Roundup Loses in Court; Talking Trees with Skeet

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I love the intersection of nature and art.

(August 19, 2018) We’ll get to how Roundup loses in court later on. But first, it’s tree time with Skeet. And that takes us to something cool happening in my neighborhood. Even before I knew about the official reason it appeared, I was intrigued by the sculpture at the west end of Palmer Square Park, which you see in the above photo and insert. It turns out that the piece was created by artist Carrie Fischer (not spelled the same way but yes, really) and it’s called “The Helping Hand.” It’s part of something called Chicago Tree Project 2018, a joint project between Chicago Sculpture International (CSI–yes, really) and Chicago Park District (CPD). It’s described as

an annual citywide effort to transform sick and dying trees into vibrant public art. Using art as a vessel for public engagement, sculptors will transform a variety of trees into fun and whimsical experiences for the greater Chicago community. The collaborative project between CSI artists and CPD and is part of the greater initiative to expand the reach of public art in Chicago.

In my opinion, the reason that this art is powerful is because our relationship with trees is so powerful. True, they are plants, but they are unlike any other plants on the planet. That has led to something called Tree-mendous Tree Stories, a project of the Morton Arboretum and Openlands. You might have heard the public service announcements on The Mike Nowak Show about that very initiative. As they state on the site, “This curated collection of stories celebrates Chicago-area trees—the stature they have in our communities and memories, the impacts they make on our landscapes and lives.”

Getting back to “The Helping Hand,” it’s about the devastation caused to ash trees across the Midwest by the insect emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) or EAB,

an exotic beetle that was discovered in southeastern Michigan near Detroit in the summer of 2002. The adult beetles nibble on ash foliage but cause little damage. The larvae (the immature stage) feed on the inner bark of ash trees, disrupting the tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients. Emerald ash borer probably arrived in the United States on solid wood packing material carried in cargo ships or airplanes originating in its native Asia. As of May 2018, it is now found in 33 states, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. Since its discovery, EAB has:

• Killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America.
• Caused regulatory agencies and the USDA to enforce quarantines and fines to prevent potentially infested ash trees, logs or hardwood firewood from moving out of areas where EAB occurs.
• Cost municipalities, property owners, nursery operators and forest products industries hundreds of millions of dollars.

The dead tree at the center of that piece of art is, of course, an ash tree. Is the “helping hand” trying to save the tree or kill the borer or remove the dead tree? I don’t know the artist but I suspect that if we asked her, she would answer our questions with one of her own, perhaps along the line of, “What does it mean to you?”

All of that brings us to today’s program and our first hour guest, M.D. Skeet, a man known to many as simply “Skeet.” He’s an ISA (International Society of Arboriculture) certified arborist with Bartlett Tree Experts and he’s practically a regular on The Mike Nowak Show, having last appeared with us in May of 2017.

However, one thing I did not know about Skeet is that in 1991 he became that 126th certified arborist in the State of Illinois. Now there are more than 9,000. I’m impressed. And speaking of ash trees, Skeet writes that

A career highlight was when Skeet testified with Senator Connelly before the Illinois House of Representatives Agriculture and Conservation Committee in Springfield, Illinois, as to the need for public funding to preserve many ash trees. In 2015, the Illinois Motor Fuel Tax was amended to allow funds to be used for treatment of right of way ash trees.

This morning, we’ll be talking about whatever comes up that relates to trees. However, there are two documents that you might find helpful. The first is primer on How to Water Trees from Bartlett. The other is from the Morton Arboretum about Chicagoland Common Tree Diseases.

 

The Roundup battle heats up

A little more than a week ago, you might have been shocked–as many people were–by a headline much like this one: California jury awards $289 million to man who claimed Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide gave him cancer

The jury deliberated three days before awarding $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages to groundskeeper DeWayne Lee Johnson, 46. He claimed that years of applying Monsanto’s Roundup and Ranger Pro to school properties in a Bay Area suburb of Benicia caused his incurable non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Activists, who have long battled to ban glyphosate, lauded the decision in the closely watched trial.

Glyphosate, for the uninitiated, is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. And, as I wrote in a blog post on December 3, 2017,

it has become the “most heavily-used agricultural chemical in the history of the world.”

Americans have applied 1.8 million tons of glyphosate since its introduction in 1974. Worldwide, 9.4 million tons of the chemical have been sprayed onto fields. For comparison, that’s equivalent to the weight of water in more than 2,300 Olympic-size swimming pools. It’s also enough to spray nearly half a pound of Roundup on every cultivated acre of land in the world.

Its ubiquitous use became a firestorm of controversy in 2015 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. But is it? Here’s what Snopes.com has to say.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is one group that offers determinations of a substance’s carcinogenicity, and their assessment is the most severe in its classification of glyphosate, is controversial, and is the scientific basis for most legal action against glyphosate.

