A Connecticut state senator recently raised concerns about the regime’s plan to unleash more pesticides tainted with potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances on our food supply. All of southern New England’s non-MAGA politicians should be doing the same.

Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, is a practicing pulmonologist who co-chairs the Connecticut Legislature’s Public Health Committee. He said the government’s move could undercut Connecticut’s multi-year effort to remove PFAS from drinking water, consumer products, and farmland.

“Why is the federal government pushing for unsafe materials that were banned in states like our own and that can harm public health to be used on the crops we eat?” he sensibly asked during a committee hearing last month. “Lobbyists for pesticide companies are now in leadership positions at the EPA.”

The one-word answer is greed; corruption would also work.

The regime has authorized the use of PFAS pesticides cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram on broccoli, potatoes, and romaine lettuce. Those two forever chemical poisons join others, including epyrifenacil, which can break down into a smaller forever chemical called trifluoroacetic acid, to be sprayed on corn, soybeans, and wheat.

An estimated 2.5 million pounds of PFAS-tainted pesticides are sprayed on California cropland annually, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis of state data published late last year. The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group found that between 2018 and 2023 nearly 15 million pounds of PFAS pesticides, from 52 fluorinated ingredients, were sprayed across California on crops such as almonds, pistachios, grapes, and tomatoes.

Nationwide, an estimated 22 million to 35 million pounds of PFAS pesticides are used annually, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

While our food bathes in ever more toxic substances, the regime forces a link between Tylenol and autism, rails against vaccines without providing a shred of scientific evidence, and loosens pollution regulations. The regime’s head of public health is an addled conspiracy theorist born into privilege with no medical training.

Those with degrees in science and health, however, have been raising the alarm over the increasing use of PFAS — a class of some 16,000 compounds typically used to make products that resist water, stains, and heat — in pesticides, but the Environmental Protection Agency continues to mindlessly expand their use because the industry bought access.

The public health community is concerned about the rising levels of PFAS in the air, human blood, and drinking water.

In 2023, DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva agreed to a $1.2 billion settlement with public water systems nationwide for PFAS contamination. Two years later, the same three corporations agreed to pay $875 million to the state of New Jersey to settle environmental claims, including pollution linked to forever chemicals.

PFAS are added to a host of pesticides, including those used on crops and those used to kill mosquitoes, weeds, and fleas on pets. These human-made compounds are likely used as surfactants and to help the poisons disperse and be absorbed.

Forever chemicals don’t naturally break down, as it can take thousands of years for some of these compounds to fully degrade in the environment. PFAS contain at least one fully fluorinated carbon atom. This carbon-fluorine bond, the strongest chemical bond known, is exceptionally rare in nature, according to the Massachusetts Medical Society, and nothing in nature can break it down.

Thus, these chemicals accumulate in the environment, in wildlife, and in our bodies. They have been linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, high cholesterol, and birth defects.

To make matters worse, manufacturers aren’t required to disclose when PFAS are used as an inert ingredient. Among the forever chemicals to be used in pesticides have been PFOA and PFOS, two of the most toxic PFAS compounds. The EPA has found virtually no level of exposure to these two chemicals in drinking water safe.

Despite an increasing amount of research documenting the adverse impacts of forever chemicals, the regime isn’t satisfied with merely soaking our food in PFAS. MAGA is prioritizing a new policy that would fast-track the approval of new chemicals, including new types of PFAS, with limited oversight to be used in energy-sucking data centers.

Related note: The regime is backing Monsanto in its effort to get the Supreme Court to shield it from liability over cancer claims related to its Roundup weedkiller. The MAGA brief supports Monsanto’s effort to overturn a lower court’s ruling that the corporation has to pay damages for failing to warn consumers about its product’s health impacts. The seminal paper that was used for 25 years to justify the use of glyphosate as safe was recently retracted.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.