Runaway Pesticide Toxicity of Food Supply Shows Generational EPA Failure

The decades-long push to clean up the American food supply has received supercharged momentum over the last month thanks, in part, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His media messaging to reform regulatory agencies has gained critical mass through social media outlets along with breaking into the mainstream of political talking points.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently acted using a rare emergency order for the first time in 40 years to stop the use of a problematic pesticide, Dacthal, from the market.

Why? According to their press release, “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 to 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.”

Does this prove the agency is listening to The People and responding to the current social momentum towards healthy food? Is the Biden–Harris administration (or whoever is truly running the country) making historic change? 

Not really…

The issue of toxins, agrochemicals, and inferior ingredients harming American health through our food supply has long been a bipartisan operation – handed down from administration to administration without pause from what could only be deemed a food industrial complex…a corporate health deep state of sorts. 

The EPA classified Dacthal as a “possible carcinogen” in 1995 after its studies done by the manufacturer found it could cause thyroid tumors in animals. 

The entire European Union banned the pesticide in 2009 due to irrefutable health concerns. Not the EPA…it was big business as usual.  

The Environmental Working Group reports: 

“In 2013, the EPA required AMVAC, the sole DCPA manufacturer in the U.S., to submit an additional study showing the chemical’s effects on the fetal thyroid among other information.  

AMVAC’s research, finally submitted to the EPA in 2022, showed even low doses of DCPA exposure can harm the developing fetus.

During the nearly 10 years before it finally complied with the EPA’s requirement, the company continued producing and selling Dacthal.”

In other words, the EPA dragged its feet, through multiple administrations, to slow roll the removal of this known, health-damaging pesticide.

Another point in play is the EPA’s regulatory hypocrisy claiming it removed Dacthal because it caused changes in fetal thyroid hormone levels, low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ, and impaired motor skills later in life.

Lowered IQ…Changes in thyroid function…

Meanwhile, the EPA is literally defending in court, for multiple years, the practice of widespread water fluoridation. Even though a new government report from the Department of Health and Human Services’s National Toxicology Program found it lowered IQ in children…which has been known for a long time.  

Furthermore, a review of developmental fluoride neurotoxicity research shows fluoride is an endocrine disrupter causing toxicity to the thyroid gland that can affect thyroid function at intake levels as low as 0.01 to 0.03 mg/kg/day in individuals with iodine deficiency. 

Yet fluoride can’t be touched. The EPA defends this practice considered one of the greatest public health achievements over the last 100 years. 

How about glyphosate? The EPA acted fast on that one right? 

The chemical was only removed from the U.S. market by its manufacturer due to overwhelming litigation costs of lost lawsuits threatening the corporate viability of Bayer. EPA…silent.

So here we are with an EPA that’s still broken. The results? 

Continued tests of the American food supply reveals widespread pesticide contamination with a recent finding of a cocktail of 21 different pesticides in Target’s baby food. Twelve of the pesticides found are classified as highly hazardous to the environment and/or human health and eight are banned in the European Union. 

A new systematic review looking at the impact of organic foods on chronic diseases found:

“A significant inverse relationship between organic food consumption and cardiometabolic risk factors, including obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, was observed in the majority of prospective studies…Clinical trials consistently indicated lower pesticide exposure in participants on organic diets, suggesting potential health benefits.” 

While its been clear to anyone paying attention that the U.S. regulatory agencies often act as barriers to optimal health rather than protectors. The parents, activists, non-profits and lawyers have stepped up, continuously, to fill the role of watchdog often battling the very agencies being funded to the tune of untold billions to oversee the regulation of environmental, medical, and health products and concerns of Americans.

As this narrative gets breathing room, the current messaging of clean, healthy food is also running head long into record low consumer confidence and higher food prices making basics challenging for most Americans. For it to continue the staying power it needs and desperately deserves, real change will be required from a combined political and grassroots union to overturn the very culture of regulatory agencies away from corporate capture and the conflicts of interest revolving door influence that has corrupted the core of American oversight for over half a century. No small task.