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Forestry Experiments 1973 — To achieve this effect, researchers planted trees in 10 degree radial increments to form 10 concentric circles. The ‘crop circle’ forest can still be seen today and is located in the Miyazaki Prefecture of southern Japan.

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Death of a Tea Master (千利休本覺坊遺文), Kei Kumai, 1989

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DuPont and Daikin, manufacturers of ‘short chain’ PFAS, did not inform regulator about the FDA negative results of tests on animals

Chemical giants DuPont and Daikin knew the dangers of a PFAS compound widely used in food packaging since 2010, but hid them from the public and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), company studies obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The chemicals, called 6:2 FTOH, are now linked to a range of serious health issues, and Americans are still being exposed to them in greaseproof pizza boxes, carryout containers, fast-food wrappers, and paperboard packaging.

The companies initially told the FDA that the compounds were safer and less likely to accumulate in humans than older types of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” and submitted internal studies to support that claim.

But Daikin withheld a 2009 study that indicated toxicity to lab rats’ livers and kidneys, while DuPont in 2012 did not alert the FDA or public to new internal data that indicated that the chemical stays in animals’ bodies for much longer than initially thought.

Science from industry, the FDA and independent researchers now links 6:2 FTOH to kidney disease, liver damage, cancer, neurological damage, developmental problems and autoimmune disorders, while researchers also found higher mortality rates among young animals and mothers exposed to the chemicals.

Had the FDA seen the data, it is unlikely that it would have approved 6:2 FTOH, said Maricel Maffini, an independent researcher who studies PFAS in food packaging. And though Daikin may have broken the law, it and DuPont, which has previously been caught hiding studies that suggest toxicity in PFAS, are not facing any repercussions. [...]

In 2020, the FDA reached agreements with some major PFAS manufacturers to voluntarily stop using 6:2 FTOH compounds in food packaging within five years. But documents show that the FDA first became aware of DuPont’s hidden study in 2015, and public health advocates say a 10-year timeline to reassess and remove the chemical is unacceptable. [...]

Even when DuPont in its 2008 study reported some health problems in lab animals at high exposure levels, it did so in a way that appears designed to confuse, Maffini noted. One passage that revealed that high doses of the chemical lead to blood in rats’ urine read that the doses “resulted in a significant reduction in the number of female rats with blood absent in the urine”.

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A battery recycling plant blanketed Latino communities with chemicals – and thousands of properties remain toxic

For years, Terry Gonzalez-Cano encouraged her children to get outside and play in the dirt. “I grew up doing everything outside, and I encouraged my kids to do the same thing. We played in the backyard, we gardened,” she said. “I thought I was being a good mother by forcing them to spend time outside.”

Gonzalez-Cano, 48, didn’t know that, for decades, the Exide lead battery recycling plant in the neighboring Los Angeles-area city of Vernon had blanketed blue-collar Latino communities with layer after layer of lead and cancer-causing arsenic.

In June 2015, the soil on her property in the LA neighborhood of Boyle Heights was tested for lead by the California department of toxic substances control. Gonzalez-Cano said the results had come back in April 2016, 10 months after her property had been tested: her home had more than double the 80 parts per million (ppm) that California deems acceptable. At her father’s home a block away, where she and her brother spent countless hours playing in the backyard when they were children, the number averaged over 800ppm. One neighbor’s soil tested so high that it surpassed the 1,000ppm required to qualify as toxic waste.

“When I found out, I couldn’t breathe,” said Gonzalez-Cano. “I felt like I was the worst mother in the world. I felt that I had killed my children.”

Sitting next to her on the couch at her home recently, her brother Jose Gonzalez emptied a plastic bag full of bracelets from his dozens of trips to the hospital for sinus cancer on to the floor. “Here’s Exide’s legacy,” he said. “I thought I was staying fit when I used to play football in the mud. I didn’t know it, but I was poisoning myself.”

Six years after their property was tested, the siblings say that the state has not given them even a prospective timeline for when their property will be cleaned up. They worry about the damage that has already been done, and the health problems they and their families may have that will only manifest with time.

The evidence of the plant’s contamination is not just in the soil of local homes, but in the teeth of the children who inhabit them. A 2019 study found high levels of lead in the teeth of local children, indicating long-term exposure that was passed along to many while they were still in their mother’s wombs. “Mothers in these communities are exposed, and they pass that exposure on to their children before they’re even born,” said Jill Johnston, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California who authored the study.

Despite its nearly 100-year presence, many in the community had never heard of Exide until less than a decade ago, although community organizers had been protesting against the plant and demanding action for many years. The company could not be reached for comment.

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i wonder if people will finally begin to care about animal & environmental welfare in the aftermath of this virus. the rightful political issues raised by vegans are mostly seen as a joke by all shades of the political spectrum. zoonotic plagues are largely the fault of how food industries have encroached on animal habitats. that includes the abusive conditions of corporate factory farming, the conditions of importing live animals, and also forcing animals into unsafe conditions via markets that put humans in close contact to multiple kinds of wildlife that are confined close together. food insecurity is one of the underlying drivers of wildlife markets, but the west simply reduces the issue to racist mudslinging about what people choose to eat. i’m concerned that reevaluating our relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom isn’t a bigger issue to a lot of people, especially the press.