Melissa
Kaplan's
Herp Care Collection
Last updated
January 1, 2014
Trade Secrets: A Bill Moyer's Report
©2001 Melissa Kaplan
Surveys of public opinion show that the majority of Americans believe that the government is making sure that they are protected against harmful chemicals. Is their understanding justified?
Trade Secrets is an exposition the chemical industry's actions, similar to those of the tobacco industry's hiding the truth about their product, journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones report on how the chemical revolution of the past 50 years has produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on the public's health and safety.
The report is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians, scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the human body.
If you missed this two hour program, you can buy the video of it from PBS, or you can read the full transcript of it online.
On March 22, Moyers was the guest speaker at the National Press Club in Washington. The excerpt of that part of his talk relating to Trade Secrets can be read online as well.
The American Chemistry Council doesn't agree with Moyers. According to their VP, Terry Yosie, who was part of the round table discussion during the last half hour of Trade Secrets, we the people (and the government) should forgive and forget all the harm chemicals do - and the fact of the chemical companies' coverups and ongoing lack of adequate research - because chemicals provide benefits to society. The ACC (and presumably the other chemical trade groups) position appears to be that as their products make life better and easier for us, we are to be grateful for that, and ignore the fact that slow and painful disease and death may come 10+ years after regular exposure rather within a short time of exposure.
Websites referenced by the roundtable participants:
Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) includes online access to some 40,000 documents involved in the research of this program.
American Chemical Council (www.abouttradesecrets.com) selectively picks at a couple of points and continues the whitewashing of the chemical industry, proof positive of Upton Sinclair's assertion that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Philip Landrigan, MD, Chairman, Preventive Medicine, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Center for Children's Health and the Environment (www.childenvironment.org)
Since everyone doesn't
get sick, maybe no one is getting sick...
PBS wrote: "Surveys of public opinion show that the majority of Americans
believe that the government is making sure that they are protected against
harmful chemicals. Is their understanding justified? Journalist Bill Moyers
and producer Sherry Jones report on how the chemical revolution of the
past 50 years has produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not
been tested for their effect on the public's health and safety. The report
is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians,
scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the
human body." Runtime: 1:56:46
Why do some people become ill from exposures deemed "safe" while others don't? Because, as much as the feds would like to make it seem so, people are highly individual in their genetic and biochemical make-up, even "identical twins." For more information, check out Roger William Ph.D.'s book, Biochemical Individuality.
Health can be snatched away at the rate of parts per billion. - Nicholas Ashford and Claudia Miller, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes.
Watch for Moyers' Kids & Chemicals, slated to air in 2002. Teachers and homeschoolers, see the Kids & Chemicals curriculum.
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