People have been saying for a while now that the Trump administration was making them sick—and here’s a literal example taken from real life. On May 5 in California, more than 50 farmworkers near Bakersfield became ill after they were exposed to an insecticide (Vulcan) on a farm as they were harvesting cabbage. Under the Obama administration, the active ingredient in Vulcan, chlorpyrifos, was slated to be banned and was recommended to be taken off the market by the Environmental Protection Agency. Chlorpyrifos can be pretty dangerous and even deadly when humans come into contact with it in high doses. So you’d think the Trump administration would also want to make sure that folks don’t risk contamination unnecessarily, right? Think again.
Approximately 12 people with symptoms of vomiting and nausea were decontaminated, but 11 of those 12 refused any further treatment, according to an incident log on the Kern County Fire Department webpage. One person was taken to the hospital while more than half of the farmworkers left before medical personnel arrived on scene. The Kern County Fire Department, Kern County Environmental Health and Hazmat responded to the area for a mass decontamination. […]
Chlorpyrifos — a widely-used organophosphate insecticide in use for over 50 years — is used on a variety of crops like oranges, apples, cherries, grapes, and broccoli. It can cause neurotoxic symptoms in humans like nausea, dizziness, and confusion. When exposed to high dosages, humans can suffer from respiratory paralysis or death. A study by researchers at Columbia University found that exposure was linked to brain function and lower IQ among children. For years, environmental groups have pressured the EPA to look into the correlation between pesticide usage and problems that could affect workers on an organic and cellular level.
You see it turns out that Dow Chemical, the very manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, was a donor to Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony (yeah, the very one that they raised millions for that no one went to). The corporation donated $1 million. And after that, Trump’s EPA rejected the ban on chlorpyrifos. Which would sound like a coincidence—except we know it’s not. It sounds a lot like a bribe, from a corrupt business to a corrupt administration.
Despite the scientific evidence, new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the ban on chlorpyrifos on the grounds that the agency needs to “provide regulatory certainty” for the thousands of U.S. farms that rely on chlorpyrifos. Dow Chemical donated $1 million to fund President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. In a letter to the Trump administration sent in April, Dow Chemical asked the administration to “set aside” and ignore research showing that the pesticide could be harmful to endangered species.
And there you have it. The administration traded workers’ health, lives, and well-being for a little bit of cash. There is literally nothing they won’t do to make a buck—even especially when it means making hard-working people sick in the process.