were working while pregnant. They were directly impacted by pesticide. And so now their kids have learning disabilities. Dactyl is just one. I mean, there are 100, more than 130. pesticides that are banned that are used in California every year. It's the first emergency action of its kind taken by the regulatory agency in 40 years. Wow, it's emergency for sure.

Yeah, 40 years. So the EPA is doing something and perhaps we should tell our counterparts over in the European Union, but they banned it in 2009. So this thing has been in our food supply for 50, years. Here's the actual order from the European Commission. 27 countries have banned this for plant protection products containing chlorothal dimethyl withdrawn by 23rd March 2010. And it also says there's no renewal from this publication date. So they banned it for the very same reasons. The EPA is now grandstanding on that they're banning it here in the United States with an emergency order they've only

used once in 40 years. This is the state of the EPA. So I wanted to give the APA some credit here for doing something right. But then you start doing your research on this. And so let's look at their press release. We go into their press release, this emergency order to stop the use of this pesticide. Why are they doing it? Well, it said a little bit in that news package there, but it says EPA has taken this action because unborn babies whose pregnant mothers are exposed to DCPA, sometimes without even knowing the exposure has occurred, could experience changes in fetal thyroid hormone levels. And these changes are generally linked to low birth weight impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life, some of which may be irreversible.

So remember that. Decreased IQ, fetal thyroid, hormone levels, these are big issues for the EPA all of a sudden. Well, let's go to the environmental working group. They did a fantastic write-up on this to give the whole story. And this is what really happened. They said in 1995, nearly 30 years ago, the agency, that's the EPA, classified DCPA as a possible carcinogens. They knew all the way back then.

That decision was based on a study conducted by Dachville's manufacturer in 1993, which showed it caused thyroid tumors in animals suggesting similar potential threats to people. Now get this. In 2013, the EPA required AMVAC, the sole DCPA manufacturer in the U.S. to submit an additional study showing the chemicals effect on the fetal thyroid, among other information. So it took them from 1995 basically to 2013 to say, hey, could you turn in your homework on this whole, you know, fetal thyroid issue with kids because, you know, something may be going on there, so we'd like to see something else from you. It took them that long, but it gets even

worse. It goes on to say, AMVAC's research, the actual company's own research, finally submitted to the EPA in 2022 showed even low doses of DCPA exposure can harm the developing fetus. The manufacturer's own study, that's like giving the cheat sheet code to the EPA saying, here they We are, we manufacture this and it's kind of unhealthy. You want to do something about this? But they didn't. So it says during the nearly 10 years before it finally complied with the EPA's requirement, the company continued producing and selling Dackville.

And AMBAC didn't submit other data requested. So in August 2023, the agency suspended use of the pesticide, a de facto temporary ban. Yet three months later, the EPA lifted that suspension, once again allowing Dactville's use until today. That's the EPA we've all grown up to know. decades of this type of foot dragging, no teeth to do anything about these pesticides. And so before it was banned, just, you know, just a couple weeks ago, this is what the headlines look like. How,

ubiquitous? Was this in our environment? Well, it says almost six out of 10 kale samples, tainted by pesticide banned in Europe 15 years ago. We're talking kale, broccoli, sweet potatoes, eggplants, turnups, mustard greens, collard greens. It's the list of superfoods, if you will, like things that people have really been switching over to for health, and now you find out it's the most poisoned product out there. I mean, it's just, it's a crime against humanity. There's no way to look at it. And there's ways around this.

There's ways to mitigate that. We're going to get to that in a moment. So we go to a chart that was in that article, and it shows the usage in the United States of this datchel, of this now-banned pesticide. And you can see here the purple line is the U.S. Geological Survey. that's throughout the United States and California that both tracks similar. But you can see almost 1.4 million pounds per year at its height and that was in like 1992. But then you see this,

we call it a precipitous decline all the way to 2000. And what happened at the bottom there, that was the advent of glyphosate and Roundup Ready seeds. So you can see on the cales, on the collard greens and things like that, these are basically, they're putting this pesticide on everything that glyphosate wasn't being put on. So the corn, the major cash, crops, the canola, those were the ones that are getting all the glyphosate at that time because that was the big moneymaker. So why is this important? Well, we pull out for this, you know, 10,000 foot view and we see continual studies like this. This is one by the nonprofit friends of the earth, and they're looking at target baby food. So again, babies are the most, you know,

the most vulnerable to these type of toxins. Toxic pesticides found in targets baby food. What do they say? They said, we found a cocktail of 21 different pesticides. a term that includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and targets baby food, including neonicotinoids. We also found metabolites from a class of neurotoxic pesticides called organophosphate. Twelve of the pesticides we found are classified as highly hazardous to the environment

and or human health, and eight are banned in the European Union. And you can see an image here, if you want to share this online, this is what we're looking at here. Anybody buying Target baby food, they may want to know this if they're giving it to their baby, and you can see there the breakdown of everything I just read in those baby food products. I mean, let's just, I just want to be clear because we can go,

