After watching the video that Trish Nelson posted on here Thursday morning concerning Iowa’s heavily polluted waterways, I also ran into some stories concerning Trump administration’s recent efforts to roll back rules that concern pollution or are adjacent to pollution in some way.
What started me on this track was the story that popped up Thursday morning that the the administration through Secretary of Transportation Duffy would be rolling back mileage standards for fleets from 50.4 MPG (miles per gallon) to 34.5 MPG. If my math is correct that is about a 35% lessening. Here is America’s #1 liar giving his slanted view: (1.5 minutes)
If a fleet of vehicles is burning fuel 35% less efficiently where does that fuel that is burned less efficiently end up? I am not a mechanic, but my understanding is that inefficiently burned fuel ends up either as pollutants in the air or somehow leeches out of the cars system as a solid or liquid waste. Either way it is out there in the environment for us or other animal life to inhale or take into our bodies.
When I saw this story, my mind immediately leapt a couple of summers back to a cross country classic car caravan that happened to go right in front of our house as part of its journey across the US. We had a ringside seat! There were cars from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s! Chevys, Dodges, even American Motors. We thought we were so lucky to have such a parade go right by our house!
But we forgot about the big drawback to those old cars – the pollution. We had watched for about half an hour from our porch when we started getting sick. We got sick in a hurry. We realized that it was the gas fumes from those old polluters that was choking us and making us dizzy. We got in our car and drove about thirty miles in the other direction to get some cleaner air. We stayed away for about 4 hours. When we got back, the air still had a stink, but was tolerable.
Now, while a lowering of the mileage standards may not have that effect, we do know that any retrenchment in pollution standards will have negative effects. When you are in a state like Iowa, couple more car pollution with the highly publicized water pollution that Trish’s post dealt with on Thursday and we are mixing a toxic brew that probably ups the chances of contracting cancer in a state where cancer is a top killer.
Then if we add farm chemicals to the mix the toxic brew becomes a super toxic brew that will come get you. You do not have to take one step out of your way, it will seek you out. So here in Iowa we start with a base level of waterways polluted by farm nutrient run off, mix in a pollutants in the air that were slowly coming down thanks to fuel standards and then to tie it all together, let’s add in more farm chemicals. This time let’s add in pesticides.
As it sometimes seems to happen, stories that have some commonality will seem to pop up in a timely manner. In this case it was a story that the Trump Administration will be doing what it can to help Bayer company face limited liability for damages alleged in lawsuits over it Roundup brand of glyphosate weed killers.
You may recall last winter and spring that Iowa’s legislature wrestled with limiting liability for Bayer’s Roundup. A bill to limit liability passed the Iowa senate before it stalled in the House. I have no doubt that some form of this bill will be on the Republican agenda when they meet again in January. Farmers are still using glyphosate in the meantime.
“This is like a win-win, where we both win or where we both lose, which is why I’m hopeful that we can convince the decision-makers in the state to stand by us and ultimately to stand by their rural communities,” Matthias Berninger, Bayer senior vice president for public affairs and science and sustainability, told the Des Moines Register in an April 30 interview.
The high-profile bill, Senate File 394, would protect pesticide and herbicide manufacturers from claims their products’ labels didn’t disclose potential health risks, like cancer, as long as their labeling follows U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules.
Opponents of the legislation, who’ve rallied at the Capitol against it, say the bill prioritizes corporate profits over the lives and health of Iowans. Iowa has the second-highest rate of new cancers in the country.
Investors have been clear that they want a solution soon, Berninger said, which is why Bayer claims it won’t be able to sell glyphosate in the U.S. without the guardrails, like the Iowa bill, because of the risk of losing billions of dollars more from litigation. The company faces 67,000 pending cases.
The company has faced thousands of lawsuits linking cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer to Roundup, paying more than $10 billion in 2020 to settle suits of more than 95,000 cases related to claims that the product’s labels did not warn of potential cancer.
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