I wanted to share a comment John Ancy sent me after reading this essay. It meant a great deal to me, especially because John—a brilliant physiologist and respiratory therapist—is not someone who gives out compliments lightly. (He’s also my brother-in-law.) John wrote: "I enjoy your substack articles, passionate, insightful and well documented. While in graduate school in 1973-75, I worked at St. John's as an RT, mostly in ICU. I remember one horrific Saturday evening shift. More than a dozen young people were brought to the hospital in acute respiratory failure. Many required mechanical ventilation and several succumbed to ARDS. They all had been at a party smoking BRIGHT green Marijuana that had a "peculiar" taste. Reportedly, the pot was tainted with paraquat. Apparently, the DEA was assisting Mexico with paraquat based eradication program. It killed the plants but left the leaves in a beautiful green state. Perfect for sales purposes and lethal. And it is still available. Wow."
I remember that. The government deliberately tainted the cannabis imported from Mexico with paraquat to deter the hippies from smoking it. They'd rather they die. This was when Spiro Agnew, Nixon's VP, turned on the peace warriors, and the American family became the enemy target. The govt also replaced the flowers and buds with needles and chemicals in San Fran Hippie movement to continue their war mongering money making fraudulent scam.
I am with CDN club of Rome & I doubt there will be significant enough changes to stop the misery.. until the pain is so obvious that something will be done.... but too little too late... your point that this is a kind of murder really strikes me as the correct pt of view, and it applies to all environmental crimes like you described
Gordon: Thank you for your comment. I don’t expect much to change in the near term, but I do believe we will eventually need to overhaul our regulatory and public health systems. My hope is to help lay the groundwork for that reform—even if it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.
This tragic "too little, too late" outlook reflects a systemic reality where immediate profit overshadows public health. In my view, labeling these delays as "murder" isn't hyperbole, but a necessary recognition of direct institutional responsibility for preventable suffering.
Jane Mayer some years ago wrote the classic book on the story of how a class of billionaires organized to twist American politics, Dark Money. Two obsessions of this powerful class emerged, one familiar to all, the other not so much. The familiar one was the obsession to stop paying taxes. Everyone sees this in open display. When their favored Party in the US, the GOP holds power, cutting taxes typically is their only major act of legislation.
But the other obsession was their unending desire to pollute. They constantly seek ways to avoid paying any price for causing harm. Mayer makes the case this was the actual impetus for their creation of the Tea Party movement back in Obama days.
At some point we must all come to the realization that this pattern of action by this group of the ultra-wealthy, pursued mainly by their corporations is not just delay, not just resistance. But comprises a highly organized political force that seeks actions they know cause suffering, impairment, and death on a vast scale. Tobacco is another example of the same. It remains so tragic, and astounding, to me that a force of this scale causing damage at this scale creates so little reaction from the millions of us they hurt.
Arthur: Thank you for this powerful perspective on the six decade-long strategy by a few ultra-wealthy families to dismantle regulation and avoid paying fines for the pollution they create. Toxic Money would indeed be an apt companion to Dark Money. If the mess we’re in today is the predictable result of weakened regulation, tax cuts, and Citizens United, then reversing it will require an equally long-term and intentional strategy. Repealing Citizens United must be part of that work. That strategy can’t stop at recovering what’s been lost. It must also include restoring progressive taxation to contain the outsized power of extreme wealth—and giving federal and state agencies a stronger mandate and the resources to do what they were created to do: protect the public from toxic chemicals and pollution.
Bruce and Arthur: The strategy of the rich and powerful goes back more than six decades. I highly recommend Naomi Oreskes' most recent book:
The Big Myth, How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.
She got interested in the longer game and deeper history after documenting how the fossil fuel industry has manipulated the climate change issue.
The strategy started at least 100 years ago and Oreskes documents how pervasive and effective the strategy was in allowing corporations and the rich to avoid taxes and regulation that might cut into profits. It has been a multi-pronged propaganda campaign that has infiltrated many non-uber-rich people's beliefs, even at the expense of their own self-interests and health.
