Corporate Corruption News Stories
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
Those who have kept track of the rise of the Thielverse, which includes figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and JD Vance, have understood that an agenda to usher in a unique form of authoritarianism has been slowly introduced into the mainstream political atmosphere. “I think now it’s quite clear that this is the PayPal Mafia’s moment. These particular figures have had an extremely significant influence on US government policy since January, including the extreme distribution of AI throughout the US government,” [investigative journalist Whitney] Webb explains. It’s clear that the architects of mass surveillance and the military industrial complex are beginning to coalesce in unprecedented ways within the Trump administration and Webb emphasizes that now is the time to pay attention and push back against these new forces. If they have their way, all commercial technology will be completely folded into the national security state — acting blatantly as the new infrastructure for techno-authoritarian rule. The underlying idea behind this new system is “pre-crime,” or the use of mass surveillance to designate people criminals before they’ve committed any crime. Webb warns that the Trump administration and its benefactors will demonize segments of the population to turn civilians against each other, all in pursuit of building out this elaborate system of control right under our noses.
Note: Read about Peter Thiel's involvement in the military origins of Facebook. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
“Ice is just around the corner,” my friend said, looking up from his phone. A day earlier, I had met with foreign correspondents at the United Nations to explain the AI surveillance architecture that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is using across the United States. The law enforcement agency uses targeting technologies which one of my past employers, Palantir Technologies, has both pioneered and proliferated. Technology like Palantir’s plays a major role in world events, from wars in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine to the detainment of immigrants and dissident students in the United States. Known as intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar) systems, these tools, built by several companies, allow users to track, detain and, in the context of war, kill people at scale with the help of AI. They deliver targets to operators by combining immense amounts of publicly and privately sourced data to detect patterns, and are particularly helpful in projects of mass surveillance, forced migration and urban warfare. Also known as “AI kill chains”, they pull us all into a web of invisible tracking mechanisms that we are just beginning to comprehend, yet are starting to experience viscerally in the US as Ice wields these systems near our homes, churches, parks and schools. The dragnets powered by Istar technology trap more than migrants and combatants ... in their wake. They appear to violate first and fourth amendment rights.
Note: Read how Palantir helped the NSA and its allies spy on the entire planet. Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and Big Tech.
Nearly the entire population of El Guayabo, approximately 400 to 500 dirt-poor lime pickers living on communal land in the west Mexican state of Michoacán, fled hastily in mid-July to escape combat between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, and the Caballeros Templarios. Every house were shattered by gunfire, roofs were blown open by bombs dropped from internet-bought drones, and everyone walked nervously, scanning the ground for landmines. Scattered everywhere were thousands of dull bronze shell-casings: .50 caliber rounds for sniper rifles and machine guns, 5.56 rounds for AR-15s and similar rifles, and 7.62×39 shells used for AK-47-style rifles. Putting a stop “to every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States,” as President Donald Trump put it to the United Nations last week, has become his self-proclaimed mission. If the U.S. military does confront the cartels in Mexico, it will find itself facing battle with its own weapons. An investigation by The Intercept traced the bullets that littered the ground in El Guayabo to at least two U.S. firearms manufacturers, one of which operates a massive factory owned by the U.S. military. Experts estimate that around 200,000 military-grade assault weapons and machine guns are trafficked every year from U.S. gunshops to Mexican criminal groups, moving south across the border. Between 2009 and 2011 ... ATF agents in Arizona allowed cartel straw buyers to purchase nearly 2,000 assault weapons.
Note: The US is effectively providing the means for the cartels to wage their dirty war. Read more about how the US arms Mexican drug cartels. Also, don't miss our in-depth investigation into the dark truths behind the War on Drugs including the long history of the US government arming and financing drug cartels for years. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on the War on Drugs.
In response to conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s murder, both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have suggested the White House will target left-wing groups and their donors. Fear of political retribution is not the only reason U.S. think tanks may be reluctant to share financial information. Even before these new threats against left-leaning groups, a Quincy Institute report found that over a third of the major foreign policy think tanks do not disclose any donor information, oftentimes because of their heavy reliance on special interests. The top 50 American think tanks received at least $110 million from foreign governments and $35 million from defense contractors in the past 5 years alone. Despite their positioning as objective and independent institutions, reliance on special interests can lead to self-censorship and perspective filtering. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would be canceling 83% of USAID’s programs. The decision impacted think tanks all around the world. The Trump administration also cut funding for the Wilson Center and U.S. Institute for Peace, two congressionally-established think tanks. Many think tanks will no doubt look to other sources to fill the gaps in U.S. funding, particularly private companies and foreign governments willing to dole out millions of dollars with the intent to influence think tank research. Those sources will likely come with strings attached.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world.
