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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Organic food consumer snapshot: Okay benefits but only if cost premium is under 5%
Understanding what truly drives consumers to choose organic or locally produced foods requires looking beyond assumptions and into real behavior ...
Viewpoint: In trying to link aluminum in vaccines to autism, RFK, Jr. unsurprisingly again bungles the science
RFK Jr is a liar. Full stop. He has been for decades — it’s what has led to his profitable ...
GLP podcast: Ketamine—miracle depression treatment, or recreational nightmare?
Widely used as a battlefield anesthetic in the later stages of the Vietnam War, ketamine has emerged as a key ...
Most scientists reject social media while others consider it their obligation to counter junk claims. Here’s the best of the best
Once upon a time, science communication was a niche hobby, reserved for the rare few who could translate lab jargon ...
Viewpoint: Who’s Who of litigation-financed junk scientists publish screed in European pay-for-play journal designed to target safe chemicals and their manufacturers for billion-dollar tort actions
Springer Nature published on November 4, 2025, in Environmental Sciences Europe, "Scientists' warning: we must change paradigm for a revolution in toxicology and ...
Roundup litigation reprieve? U.S. government backs Bayer’s claim that its glyphosate is safe-as-used finding preempts random, conflicting state-by-state ‘failure-to-warn’ claims
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a brief on Monday urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review Monsanto’s federal ...
GLP podcast: Dr. Strangelove come to life. The anti-fluoride conspiracy, explained
For 70 years, a persistent minority of academics and activists has claimed that fluoridated drinking water poses a serious but ...
Viewpoint: Environmental toxin hysteria—MIT’s Undark embarrasses with hysteria-driven story aligning itself with false claims that ‘environmental toxins’ (whatever that means) are crippling our health
MIT’s Undark magazine describes itself as a publication that “will explore science … as a frequently wondrous, sometimes contentious, and occasionally troubling byproduct of ...
Viewpoint: New Zealand rebuffs science-rejectionist attack on the safe use of glyphosate weedkiller
I agree with the recent decision by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority concerning glyphosate. It states that glyphosate can ...
Viewpoint—Chemophobia: The alliance of environmental activists and lawyers
From tampons to tap water, from cereal boxes to vaccines, nearly every modern health scare rests on the same myth: ...
Viewpoint: The Washington Post’s ignorant article suggesting corn country deaths are driven by the herbicide glyphosate
Several weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an article titled “The mysterious rise of cancer among adults in the Corn Belt.” It ...
Tripping through loopholes: Ketamine, Musk and America’s regulation blackout
After trying unsuccessfully to treat his depression with medication over several decades, Noel Farris, a 43-year-old web developer based in ...
GLP podcast: Cookies addictive like heroin? Toxicologist dismantles ‘food addiction’
Enjoying delicious food is a fundamental part of the human experience. Few of us would deny the enjoyment we get ...
Viewpoint: Science is a corporate conspiracy: The consequences of the alliance between RFK, Jr., his MAHA acolytes, and science-distorting enviro activists
A National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences paper is sounding the alarm about detectable per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in ...
Viewpoint—Toxic Narratives: The lucrative environmentalist–tort lawyer-media disinformation network driving drug and chemical scares
Is aspartame, used in thousands of products, from Diet Coke to Trident Gum to Log Cabin Sugar-Free Syrup, potentially cancer-causing? ...
Activists decry EPA approval of effective PFAS family herbicide
The Trump administration is poised to again approve a new Pfas “forever chemical” pesticide ingredient, a move that is drawing ...
Setting aside $18 billion: As glyphosate cancer litigation persists, Bayer places its survival bet on SCOTUS and federal legal protection
Bayer … notes that regulators in countries from the US to Japan to New Zealand have recently reaffirmed that glyphosate-based ...
Viewpoint: Tort lawyer and HHS Secretary RFK, Jr. falsely claim thimerosal—used safely in vaccines for 90 years—contains dangerous mercury
RFK Jr. released a video addressed to the Minamata Convention on Mercury where he lied about vaccines. Again. And again ...
Viewpoint: Do chemicals in common plastics really kill
Three hundred fifty thousand of you are predicted to die every year from heart disease caused by exposure to plastics, ...
Weeds have long been the bane of farmers. Will the future be different?
[The] International Herbicide Resistant Weed Database reports that there are 534 unique cases of herbicide-resistant weeds globally, with 273 species. In all, ...
Happy 43rd birthday, GMO insulin. FDA approval in 1982 took 5 months. How many years would it take now?
This is the 43rd anniversary of one of biotechnology’s most significant milestones — the approval by the Food and Drug ...
Viewpoint: Environmentalists claim farmers can forego chemicals and genetically engineered crops and grow bumper crops with less environmental impact. If only farming was that easy
At the end of the 20th century, the United Nations (UN) launched the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were a list of ...
Why scare stories about crop chemicals outlive the science
For years, glyphosate has been the world’s most litigated molecule. The herbicide, first brought to market in 1974 under the ...
Viewpoint: While overall cancer rates remain steady, it’s rising in Midwest farm country. Are pesticides to blame?
Cancer rates among young adults in the Corn Belt, a patchwork of golden fields and straight-line highways stretching across the ...
RFK, Jr.’s bungled science on thimerosal and vaccines
Mercury, the element, is no longer used in thermometers, but it remains at the center of a decades-long debate over ...
Can we expect a wave of corporate breakups as seed industries liberate themselves from litigation-laden pesticide businesses
Companies involved in both the seed and pesticide sectors see a pipeline of pesticide-related class action lawsuits, MDLs and unlimited ...
GLP podcast: Are science journals corrupt? Dr. Kevin Folta examines the ‘replication crisis’
The science community faces an existential crisis as thousands of studies are retracted and dozens of peer-reviewed journals are forced ...