Chris: I agree. Big business has been at this for more than a century, though it has unfolded in distinct waves. Early on, there were targeted efforts by specific industries—lead, sugar, tobacco. Beginning in the 1960s, that gave way to broader, more coordinated campaigns by the Koch brothers, John Olin, and others, using their inherited wealth, to undermine government and dismantle regulation. I’ll pick up Naomi Oreskes’s new book after I finish Dark Money.
Amazing Bruce. Did you make the toxic timeline graph. I would like to get a good copy for the wA Board of Health. How do we change our toxic America? What is a sample law or regulation. Should it start at least with a clear cautious label. I don’t even know where the toxins are, let alone how much toxin is in foods air water etc
Bill: Thank you. I made it with the help of Tanner Noth, a volunteer graduate student, and my brother, Bob, a graphic designer. You are welcome to use it. Let me know if you need a high quality image.
While labels help, they can't fix invisible environmental toxins. In my view, a "no data, no market" law, mirroring Europe's REACH, is the only way to shift the burden of proof to corporations and truly protect the American public.
The failure of the US to protect its population continues. Dr. Lanphear, I will be sharing this post far and wide. My occupational safety and health education included toxicology. As a PhD prepared nurse, I stress the importance of recognizing these accumulative toxic effects on our population, including plastics and its chemicals.
That is why my retirement is spent as an environmental activist with and between many groups. It is a purposeful failure in educating all ages on these hazards and preventing continued contamination. I hope we all see the change needed to save future generations. Thanks for making some people uncomfortable. Keep making these insightful posts.
The nurse rightly emphasizes that accumulating plastics and toxins create a devastating synergy for public health. In my view, integrating environmental toxicology into nursing is crucial to finally link chronic pathologies to these systemic and regulatory failures.
That is why dissemination of information is so important to the health for all. Nurses carry weight. In my organization, I have educated on climate change and the vectors that come with it as well as Dupont poisoning the world and had to advocate. So yes, education of all healthcare professionals are important.
Another ‘keeper’ from Dr. Lanphear. Maybe I can add another facet. When Zeldin postponed the enforcement timeline for PFOA and PFOS limits (at 4 ppt) in drinking water by two years, I asked my colleague Dave Andrews if we could come up with ‘exposure days’ across the population. Here’s the note he sent back: “30 billion extra PFAS contamination exposure days (41 million people with water for 2 years)
this is the lower conservative population value estimate from the EPA cost analysis with 41 million people at entry points where the water expect to exceed the MCL
at the water system level -> 55 billion extra PFAS contamination exposure days (for the estimated 76 million people in water systems expected to need filtration)”
Quantifying delays in "exposure days" exposes the staggering human cost of administrative procrastination. In my view, shifting from technical timelines to billions of days of contamination reveals the criminal scale of policy choices that treat public health as a negotiable expense.
Ken: Thank you for adding a concrete example of how regulations are delayed. While the current administration is particularly troubling, these kinds of delays have long been built into the system.
These chemicals are still being used in Australia as well - I speak to farmers in grazing, horticulture, and sugarcane who rely on Glyphosate and Paraquat to manage weeds, pests and 'spray out crops' like soybeans to dry down for harvest. They won't even let their family eat it.
I've written several articles about my encounters, in an attempt to warn unsuspecting vegetarians/vegans who replace meat protein with soy protein or other legumes like peas, and mung beans, of the dangers.
The bans in other countries are well documented, based in science and irrefutable, yet these companies and farmers continue to poison us and themselves. It's insane, there has to be a way to stop it!
Paraquat's toxicity stems from its ability to trigger "oxidative stress" by depleting cellular antioxidants, specifically targeting dopamine-producing neurons. I find it chilling that while we focus on individual lifestyle, systemic chemical exposure might be "pre-programming" our neurodegeneration years before symptoms appear.
