California warns about illegal Chinese pesticides—while spraying CCP-linked feminizer
Chinese drug cartels are smuggling toxic illegal pesticides into northern California and other parts of the country to protect their marijuana crops, state authorities warn.
“These criminal organizations use such a deadly, potent, toxic chemical because it absolutely keeps everything off their cash crop,” Lt. John Nores Jr. of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told NewsNation last week.
Nores said the toxic pesticides are causing damage to the environment that may take decades to reverse. Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall added that “a lot of the chemicals that are being used are hazardous to humans.”
Chinese drug gangs are also smuggling the pesticides into other states where they grow large marijuana crops, like New Mexico, Maine, and Oklahoma.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly investigating the matter.
Atrazine
Meanwhile, the EPA permits some 80 million pounds of atrazine—a toxic, feminizing pesticide with ties to the Chinese Communist Party—to be sprayed across the United States every year. In California alone, about 20,000 pounds are applied annually.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley found that three-quarters of male frogs exposed to atrazine produced less sperm and less testosterone. Not only did the frogs experience lower fertility, many sought to mate with males instead of females. Ten percent of the frogs exposed to atrazine became females, producing viable eggs.
“Atrazine-exposed males were both demasculinized (chemically castrated) and completely feminized as adults,” wrote the researchers. Tyrone Hayes, PhD, the study’s lead author, said: “When we grow these guys up, depending on the family, we will get anywhere from 10 to 50 percent females. In a population, the genetically male females can decrease or wipe out a population just because they skew sex ratios so badly.”
Other studies found similar results in fish and reptiles, leading the Berkeley researchers to conclude that the effects of atrazine are the same across vertebrates.
When Hayes published his findings, he was targeted by Syngenta, the largest atrazine manufacturer in the US. Syngenta is a large agrichemical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and owned by ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned company. Syngenta is chaired by Li Fanrong, a veteran in the Chinese energy industry who also sits on the board of Sinochem Holdings, designated by the Trump administration as owned by the People’s Liberation Army, the armed wing of the CCP. Other executive and supervisory board members also have strong ties to the CCP such as Jiao Jian, the director and president of Sinochem Holdings and Yang Lin, former CFO and current deputy CFO at Sinochem Holdings.
In 2004, Europe banned atrazine over environmental concerns from water contamination. The European Union continues to manufacture and export atrazine to several countries including Ukraine, Sudan, and Pakistan, according to Greenpeace.
The EPA acknowledges that atrazine poses developmental and reproductive risks to animals and humans, especially children, who spend more time on the ground and frequently place their hands in their mouths. In France, babies whose mothers were exposed to atrazine during pregnancy developed slower than normal. In Texas, babies born to mothers in counties with higher atrazine use were more likely to have birth defects.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also warns of atrazine’s risks to humans, especially in reproductivity. While the agency acknowledges that the toxin’s effects on animals and humans may not be the same, it warns that it can still have harmful effects on the human reproductive system.
“Some of the specific effects observed in animals are not likely to occur in humans because of biological differences between humans and these types of animals. However, atrazine may affect the reproductive system in humans by a different mechanism,” explains a CDC fact sheet.
The EPA's repeated claims that atrazine levels are below the toxic threshold are largely based on conclusions by its scientific advisory panel, which comprises six academics. The SAP was recently chaired by Robert Chapin, PhD, a former senior research fellow at Pfizer Global Research and Development.
In 2006, the NRDC sued the EPA after the agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The thousands of documents that were subsequently released showed that the EPA had been ignoring its own transparency regulations regarding atrazine and its manufacturer Syngenta.
This was most evident in 2003, when the EPA approved Syngenta’s re-registration request for atrazine. The agency based its approval of atrazine on the recommendations of two advisory committees, both of which contained only EPA and Syngenta representatives. There were no representatives from the public.
That year, the EPA held at least 50 private meetings with Syngenta that were also hidden from the public eye.
Following Hayes' findings on atrazine's effect on frogs, Syngenta decided to attack the scientist. Not only did the corporation hire academics to try to discredit Hayes, but documents show that then-Syngenta Communications Manager Sherry Ford had plans to investigate Hayes' wife and paint him as “paranoid schizo and narcissistic”. Another proposal involved purchasing Hayes' name as a search word online.
When Hayes would give lectures or perform speaking engagements, Syngenta operatives would follow him and ask pointed questions to mock him. A Syngenta spokeswoman confirmed that “[a] Syngenta representative does try to attend events where Dr. Hayes is speaking. It’s in our best interest, and farmers’, that we have the opportunity to counter his outrageous accusations.”
According to reports, Syngenta also purchased Google ads discrediting Hayes which would appear when his name was searched.
In 2004, Europe banned atrazine over environmental concerns from water contamination. The European Union continues to manufacture and export atrazine to several countries including Ukraine, Sudan, and Pakistan, according to Greenpeace.