It was early 2012 when doctors found a tumor in Kim Franzi’s brain. Franzi underwent a risky two-day brain surgery to remove the mass, which doctors warned could leave her paralyzed or prove fatal. The operation was successful, but more than 13 years later, she still suffers from side effects, including issues with her reflexes, teeth, hearing, and vision. Before discovering the tumor, Franzi used the birth control shot Depo-Provera for more than 15 years. The shot has been used by roughly one in four sexually active women in the United States, bringing in hundreds of millions in profits annually for the pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, which manufactures and distributes the drug. But according to more than 1,200 lawsuits, Pfizer has failed to properly warn the public about long-established links between Depo-Provera and meningiomas. That includes a lawsuit submitted on Franzi’s behalf, plus more than 9,500 cases that have yet to be filed. In 2024, a large study of more than 18,000 cases of women undergoing surgery for meningiomas found that “prolonged use of [Depo-Provera] was found to increase the risk of intracranial meningioma.” Specifically, the scientists found that use of Depo-Provera was associated with a more than five-fold heightened risk of developing a meningioma that required surgery, and that risk increased further if patients used Depo-Provera for more than a year. Drug labels for Depo-Provera in the European Union, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada ... warn about these brain tumors.
Note: Read the full article to learn about how Pfizer omitted six studies that found significant links between patients taking the birth control shot and brain tumors. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption.
Mark Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014. It is set to include a shelter, complete with its own energy and food supplies, though the carpenters and electricians working on the site were banned from talking about it. Asked last year if he was creating a doomsday bunker, the Facebook founder gave a flat "no". The underground space spanning some 5,000 square feet is, he explained, "just like a little shelter, it's like a basement". Other tech leaders ... appear to have been busy buying up chunks of land with underground spaces, ripe for conversion into multi-million pound luxury bunkers. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has talked about "apocalypse insurance". So, could they really be preparing for war, the effects of climate change, or some other catastrophic event the rest of us have yet to know about? The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has only added to that list of potential existential woes. Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and a co-founder of Open AI, is reported to be one of them. Mr Sutskever was becoming increasingly convinced that computer scientists were on the brink of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). In a meeting, Mr Sutskever suggested to colleagues that they should dig an underground shelter for the company's top scientists before such a powerful technology was released on the world.
Note: Read how some doomsday preppers are rejecting isolating bunkers in favor of community building and mutual aid. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
There are 34 ingredients in M&Ms, and, according to Mars, the company that produces the candy, at least 30 countries – from Ivory Coast to New Zealand – are involved in supplying them. Each has its own supply chain that transforms the raw materials into ingredients – cocoa into cocoa liquor, cane into sugar, petroleum into blue food dye. The environmental impact of ultra-processed foods – like M&Ms – is less clear and is only now starting to come into focus. One reason they have been so difficult to assess is the very nature of UPFs: these industrially made foods include a huge number of ingredients and processes to put them together, making it nearly impossible to track. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of global deforestation, which has been responsible for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, definitionally, UPFs consist of many ingredients and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren’t just mixed together like one would do to make a stew at home. Instead, these ingredients are chemically modified, some parts stripped away, and flavors, dyes or textures added in – and it’s unclear what the cost of these processes are because so many suppliers and components are involved. Another reason is that all UPFs (again, definitionally) are the creations of food companies that have little incentive to disclose their environmental footprint.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and climate change.