YES! YES! YES! KEEP YELLING IT! SCREECH IT UNTIL YOU ARE HOARSE! And I will keep quoting you in my opeds with your evidence that you summarize so succinctly and poignantly. Thank you, Bruce....
“If we want a healthier future, we must build a regulatory system that holds corporations responsible before the damage is done—not after.” A 'call to arms' to which we must respond.
This "call to arms" highlights the urgent need to shift from reactive justice to strict preventive regulation. In my view, this transformation requires ending trade secret protections, as current opacity prevents public action until after bodies are already poisoned.
This piece lands with real clinical weight! In medicine, we spend enormous effort treating downstream disease (Parkinson’s, cancers, infertility, kidney and cardiovascular disease) while the upstream exposures that shape risk remain largely “invisible,” normalized, and under-regulated. Your framing of regulatory delay as a public-health harm (not an abstract policy issue) is exactly right: the latency of toxic injury doesn’t make it less real, but it just makes accountability easier to avoid. I also appreciate how you connect this to consent and equity. Many exposures are not lifestyle “choices”; they’re ambient, occupational, and structurally distributed, borne most heavily by workers, children, and communities downwind/downstream. Clinically, that’s why prevention has to operate at the population level: testing before market entry, regulating chemical classes (not one-by-one whack-a-mole), and building safer defaults.
Thank you for giving language to what so many patients live: slow harms that medicine can name, but society still refuses to prevent!
I wanted to share a comment John Ancy sent me after reading this essay. It meant a great deal to me, especially because John—a brilliant physiologist and respiratory therapist—is not someone who gives out compliments lightly. (He’s also my brother-in-law.) John wrote: "I enjoy your substack articles, passionate, insightful and well documented. While in graduate school in 1973-75, I worked at St. John's as an RT, mostly in ICU. I remember one horrific Saturday evening shift. More than a dozen young people were brought to the hospital in acute respiratory failure. Many required mechanical ventilation and several succumbed to ARDS. They all had been at a party smoking BRIGHT green Marijuana that had a "peculiar" taste. Reportedly, the pot was tainted with paraquat. Apparently, the DEA was assisting Mexico with paraquat based eradication program. It killed the plants but left the leaves in a beautiful green state. Perfect for sales purposes and lethal. And it is still available. Wow."
I remember that. The government deliberately tainted the cannabis imported from Mexico with paraquat to deter the hippies from smoking it. They'd rather they die. This was when Spiro Agnew, Nixon's VP, turned on the peace warriors, and the American family became the enemy target. The govt also replaced the flowers and buds with needles and chemicals in San Fran Hippie movement to continue their war mongering money making fraudulent scam.
I am with CDN club of Rome & I doubt there will be significant enough changes to stop the misery.. until the pain is so obvious that something will be done.... but too little too late... your point that this is a kind of murder really strikes me as the correct pt of view, and it applies to all environmental crimes like you described
Gordon: Thank you for your comment. I don’t expect much to change in the near term, but I do believe we will eventually need to overhaul our regulatory and public health systems. My hope is to help lay the groundwork for that reform—even if it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.
This tragic "too little, too late" outlook reflects a systemic reality where immediate profit overshadows public health. In my view, labeling these delays as "murder" isn't hyperbole, but a necessary recognition of direct institutional responsibility for preventable suffering.
Jane Mayer some years ago wrote the classic book on the story of how a class of billionaires organized to twist American politics, Dark Money. Two obsessions of this powerful class emerged, one familiar to all, the other not so much. The familiar one was the obsession to stop paying taxes. Everyone sees this in open display. When their favored Party in the US, the GOP holds power, cutting taxes typically is their only major act of legislation.
But the other obsession was their unending desire to pollute. They constantly seek ways to avoid paying any price for causing harm. Mayer makes the case this was the actual impetus for their creation of the Tea Party movement back in Obama days.
