Is Congress Shielding Chemical Corporations From Accountability?

The House drafts a bill that riles up MAHA moms and environmental advocates.

Buried in a lengthy House Appropriations Committee bill advanced on July 23 are two dubious provisions that have riled a hornet’s nest of outrage from environmental and health advocacy groups. The provisions use congressional purse strings to limit the authority of federal agencies to protect the public by dictating what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate. One provision makes it difficult for agencies to label products made by chemical producers that may be toxic; the other blocks EPA’s study of the dispersal of poisonous sewage sludge onto agricultural lands.

Pesticide Labeling Pre-emption

President Donald Trump promised voters he would Make America Healthy Again by improving their food supplies and eliminating toxins from drinking water. Both of these provisions would inflict the opposite result. Section 453 provides that no federal funds may be used to “approve any labeling or change to such labeling that is inconsistent with … (a) a human health assessment performed pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act [FIFRA] … ; or (b) a carcinogenicity classification for a pesticide.” A flurry of recent jury verdicts around the country against manufacturers of the weed killer glyphosate (Roundup) has been premised on a “failure to warn” cause of action, finding that Bayer/Monsanto and other chemical companies knew of the health risks of their products but hid behind inadequate federal labeling requirements.

Health advocacy groups have portrayed Section 453 as a grant of immunity to pesticide manufacturers, based on the effect of such federal legislation on state causes of action. Under the federal pre-emption doctrine, once Congress legislates in an area such as product labeling, inconsistent state requirements – including de facto changes necessitated by jury awards that require companies to better warn buyers to avert liability – are barred by federal law.

Section 453 goes even further in its protections of chemical manufacturers: It hampers the EPA and other agencies from updating labels in the face of emergencies or emerging awareness of exposure risks. Procedural compliance with FIFRA, or an agency classification of carcinogenicity, can take a decade or more to achieve. Federal agencies tasked with protecting the public from toxic chemicals are thus being thoroughly hamstrung by a sweeping one-sentence provision that blocks injured plaintiffs who prove their cancer and other illnesses are caused by chemical exposures from filing suit to recover for personal injuries and indefinitely prevents federal agencies from warning consumers about these risks.

Activists Rightly Riled

It is unsurprising that environmental and consumer advocacy groups nationwide are up in arms. Zen Honeycutt, founder and executive director of Moms Across America, told Liberty Nation News:

“This is a critical time in history. We are faced with the risk of our elected officials giving chemical companies immunity for accountability and safety, jeopardizing human health at an even greater scale than we are already experiencing. Our health crisis must be reversed, not increased, by pandering to the chemical corporations.”

The House Appropriations Committee was presented with an amendment to the controversial bill by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) that would have stricken both Sections 453 and 507. Despite making a show of opposition to the Republican-sponsored provisions, Democrats did not insist on a roll call vote, resulting in a voice vote that was dubiously credited with rejecting Pingree’s amendment. This anonymous procedure served to shield individual legislators from political accountability.

Section 507 is a similarly slimy provision, curtailing ongoing EPA efforts to study and regulate the dispersal of toxic sewage sludge on farmlands.

Chemical Companies Rule?

Why on earth would the House of Representatives block the EPA’s investigation and regulation of spreading toxic sludge into Americans’ food supplies and drinking water? Once released, these contaminants persist for thousands of years, earning them the moniker “forever chemicals.” They also accumulate in human bodies, and children are more vulnerable:

“Modeling for land application scenarios suggests that, when the majority of the consumer’s dietary intake of a product comes from a property impacted by the land application of sewage sludge contaminated with PFOA or PFOS, the highest risk pathways include (1) drinking milk from pasture-raised cows consuming contaminated forage, soil, and water, (2) drinking water sourced from contaminated surface or groundwater on or adjacent to the impacted property, (3) eating fish from a lake impacted by runoff from the impacted property, and (4) eating beef or eggs from majority pasture-raised hens or cattle where the pasture has received impacted sewage sludge.”

The House Appropriations Committee has halted progress on measuring these impacts and blocked the public comment process on the EPA’s risk assessment, allowing the continued application of sewage sludge in farming operations. This is not an instance of runaway extremist agency action, but the opposite – these chemicals cause cancer. Draft Section 507 puts a stop to further study.

Crossing Health and Political Thresholds

Americans rightly ask why funding for this critical issue related to food and water safety and children’s health is being terminated by Section 507. In addition to the scandalous legislative undermining of agency labeling of pesticides and other toxins, it appears that industry contamination of the democratic process of the Republic is on full display. Will Trump tweet his displeasure and call on the legislature to excise these two noxious provisions from the appropriations bill, or will the administration acquiesce as the promises of MAHA crash and burn?

The bill will now head to the full House, where some voters are likely to contact their representatives to clean up the sludge of Sections 453 and 507. The Senate is weighing its own appropriations bill, which lacks the health-offensive provisions. If the labeling and sludge provisions endure the full House, they may find themselves negotiated into a final bipartisan bill.

If that occurs, both political parties should be deeply ashamed.