oh, my God, Target's baby food, folks. Target's just putting a bunch of vegetables and fruits and giant, you know, factory, you know, cookers and blending it down into a baby food. It's the same vegetables we're buying. You know, all that's telling us is not necessarily as far as I can tell that they're injecting pesticides into the little, you know, cans of baby food for your baby. It's just showing you that any company that you,

uses our food supply, our, you know, our farm-grown vegetables and fruits are going to be poisoning you. I mean, that's what we get there. I mean, kale. I mean, everything, it's, it's just really, it's amazing we're still sitting here, I guess, and having this conversation. And it's why that Ron Johnson hearing was so important. I mean, actually, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit because I think around this is really something that came up in that hearing talking about. How is it that America is getting chemicals that nobody else has? Take a look at this. Americans now live in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals, plastics,

and untenable pesticide loads that permeate our food, water, and air. Having studied the evolution of corporations, I believe the root cause of how we got here is an unintended consequence of the unchecked and misguided industrialization of agriculture and food. I believe there are two key drivers behind how we got here. First, America has much looser regulatory approach to approving new ingredients and chemicals than comparable developed countries. Europe, for example, uses a guilty-until-in-proven innocent standard for the approval of new chemicals,

which mandates that if an ingredient might pose a potential health risk, it should be restricted or banned for up to 10 years until it is proven safe. In complete contrast, our FDA uses an innocent, until proven guilty approach for new chemicals or ingredients that's known as grass or generally recognized as safe. This recklessly allows new chemicals into our food system until they are proven harmful. Shockingly, U.S. food companies can use their own independent experts to bring forth a new chemical without the approval of the FDA.

It is a travesty that the majority of Americans don't even know they are constantly constantly exposed to thousands of untested ingredients that are actually banned or regulated in other countries. To put it bluntly, for the last 50 years, we have been running the largest uncontrolled science experiment ever done on humanity without their consent. Why should America, the greatest country on earth, be the last developed nation to protect its people? It's such an important question, but the point he's making is here in America,

We say basically put any chemical on the food, spray it on anywhere, stick it in baby food. We don't care only until someone has the courage to get involved in a lawsuit that will probably take them 15 more years while everyone's being poisoned to finally get on board with where the rest of the world was at and finally ban this product. I mean, it's absolutely and totally obscene and shocking for all of us Americans that had some sort of delusion of grandeur. that America is the greatest, that we have the greatest food supply and the, you know, the greatest government system is not working. And really one of the questions I have not to get in is just, you know, a lot of, as I've said before, I was, you know, a flower power hippie, if you will, growing up, a liberal, but we were into organic food and clean food as I was growing up.

But I never understood this hate on regulatory agencies. Like, you know, every time conservators, like, you know, down with the regulatory agencies. Well, clearly corporations don't care for us, right? They're going to poison us anytime they get a chance. But then if you have regulatory agencies that are working for, then which these clearly are, then what good are they anyway? I mean, this whole thing is corrupt to the very bone

in the marrow of this nation right now. And, you know, industry talking points. Yeah, I think, Del, so many people feel the way that you do. And this is why these issues are now front and seven. These issues are now political, if you will, and sweeping across the United States. A lot of industry mouthpieces that are put up there and propped up there on the media to talk about things like this will say there's no difference between organic and conventional. Well, a study out of Europe just said something different.

So this is looking at the impact of organic foods on chronic diseases. This is a systematic review, again, looking at a lot of studies. It says a significant inverse relationship between organic food consumption and cardiovascular metabolic risk factors, including obesity, diabetes, malitis, hypertension, hypolipidemia, was observed in a majority of prospective studies. Then it goes on to say the obvious clinical trials consistently indicated lower pesticide exposure in participants on organic diet suggesting potential health benefits. But just to put a finer point on that, this is a study out of frontiers of medicine,

and it says pesticides potentially as bad as smoking for increased risk in certain cancers. And they talked to the lead author, he said, in our study, study, we found that for some cancers, the effect of agricultural pesticide usage is comparable in magnitude to the effect of smoking. Wow. And the ones they found leukemia, non-hottings, lymphoma, bladder cancer. And so, you know, if government really wanted to do something and they can't reform the agencies, well, maybe throw some incentives on those organic foods to make them cheaper for people

because people are having a really hard time buying food right now. So how are they going to afford organic food? Make people pay for the bad food that they want to have. If they want to have food with all of these bad ingredients in them, make it like a pack of cigarettes. They have to pay triple a price for it. Instead is the opposite. That's the food that's getting subsidized. There's so many of the speakers we're talking about at the Ron Johnson hearing.

That's the food that's in your food stamp programs. And, you know, so really if you can't afford organic food, you're just being poisoned. And now, you know, as we see here, organic food, my sister was just telling me this week that, you know, her cholesterol was going up, she was having some high blood pressure issues, and just decided randomly to just switch over to just organic food. And in doing so, you know, a couple months later, the doctor was like, what did you do? I mean, your numbers were all down. What exactly did you do?

She like, it just changed out and started eating organic food. The doctor was like, huh, that's interesting. He never heard of that before. I mean, amazing. And to your point, too, how is this, how is this taken out? Let's look at glyphosate. Did the EPA step up and say, you know what, this glyphosate is causing non-hoshkinsomoma cancers? There's all, no, these were the lawyers.