In July, US group Delta Air Lines revealed that approximately 3 percent of its domestic fare pricing is determined using artificial intelligence (AI) – although it has not elaborated on how this happens. The company said it aims to increase this figure to 20 percent by the end of this year. According to former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan ... some companies are able to use your personal data to predict what they know as your “pain point” – the maximum amount you’re willing to spend. In January, the US’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which regulates fair competition, reported on a surveillance pricing study it carried out in July 2024. It found that companies can collect data directly through account registrations, email sign-ups and online purchases in order to do this. Additionally, web pixels installed by intermediaries track digital signals including your IP address, device type, browser information, language preferences and “granular” website interactions such as mouse movements, scrolling patterns and video viewing behaviour. This is known as “surveillance pricing”. The FTC Surveillance Pricing report lists several ways in which consumers can protect their data. These include using private browsers to do your online shopping, opting out of consumer tracking where possible, clearing the cookies in your history or using virtual private networks (VPNs) to shield your data from being collected.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Emergency rooms, dentist offices, and nursing homes managed by the private equity industry consistently deliver worse health outcomes than other such medical institutions. The difference can mean life or death for patients. A new Harvard Medical School study of more than one million Medicare ER visits found that patient death rates are 13 percent higher in private equity–owned ERs than their counterparts, likely thanks to staffing and salary cuts. On average, private equity–owned hospitals reduce hospital staffing by more than 11 percent and pay ER staffers 18 percent less than non-private equity hospitals. Private equity–backed dental groups have been found to perform medically unnecessary and painful procedures. One firm allegedly extracted healthy teeth from patients to charge them for expensive dental implants, while another performed root canals on the baby teeth of children as young as three. A study of more than 662,000 Medicare hospitalizations in private equity–owned facilities saw 25 percent more hospital-acquired complications, including falls and surgical site infections, compared to other hospitals. Medicare patients in private equity–backed nursing homes suffered an 11 percent higher short-term mortality rate than those in non-private equity–backed facilities between 2004 and 2019, resulting in 22,500 additional deaths. Nursing homes linked to private equity tend to underperform in terms of patient mobility and reported pain levels.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and financial system corruption.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s making animal welfare a component of his Make America Healthy Again mission. The health secretary has asked his agencies to refine high-tech methods of testing chemicals and drugs that don’t involve killing animals. He thinks phasing out animal testing and using the new methods will help figure out what’s causing chronic disease. Last week, the National Institutes of Health announced it would spend $87 million on a new center researching alternatives to animal testing and permit agency-supported researchers to use grant funding to find homes for retired lab animals. Kennedy signed off because he thinks the new methods will enable scientists to more quickly and inexpensively draw conclusions about how chemicals and drugs work. He expects that’ll confirm his belief that chemicals in the environment and in food are making Americans sick and also speed cures for chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The new center will attempt to develop a standardized alternative to animal testing that relies on tiny, lab-grown 3D tissue models, enlisting help from across the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates pharmaceuticals. Harnessing science and technology to protect animals isn’t an obvious Trump agenda item. But the president has a pattern of taking ideas from the left and repackaging them for his base, to great success.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma corruption.
Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle ... said AI will usher in a new era of surveillance that he gleefully said will ensure "citizens will be on their best behavior." Ellison made the comments as he spoke to investors earlier this week during an Oracle financial analysts meeting, where he shared his thoughts on the future of AI-powered surveillance tools. Ellison said AI would be used in the future to constantly watch and analyze vast surveillance systems, like security cameras, police body cameras, doorbell cameras, and vehicle dashboard cameras. "We're going to have supervision," Ellison said. "Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on." Ellison also expects AI drones to replace police cars in high-speed chases. "You just have a drone follow the car," Ellison said. "It's very simple in the age of autonomous drones." Ellison's company, Oracle, like almost every company these days, is aggressively pursuing opportunities in the AI industry. It already has several projects in the works, including one in partnership with Elon Musk's SpaceX. Ellison is the world's sixth-richest man with a net worth of $157 billion.