In March 2015, using studies of humans exposed to glyphosate through agricultural work, as well as from laboratory experiments on animals, the IARC concluded that “there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity [for the herbicide glyphosate] in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” As such, they classified glyphosate as a Group 2A substance that is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

In November 2015, the European Union’s Food Safety Authority (EFSA) weighed in on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate as well. Their review, which was concerned only with exposure to glyphosate through food, declined to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen, noting that “all the [European Union] Member State experts but one agreed that neither the epidemiological data (i.e. on humans) nor the evidence from animal studies demonstrated causality between exposure to glyphosate and the development of cancer in humans.”

That Snopes piece was written on the heels of the jury decision against Monsanto in San Francisco. Just a week later, glyphosate was once again making headlines like the one from CBS News: Weed-killing chemical linked to cancer found in some children’s breakfast foods.

used its own, more stringent standards to conclude that products with excessive levels of the herbicide included Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, Cheerios, Quaker Dinosaur Egg Instant Oats, Great Value Instant Oats, and Back to Nature Classic Granola. Glyphosate was even found in a few organic products, though most had non-detectable levels.

That story has actually been making the rounds for awhile, and it has its critics, like the woman who bills herself as the Farm Babe. I guess that’s a reaction to the woman who calls herself the Food Babe. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, the Farm Babe, who writes on the AgDaily website, penned a piece called No, there isn’t glyphosate in your food. That was in May, a full three months before the CBS story, which is a rehash of an earlier story.

One of the reasons I posted on December 3 of last year was because our guest was Carey Gillam, who had just written a book called Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. Her background is that of a journalist–she is a former senior correspondent for Reuters’ international news service, is a member of both the Society of Environmental journalists and North American Agricultural Journalists. She is also research director for the consumer group U.S. Right to Know.

In December, I wrote about her book.

Gillam walks her readers through the history of what seemed at the time like a “miracle” chemical, because it was so effective and seemed to have little downside. But there were hints from the very beginning that glyphosate might not be as benign as its manufacturer would have you believe. In fact, much of the book is about the continuing battle–more than 40 years after the release of the product–to determine whether the chemical is linked to cancer.

It’s no secret that Monsanto has fought long and hard to protect its cash cow from any connection to diseases like non-Hodgkin lymphoma. What is often a secret, however, is exactly who is on the Monsanto payroll and how the company has inserted itself into scientific toxicity studies about glyphosate. And if they view you as a threat, you might find yourself the target of an effort to have your work discredited–which is what happened to the IARC and has happened to scientists and journalists alike.

Gillam is now one of those journalists. In an article in Financial Review, she writes,

I’m now one of an assortment of journalists and scientists dubbed a “denier for hire” on an industry front group website. Multiple scathing articles about me have been posted on another industry-backed website that appears to be independent, but in fact was secretly set up by Monsanto public relations agents specifically to target journalists, scientists and others who would not toe the corporate line, documents show.

Another organisation, listed in internal Monsanto documents as a “Tier 2” “partner,” ridiculed my book in a review it posted on its website and pushed across social media. And I’m trolled endlessly on multiple platforms with an array of false attacks designed to discredit me and my work.

Following the San Francisco decision, she wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian titled One man’s suffering exposed Monsanto’s secrets to the world. In it, she says,

Monsanto was undone by the words of its own scientists, the damning truth illuminated through the company’s emails, internal strategy reports and other communications.

The jury’s verdict found not only that Monsanto’s Roundup and related glyphosate-based brands presented a substantial danger to people using them, but that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Monsanto’s officials acted with “malice or oppression” in failing to adequately warn of the risks.

But Snopes argues that

Court cases like Johnson v. Monsanto, in which a jury is asked to decide the likely cause of an illness, are often challenging because they sometimes have the effect of asking for certainty when such certainty does not exist even within the expert community…

So where does that leave us? As I wrote eight months ago, it seems as if each side has hunkered down into trenches on either side of the Maginot Line, from which they lob insults and their own carefully constructed facts in attempts to discredit the “enemy,” then duck as the other side returns the fire.

Ultimately, is glyphosate safe to use? Some people think so. Me? Knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t use it if I were a farmer because of the intense exposure to the chemical. Would I use it as a gardener? Possibly, but only in very, very limited ways and with caution. But that’s the way you should treat any pesticide, so I’m not sure that I’ve changed my views all that much. I wasn’t a fan in the first place and I’m not a fan now.

And the 800 pound gorilla in the room is…well, the 800 pound gorilla. Meaning, the Monsanto company, now owned by Bayer, which steamrolls its way across the farmlands of the planet, proclaiming that its mission is to “feed the world” and that the only way to do it is through the use of their chemicals, their GMO products, their lack of transparency and their bullying tactics. If you dare to dispute their claims, you’re called anti-science or, worse, a crazy hippy. And because they have more money than many countries, they almost always win. That’s not healthy, and it’s why juries come back with seemingly outrageous judgements. Those are ordinary people sitting in those courtrooms, and they know injustice when they see it.

Science may ultimately show that glyphosate and GMOs are relatively harmless. Or not. I wish I knew. But the road to the truth has been washed out by suspicion and bad faith and I see no emergency crews on the way.

Author and reporter Carey Gillam joins us again this morning. Perhaps we’ll be able to shed a tiny bit of light on this dark subject.