At some point we must all come to the realization that this pattern of action by this group of the ultra-wealthy, pursued mainly by their corporations is not just delay, not just resistance. But comprises a highly organized political force that seeks actions they know cause suffering, impairment, and death on a vast scale. Tobacco is another example of the same. It remains so tragic, and astounding, to me that a force of this scale causing damage at this scale creates so little reaction from the millions of us they hurt.
Arthur: Thank you for this powerful perspective on the six decade-long strategy by a few ultra-wealthy families to dismantle regulation and avoid paying fines for the pollution they create. Toxic Money would indeed be an apt companion to Dark Money. If the mess we’re in today is the predictable result of weakened regulation, tax cuts, and Citizens United, then reversing it will require an equally long-term and intentional strategy. Repealing Citizens United must be part of that work. That strategy can’t stop at recovering what’s been lost. It must also include restoring progressive taxation to contain the outsized power of extreme wealth—and giving federal and state agencies a stronger mandate and the resources to do what they were created to do: protect the public from toxic chemicals and pollution.
Bruce and Arthur: The strategy of the rich and powerful goes back more than six decades. I highly recommend Naomi Oreskes' most recent book:
The Big Myth, How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.
She got interested in the longer game and deeper history after documenting how the fossil fuel industry has manipulated the climate change issue.
The strategy started at least 100 years ago and Oreskes documents how pervasive and effective the strategy was in allowing corporations and the rich to avoid taxes and regulation that might cut into profits. It has been a multi-pronged propaganda campaign that has infiltrated many non-uber-rich people's beliefs, even at the expense of their own self-interests and health.
Chris: I agree. Big business has been at this for more than a century, though it has unfolded in distinct waves. Early on, there were targeted efforts by specific industries—lead, sugar, tobacco. Beginning in the 1960s, that gave way to broader, more coordinated campaigns by the Koch brothers, John Olin, and others, using their inherited wealth, to undermine government and dismantle regulation. I’ll pick up Naomi Oreskes’s new book after I finish Dark Money.
Amazing Bruce. Did you make the toxic timeline graph. I would like to get a good copy for the wA Board of Health. How do we change our toxic America? What is a sample law or regulation. Should it start at least with a clear cautious label. I don’t even know where the toxins are, let alone how much toxin is in foods air water etc
Bill: Thank you. I made it with the help of Tanner Noth, a volunteer graduate student, and my brother, Bob, a graphic designer. You are welcome to use it. Let me know if you need a high quality image.
I would love to get a high-quality image -- and will properly credit it if I use it in my forthcoming book! jkauth@ben.edu
Jean-Marie: Absolutely! I'll share the graphic and Tanner's excel file with you via email.
While labels help, they can't fix invisible environmental toxins. In my view, a "no data, no market" law, mirroring Europe's REACH, is the only way to shift the burden of proof to corporations and truly protect the American public.
The failure of the US to protect its population continues. Dr. Lanphear, I will be sharing this post far and wide. My occupational safety and health education included toxicology. As a PhD prepared nurse, I stress the importance of recognizing these accumulative toxic effects on our population, including plastics and its chemicals.
Thank you Dr. Peggy! I know my posts make some people uncomfortable. Unfortunately that discomfort is necessary to galvanize us to change the system.
That is why my retirement is spent as an environmental activist with and between many groups. It is a purposeful failure in educating all ages on these hazards and preventing continued contamination. I hope we all see the change needed to save future generations. Thanks for making some people uncomfortable. Keep making these insightful posts.
The nurse rightly emphasizes that accumulating plastics and toxins create a devastating synergy for public health. In my view, integrating environmental toxicology into nursing is crucial to finally link chronic pathologies to these systemic and regulatory failures.
That is why dissemination of information is so important to the health for all. Nurses carry weight. In my organization, I have educated on climate change and the vectors that come with it as well as Dupont poisoning the world and had to advocate. So yes, education of all healthcare professionals are important.