Note: As journalist Kenan Malik put it, "The problem we face is not that machines may one day exercise power over humans. It is rather that we already live in societies in which power is exercised by a few to the detriment of the majority, and that technology provides a means of consolidating that power." Read about the shadowy companies tracking and trading your personal data, which isn't just used to sell products. It's often accessed by governments, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies, often without warrants or oversight. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
In an exchange this week on “All-In Podcast,” Alex Karp was on the defensive. The Palantir CEO used the appearance to downplay and deny the notion that his company would engage in rights-violating in surveillance work. “We are the single worst technology to use to abuse civil liberties, which is by the way the reason why we could never get the NSA or the FBI to actually buy our product,” Karp said. What he didn’t mention was the fact that a tranche of classified documents revealed by [whistleblower and former NSA contractor] Edward Snowden and The Intercept in 2017 showed how Palantir software helped the National Security Agency and its allies spy on the entire planet. Palantir software was used in conjunction with a signals intelligence tool codenamed XKEYSCORE, one of the most explosive revelations from the NSA whistleblower’s 2013 disclosures. XKEYSCORE provided the NSA and its foreign partners with a means of easily searching through immense troves of data and metadata covertly siphoned across the entire global internet, from emails and Facebook messages to webcam footage and web browsing. A 2008 NSA presentation describes how XKEYSCORE could be used to detect “Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in,” “Someone who is using encryption,” or “Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff.” In May, the New York Times reported Palantir would play a central role in a White House plan to boost data sharing between federal agencies, “raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.”
Note: Read about Palantir's revolving door with the US government. As former NSA intelligence official and whistleblower William Binney articulated, "The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book “Careless People,” told U.S. senators ... that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. In response to a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Wynn-Williams admitted that Meta (which was then known as Facebook) had targeted 13- to 17-year-olds with ads when they were feeling down or depressed. “It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and [Meta] would take that information and share it with advertisers,” Wynn-Williams told the senators on the subcommittee for crime and terrorism. “Advertisers understand that when people don’t feel good about themselves, it’s often a good time to pitch a product — people are more likely to buy something.” She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence. If Meta was willing to target teens based on their emotional states, it stands to reason they’d do the same to adults. One document displayed during the hearing showed an example of just that.
Note: Facebook hid its own internal research for years showing that Instagram worsened body image issues, revealing that 13% of British teenage girls reported more frequent suicidal thoughts after using the app. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
The insecticide chlorpyrifos is a powerful tool for controlling various pests, making it one of the most widely used pesticides during the latter half of the 20th century. Like many pesticides, however, chlorpyrifos lacks precision. In addition to harming non-target insects like bees, it has also been linked to health risks for much larger animals – including us. Now, a new US study suggests those risks may begin before birth. Humans exposed to chlorpyrifos prenatally are more likely to exhibit structural brain abnormalities and reduced motor functions in childhood and adolescence. Progressively higher prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos was associated with incrementally greater deviations in brain structure, function, and metabolism in children and teens, the researchers found, along with poorer measures of motor speed and motor programming. This supports previous research linking chlorpyrifos with impaired cognitive function and brain development, but these findings are the first evidence of widespread and long-lasting molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain. Subjects in this urban cohort were likely exposed to chlorpyrifos at home, since many were born before or shortly after the US Environmental Protection Agency banned residential use of chlorpyrifos in 2001. The pesticide is still used in agriculture around the world. "Widespread exposures ... continue to place farm workers, pregnant women, and unborn children in harm's way," says senior author Virginia Rauh.
Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years.
There has been a surge of concern and interest in the threat of “surveillance pricing,” in which companies leverage the enormous amount of detailed data they increasingly hold on their customers to set individualized prices for each of them — likely in ways that benefit the companies and hurt their customers. The central battle in such efforts will be around identity: do the companies whose prices you are checking or negotiating know who you are? Can you stop them from knowing who you are? Unfortunately, one day not too far in the future, you may lose the ability to do so. Many states around the country are creating digital versions of their state driver’s licenses. Digital versions of IDs allow people to be tracked in ways that are not possible or practical with physical IDs — especially since they are being designed to work ... online. It will be much easier for companies to request — and eventually demand — that people share their IDs in order to engage in all manner of transactions. It will make it easier for companies to collect data about us, merge it with other data, and analyze it, all with high confidence that it pertains to the same person — and then recognize us ... and execute their price-maximizing strategy against us. Not only would digital IDs prevent people from escaping surveillance pricing, but surveillance pricing would simultaneously incentivize companies to force the presentation of digital IDs by people who want to shop.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
Kenya’s Gazette Supplement 181 of 2024 ... carrying the name of Kenya’s minister of foreign affairs, announced that the Kenyan government had granted full diplomatic immunity to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. An organization must affirmatively ask Kenya’s highest leadership for such privileges, which they can only grant through a vote of the full cabinet and with the support of the country’s president. The immunity announcement ... did not say who at the foundation was being immunized or why. The Gates Foundation has assets in excess of $75 billion and has given out $91 billion in grants this century, making it the richest and most generous American charity in history. Since 2003, Gates has given 502 grants to organizations in Kenya, totaling over $1.9 billion. Gates has donated $870 million to AGRA, a Nairobi-based group attempting to introduce genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, and large-scale agriculture throughout Africa. In Kenya it is possible to see the results of his now-accelerating project, which comprises three distinct efforts: the introduction of a new vaccine against malaria, a far-reaching agricultural reform program, and a divisive campaign to vaccinate cattle. Gates has no democratic accountability to anyone in the U.S., Kenya, or any other country. The Gates Foundation ... exists outside of nations and constitutions and laws, and its money is so widely distributed and so embedded in so many different private and public entities that it practically disappears into the larger architecture of the global system. One thing that unites NPR, the Guardian, and the Chinese government is that they are, in some form or another, Gates-funded institutions.
