Weedkiller found in granola and crackers, internal FDA emails show

Originally shared by Toxic Reverend

Weedkiller found in granola and crackers, internal FDA emails show
Quote: "the internal documents obtained by the Guardian show the FDA has had trouble finding any food that does not carry traces of the pesticide."

The FDA has been testing food samples for traces of glyphosate for two years, but the agency has not yet released any official results

By Carey Gillam, The Guardian Newspaper, 30 April 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkiller-glyphosate-in-food-internal-emails

#glyphosate #monsanto

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOLLOWS:>


News story from 18 years ago #censored

U.S. Lags in Toxicity Data
{Congressional Report: Less than 6% of chemicals known to impact health are tracked}
By SUNNY KAPLAN, Times Staff Writer, Wednesday, May 3, 2000

PLEASE NOTE THE "FAIR USE NOTICE"
GIVEN AFTER THIS COPYRIGHT ARTICLE

The nation's health experts are
unable to gauge the effect of many potentially toxic
chemicals on humans because the federal government
has failed to study such exposure and has "a long way
to go" before remedying the situation, according to a
report released Tuesday by the research arm of Congress.

The study by the General Accounting Office was
begun nearly two years ago at the request of
Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Maxine
Waters, both of Los Angeles, Nancy Pelosi of
San Francisco and other members of Congress.
Pelosi announced the findings Tuesday at a House
subcommittee hearing on children and environmental
health.

The study concluded that the Department of Health
and Human Services and the Environmental Protection
Agency should "develop a coordinated federal strategy
for short- and long-term monitoring and reporting of human
exposures to potentially toxic chemicals."

"Millions of Americans work and live in environments full of
dangerous contaminants," Pelosi said. "We must make a
commitment to do the research and gather the data that will
help us understand the effect of chemicals on human health."

The study reviewed more than 1,400 chemicals that pose
potential threats to human health and found that only 6% are
being tracked by HHS and the EPA. And only a small percentage
of the chemicals known or thought to be carcinogenic are being
tracked by the government, the study found.

In some situations where medical experts wanted to collect
"human exposure" data--from blood, hair or urine, for example
and examine it for chemicals, they were constrained by financial
resources, the study found. Such situations included suspected
"cancer clusters" or contact with toxic chemicals. State and
federal environmental health officials said that current budgets
allow them to collect or use such data in less than half the cases
where they thought it to be necessary.

Even when laboratories have the capacity to collect the data,
no laboratory method has been developed for assessing exposure
levels in human tissue for many of the 1,400 chemicals known to
pose a threat to human health, the report said.

Public health officials said that, to put local data into context,
they need more information on typical exposures in the general
population.

"The release of the GAO study today sends a serious and direct
message to Congress that we must do more to protect our
communities," Pelosi said. "We must provide the resources
that will enable federal and state officials to address these
barriers." Breast cancer will be diagnosed in about 180,000
women this year, and prostate cancer will be diagnosed in
about the same number of men, according to the American
Cancer Society. Some medical researchers suspect
environmental factors have contributed to the high numbers.

"There are increasing concerns about cancer rates being linked
to environmental exposures," said Katherine Iritani, the lead
evaluator for the GAO study.

Data on how environmental toxins affect children are particularly
lacking, according to physicians and public health officials who
testified at Tuesday's hearing before the labor, health and human
services and education subcommittee of the Appropriations
Committee. "Children have been data orphans," said Dr. Richard
Jackson, director of the National Center for Environmental Health
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Data do exist in some areas--infant mortality, for example, is at
a record low. Cases of lead poisoning among children are on the
decline, Jackson said, and the CDC hopes to eradicate them completely
by 2010.

However, childhood asthma is on the increase. In the last two
decades, the number of asthmatic children has doubled to about
4 million, and officials are unsure why the number of cases is on
the rise.

In addition, only 10 states have a surveillance system in place to
monitor birth defects, Jackson said, and data on autistic children
are only being collected in the city of Atlanta. He said that the cost
of establishing surveillance systems to monitor childhood illnesses
could reach an estimated $500,000 per state.

Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times


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The Report mentioned in the above newspaper article was e-mailed to my by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's office and is titled:

2:
Testimony on Children's Health and the Environment

By Richard J. Jackson, M.D., M.P.H.
Director, National Center for Environmental Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education
May 2, 2000
Archive Wayback Machine posting {so all of the olinks work}
https://web.archive.org/web/20010304015550/http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t000502a.html
The Government also has the page archived on their server, but the links have not been maintained at
http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t000502a.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/30/fda-weedkiller-glyphosate-in-food-internal-emails