Another ‘keeper’ from Dr. Lanphear. Maybe I can add another facet. When Zeldin postponed the enforcement timeline for PFOA and PFOS limits (at 4 ppt) in drinking water by two years, I asked my colleague Dave Andrews if we could come up with ‘exposure days’ across the population. Here’s the note he sent back: “30 billion extra PFAS contamination exposure days (41 million people with water for 2 years)
this is the lower conservative population value estimate from the EPA cost analysis with 41 million people at entry points where the water expect to exceed the MCL
at the water system level -> 55 billion extra PFAS contamination exposure days (for the estimated 76 million people in water systems expected to need filtration)”
Quantifying delays in "exposure days" exposes the staggering human cost of administrative procrastination. In my view, shifting from technical timelines to billions of days of contamination reveals the criminal scale of policy choices that treat public health as a negotiable expense.
Ken: Thank you for adding a concrete example of how regulations are delayed. While the current administration is particularly troubling, these kinds of delays have long been built into the system.
Perhaps the best thing you've ever written!
This is my thesis, too, but you left out one item: Fluoridation Policy.
Thank you Maggie. I'm sure dozens of other chemicals could be added to the timeline.
Bruce -- you inspire me. <3
This is a question many of us have hesitated to ask, yet ask regardless because it is so obvious and important.
https://open.substack.com/pub/poisoningchildren/p/when-is-systemic-poisoning-murder?r=3id6x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
These chemicals are still being used in Australia as well - I speak to farmers in grazing, horticulture, and sugarcane who rely on Glyphosate and Paraquat to manage weeds, pests and 'spray out crops' like soybeans to dry down for harvest. They won't even let their family eat it.
I've written several articles about my encounters, in an attempt to warn unsuspecting vegetarians/vegans who replace meat protein with soy protein or other legumes like peas, and mung beans, of the dangers.
The bans in other countries are well documented, based in science and irrefutable, yet these companies and farmers continue to poison us and themselves. It's insane, there has to be a way to stop it!
Late lessons from early warnings. a powerful title and statement.
Paraquat's toxicity stems from its ability to trigger "oxidative stress" by depleting cellular antioxidants, specifically targeting dopamine-producing neurons. I find it chilling that while we focus on individual lifestyle, systemic chemical exposure might be "pre-programming" our neurodegeneration years before symptoms appear.
wow, hard hitting in a constructive and realistic way... we really are a sick society to allow this murder...
Thank you Gordon. It is troubling, but the hopeful truth is that we can change the system and prevent disease using what we already know.
Without regulatory agencies and accountability, it is unlikely that corporations will change. The graphic is very helpful to see.
YES! YES! YES! KEEP YELLING IT! SCREECH IT UNTIL YOU ARE HOARSE! And I will keep quoting you in my opeds with your evidence that you summarize so succinctly and poignantly. Thank you, Bruce....
“If we want a healthier future, we must build a regulatory system that holds corporations responsible before the damage is done—not after.” A 'call to arms' to which we must respond.
This "call to arms" highlights the urgent need to shift from reactive justice to strict preventive regulation. In my view, this transformation requires ending trade secret protections, as current opacity prevents public action until after bodies are already poisoned.
This piece lands with real clinical weight! In medicine, we spend enormous effort treating downstream disease (Parkinson’s, cancers, infertility, kidney and cardiovascular disease) while the upstream exposures that shape risk remain largely “invisible,” normalized, and under-regulated. Your framing of regulatory delay as a public-health harm (not an abstract policy issue) is exactly right: the latency of toxic injury doesn’t make it less real, but it just makes accountability easier to avoid. I also appreciate how you connect this to consent and equity. Many exposures are not lifestyle “choices”; they’re ambient, occupational, and structurally distributed, borne most heavily by workers, children, and communities downwind/downstream. Clinically, that’s why prevention has to operate at the population level: testing before market entry, regulating chemical classes (not one-by-one whack-a-mole), and building safer defaults.
Thank you for giving language to what so many patients live: slow harms that medicine can name, but society still refuses to prevent!