Note: Gates has given over $250 million to major outlets including BBC, Guardian, NPR, and Al Jazeera. Bill Gates’ hundreds of millions to WHO now give him outsized influence to prioritize corporate interests under the guise of public health philanthropy, which have led to mass suicides in India and worsening environmental degradation and poverty in Africa.
When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission’s newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children. [The Commission] barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes—a key issue for the MAHA movement—are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs. The Commission’s strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly “precision agriculture”—the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs—which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
Pesticides once appeared to be a clear target for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s desire to “make America healthy again.” Before becoming the health secretary, he described Monsanto, the maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, as “enemy of every admirable American value,” and vowed to “ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries.” Since he came to power, many of Kennedy’s fans have waited eagerly for him to do just that. Kennedy has yet to satisfy them: In the latest MAHA action plan on children’s health, released last week, pesticides appear only briefly on a laundry list of vague ideas. The plan says that the government should fund research on how farmers could use less of them, and that the government "will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence” in the EPA’s existing pesticide-review process, which it called “robust.” Several studies have found neurological impacts associated with pesticides. UC Davis’s MIND Institute put out a study in 2014 that found autism risk was much higher among children whose mothers had lived near agricultural-pesticide areas while pregnant. A 2017 paper found that zip codes that conducted aerial spraying for mosquitoes—a pesticide—had comparatively higher rates of autism than zip codes that didn’t. Others have linked pesticides to a range of behavioral and cognitive impairment in children.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office. [The meetings] were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission. From February to mid-May, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leaders accepted meetings with representatives from at least 50 industry associations and companies, including agricultural and chemical giants such as Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Dow and the agrichemical lobbying group CropLife America, as well as the American Soybean Association, the National Cotton Council and others. Critics of the agrichemical industry said corporate influence in regulatory matters was underscored earlier this month when the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission released its long-anticipated report on how to address chronic disease and clean up the food supply. The final version was significantly more friendly to the agricultural industry than a May MAHA report that cited the health risks posed by the widely used farm chemicals glyphosate and atrazine. The September report took aim at synthetic dyes and junk food, among other things, but deleted references to glyphosate and atrazine and made no mention of pesticide exposure routes or risks.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
Two lawsuits aim to stop US federal regulators and industry from “illegally” hiding basic information about toxic chemicals used in consumer products. Companies often claim that toxic chemicals’ health and safety data, and even their names, are “confidential business information” (CBI) because making the data public could damage their bottom line. The US Environmental Protection Agency frequently allows industry to use the tactic, which makes it virtually impossible for public health researchers to quickly learn about dangerous chemicals. It also bars most EPA staff and state regulators from accessing the information and criminal charges could be brought against those who do. That leaves regulators attempting to protect the public without essential information for some chemicals and in effect creates a “shadow regulatory government” in the EPA, said Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA attorney who is now director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a plaintiff in one of the suits. The ... suit alleges the EPA has narrowed Congress’s definitions of what should be made public. The EPA is also withholding chemical safety test results that show health risks to the public or environment. Separately, Peer is suing the EPA for hiding health and safety data for chemicals made by Inhance Technologies, which produces plastic containers found to leach dangerous levels of PFOA, a highly toxic compound, into the containers’ contents.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
