Chemical Controversies
Pesticides are substances that prevent, destroy, repel, or reduce the severity of pests. Pests are living things that occur where they are not wanted or that cause damage to humans, crops, or animals. Pests can be insects, rodents, unwanted plants, bacteria, viruses, or different types of fungus. Pesticides can vary in how toxic they are to humans and the environment. Some are persistent in the environment, animals, and birds, lasting for years; others break down soon after they are released. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants licenses, or registrations, to pesticides that it has found do not pose unreasonable risks to human health and the environment; it has registered at least 865 pesticides, which are used in thousands of pesticide products.
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$7.35 billion PFAS settlement: 3M to pay people who blame health problems on ‘forever chemicals’ phased out of firefighting foam for more than 20 years
3M will pay up to $7.35 billion to settle lawsuits from as many as 120,000 people who say groundwater tainted ...
Farming, food, and chemicals: Post-midterms, the MAHA alliance between Democrats and MAGA Republicans is bruised but not cowed. What comes next?
Concerns about pesticides were a factor in the 2026 midterm elections, but they primarily acted as a winning issue for ...
How climate change is driving increased pesticide usage
Climate change isn’t just stressing crops — it’s giving the insects that eat them a leg up. Warmer temperatures are ...
Viewpoint: From Medicaid cuts to MAHA-backed anti-vaccine and chemical hysteria, voters reject Republicans’ science-skeptical agenda
Republicans who championed Medicaid cuts and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement had a rough Election Day. Democrats seized ...
Cataloging the RFK Jr.-MAHA crushing midterm collapse
Tuesday's midterms were a brutal night for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement, as ...
Farmers are collateral damage in the PFAS “forever chemicals” crossfire. Here’s what they need to know.
Most of the PFAS — or "forever chemicals" — on Minnesota farms came from somewhere else, according to a new ...
Viewpoint: The fragile (and often bizarre) MAHA-MAGA-far left health-and-chemicals coalition is fracturing. Here’s why
The Make America Healthy Again movement rallied voters around fears of industrial chemicals, pesticides and corporate agriculture — but the ...
Viewpoint: Activists hype ‘dangerous level’ of pesticide residues in Driscoll berries: Separating health concerns from fear-mongering
I had several people ask me if I have second thoughts about my berry consumption in light of a swarm ...
‘Blatant slap in the face’: MAHA activists turn on RFK Jr. and Trump administration
A group of “Make America Healthy Again” activists, including former members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign, says ...
PFAS in Agriculture: Science, Uncertainty, and Risk Communication
Summary PFAS contamination raises legitimate health and environmental concerns, but this diverse family of thousands of chemicals should not be ...
GAHA: The corporate-created “healthier America” movement challenging what it claims is MAHA misinformation about modern farming, chemicals, and food
Some of America’s biggest food and farm interests have decided the best way to answer the Make America Healthy Again ...
‘Forever chemical’ concerns: Separating hysteria from reasonable concern in the debate over PFAS danger
PFAS have become a flashpoint in the debate over public health, environmental protection, and chemical regulation—but are millions of very ...
Trump administration clears the way for speedy approvals of once-restricted tobacco vapes and pouches
The Trump administration wants to make it easier for flavored vapes, nicotine pouches and other newer tobacco products to reach ...
Viewpoint: How to ecologically damage America’s forests: Ban glyphosate
A recent Mother Jones’ investigation ran under the headline “We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup.” The authors claim that ...
‘Glyphosate is not carcinogenic’: Independent EU chemical oversight agency reaffirms—for the 3rd time in 9 years—that the herbicide is safe-as-used
The European Chemicals Agency's Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) has reaffirmed, for the third time in nine years, that glyphosate does ...
Bayer urges court to approve $7.25 billion Monsanto Roundup settlement that could limit its future liabilities
Bayer is asking a Missouri court to grant final approval to a $7.25 billion settlement covering roughly 65,000 lawsuits claiming ...
Chemophobia trap: How the ‘appeal to nature’ fallacy makes ‘clean’ and organic products seem safer—even when they’re not
Fear of “chemicals” is spreading well beyond the wellness aisle — and now it’s driving political messaging as much as ...
Viewpoint: No, regenerative agriculture—whatever that means—is no better for the planet or your health than conventional farming that uses pesticides judiciously
Americans have been subjected to a decades-long misinformation campaign about agriculture. Instead of the truth—conventional farmers grow ever-increasing amounts of ...
Viewpoint: Assessing and dissecting digital disinformation
Recent reports have highlighted AI-generated “doctors” spreading dubious health advice to millions of social media users. Fabricated wellness trends can ...
‘Glyphosate-free oats’ claim is fearmongering: Every risk agency in the world has assessed it as safe, and it isn’t even sprayed on oat plants
Slap "glyphosate-free" on a bag of oats and watch it fly off the shelf, even though the herbicide is barely ...
Viewpoint: Kennedy moves to close Big Food’s GRAS loophole—but will politically-protected Prevagen and Big Supplement slip through another?
With great fanfare, Secretary Kennedy announced the closing of the GRAS (“Generally Recognized As Safe”) loophole. But separating the rhetoric ...
What’s the political and health battle over GRAS–ingredients ‘Generally Recognized as Safe’
Behind every significant advance in US food safety lies a public health disaster that forced Congress to act. A regulatory ...
RFK Jr.’s FDA wants to close a food-safety loophole. Critics say it’s still half-open.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Health and Human Services Department unveiled a plan on August 17, 2026, to close a decades-old ...
Facts & Fallacies podcast: ‘Regenerative farming’? RFK Jr.’s federal push romanticizes the past and risks food security
An ambitious federal effort is pouring some $700 million into scaling “regenerative” agriculture, framed by Health and Human Services Secretary ...
Viewpoint: Organic food costs more—but is it healthier, safer, and more nutritious? The latest science findings may surprise you.
Few symbols on food labels evoke such an immediate sense of health as the “organic seal.” Its promise of "natural" ...
How technology transformed India from a health basket case into a breadbasket in three generations—and more than doubled its life expectancy
The average human life expectancy in India has risen to over 68 years, a substantial jump from the baseline of ...
Disinformation tracker maps declining confidence in science and public health
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, false claims about “US-run biolabs” began circulating almost immediately through Russian state ...