These were the legal issues being pushed by lawyers that were literally bankrupting the company. It was called the worst corporate takeover in history. And you see headlines like this, Barrett to end glyphosate sales to U.S. consumers. They had to pull glyphosate off the market in the United States because, so if you go to Home Depot and try to get Roundup, it's not glyphosate based anymore. They took it out because of all these lawsuits. And so that's a positive. There's still a long way to go, though, on glyphosate being used on the crops in the United States. Yeah, because, I mean, you literally took it out of Home Depot.

I can't spray it in my yard, but it's on 80 and 90 percent of the crops I'm eating in my house. It's literally I'm eating this stuff. And again, where's the EPA? Where's the FDA? You lost the lawsuit. You're watching them pay out billions of dollars. This stuff clearly causes cancer. You watch it taking off the shelves so we can't spray.

on our tulips out in the yard, but it'll be on all your food. It'll be desiccating and drying your wheat, which is going to go straight from there, ground up and turn into bread for you. And no one in our regulatory agents seems to think, well, I don't know. Let's put two plus two. You know, if it's bad for me in my yard, probably bad for me in my bread. So wrapping this up, so we have the EPA grandstanders. Please wrap this up before I have a heart attack here. Okay. We have a 40-year emergency motion that it's used because all of a sudden they are very concerned about young children and they're very concerned about lower IQ and fetal thyroid functioning. But wait a minute, where have I heard that before? Well, here's the Hill just a couple of months ago before this landmark fluoride decision.

U.S. agency links high fluoride exposure to lower IQ and kids. Well, what about thyroid function? Here's this, here's an updated review of all the studies looking at thyroid function and what's called developmental fluoride. Neuroxicity. It says among the possible mechanisms of developmental neuro toxicity is toxicity to the thyroid glandant mechanism relevant in regard to several neurotoxicants. Thus, the NRC concluded that fluoride is an endocrine disruptor, can affect the thyroid. It goes on and on about the dosages. So here, I mean, we're talking about regulatory hypocrisy. They're going to this grandstand on this, this pesticide that it's not really used too much anymore, but fluoride, they're going to fight tooth and nail in court to keep this in your water supply. It's amazing. Tell me how that makes sense. I mean, this is why people are outraged. People are thinking, it's conspiracy theorists online that are doing this or it's anti-vaxxers. No, it's their own, it's their what they're doing, their own admissions, their own movements

and lack of, lack of initiative to take these out. So we're talking about revolutions, you know, we want to reform these agencies, but public health in general, it needs to be looked at, completely reformed. Right now, the United States and across most of the world, there's something even greater, and that's the ability for us to even communicate. Free speech, something we've been covering for weeks and weeks here, is been increasingly under attack. And it seems like now some of the very familiar faces we've known from over the years are coming back into the fold and really starting to talk about how to curtail speech.

One of them, you may know. Take a look. They constantly raise the issue of freedom of speech. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and the other people who now control maybe the most powerful media platforms in the world. And they say we don't want to censor human users, but it's not about the human users.

It's about the corporate algorithms. Right. Humans produce enormous amount of content on social media. They produce hate-filled conspiracy theories, and they produce cooking lessons and biology lessons and funny cat videos and whatever. And I think I agree with them that we should be very, very careful

before we censor and ban human beings. But the problem begins not with it when a human post some hateful conspiracy theory online, but when the Facebook algorithm or the Twitter algorithm chooses, makes a decision to recommend and promote and spread and autoplay this particularly hate-filled video, in pursuit of user engagement. Right, and I thought. And this is something that the corporations should be accountable for.

All right, so he's giving kind of an academic view of, you know, why algorithms should curtail speech. One of the premises he forgot to start with is he's saying, it's just people that are spreading this hate and this misinformation. It's not talking about corporations. He's not talking about public health agencies, the governments themselves. What about them? What about when they do it?

I mean, that's what's so troubling about this conversation. We are sitting here right here today, as we've reported every single week. Our government still not admitting that the COVID vaccine is down regulating the immune systems of everybody that's on their second or third shopping, covering that a lot. I was last week still not talking about the fact that myocarditis, periokyditis, is much more severe in children, much more severe than the disease itself, much more prevalent. All of this is now known science across the world. And still, they are out there saying that what you and I are talking about, saying the things I just said, that that is the misinformation. As long as my government is the one lying to us,

then I have a real problem with them deciding how they're going to decide what hate speech, if you will. I mean, Dolp. Bigtree hates people because he doesn't want them taking a product that's so good for them. I mean, who cares if it's going to swell your heart and downregulate your immune system? I mean, this is how this language is being spun, right? That as soon as you're against the government,

now you're causing hate, you're causing dissension. It's literally what, you know, the fourth state was supposed to be. We're supposed to be challenging government. Now if you challenge government, that's a problem. It's really, really scary. This is very scary stuff. Absolutely. And we get lectured by agencies like the CDC on misinformation.

This is an agency that thinks generationally lowering the IQ of children is better than just a couple of cavities.