[2018] Elsevier reports on supression of research that shows adverse effects of Atrazine, a widely used pesticide.
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/rohrlab/data/2018%20Rohr%20Atrazine.pdf
Atrazine is what Alex Jones was referring to in his infamous "gay frogs" rant, when he said (screamed) "they are putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!". This article sums up nicely how research of Dr. Tyrone Hayes, who was among the first to study the effects of Atrazine on amphibic life, was systematically supressed by Syngenta, the manufacturer of Atrazine, and the EPA, and the smear campaign Syngenta launched against him.
EDIT: As advised by /u/yukichigai I am adding a personal estimate on how likely this is true, and some additional sources.
Syngenta's smear campaign and supression of research is well documented, in my opinion. Clare Howard was, as far as I know, the first to publish a well researches journalistic article on the topic on 100reporters in 2013. He was also the one who requested the internal documents from the 2012 court case against Syngenta. You can find a small part of it here, containing the revealing stuff: List of paid, "independant" researches, strategies to smear Hayes. I am still trying to find a complete archive of the some thousand pages of documents, as reported by Elsevier. But other trustworthy outlets like the New Yorker reported on them as well, Syngenta never disputed these, did not contest them in court, and last but not least they settled for 105 million. So for the part Syngenta played I'd give it at least 95% probability. For this to be wrong, the whole story about the court case would have to be faked, the documents would have to never have existed. Also, everyone who reported on the court case would have to be totally off.
What part the EPA played is less clean cut: Let's start with the redeeming stuff. In this video the youtuber Oki interviewed three researchers who were on the scientific advisory panel. They all appear to geniunly regret the EPAs decision at the time, and wonder why they went that way against their recommendations. Also, they were legally forced by the Data Quality Act to not accept most studies in their second risk assessment. And in their latest Refined Ecological Risk Assessment for Atrazine from 2016 they actually concluded:
Based on the results from hundreds of toxicity studies on the effects of atrazine on plants and animals, over 20 years of surface water monitoring data, and higher tier aquatic exposure models, this risk assessment concludes that aquatic plant communities are impacted in many areas where atrazine use is heaviest, and there is potential chronic risk to fish, amphibians, and aquatic invertebrates in these same locations. In the terrestrial environment, there are risk concerns for mammals, birds, reptiles, plants and plant communities across the country for many of the atrazine uses. EPA levels of concern for chronic risk are exceeded by as much as 22, 198, and 62 times for birds, mammals, and fish, respectively.
That's the good news. However, there are quite a few things pointing to some parts of the EPA conspiring with Syngenta. Firstly, why was the first risk assignment not already clearly concluding that Atrazine comes with a high risk? They did only include a small subset of the available research, a overhelming part of it showing adverse effects, yet the conclusion did not mirror that. Mother Jones reported:
Back in 2005, the Natural Resources Defense Council obtained documents revealing that agency officials met privately with Syngenta more than 40 times while evaluating atrazine’s toxicity. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported that fewer than 20 percent of the papers the EPA relied upon in its past decision-making were peer-reviewed, while at least half were conducted by scientists with a financial stake in the product.
In the Elsevier article it is said that in a meeting on the effects of atrazine on amphibians at the North American Societyfor Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry "much to the surprise of all, Hayes presented no data. Rather, he presented only emails ostensibly incriminating the EPA and Syngenta associates of colluding to ensure the re-registration of atrazine."
It is also questionable why the EPA, after Syngenta backed attorneys prevented much of the prior work from being included in their second risk assessment, made it Syngenta's responsibility to develop the Good Laboratory Practice Guidelines required by the Open Data Act, that finally lead to them falsly claiming Atrazine was virtually risk free.
So while the case with Syngenta itself is really well proven, the EPA involvement is not as black and white, but a lot is pointing towards them conspiring with Syngenta. I'd give this maybe 80-90% probability. It's still really hard to explain away the backroom meetings, accepting not peer-reviewed, Syngenta funded research, and allowing Syngenta to develop the protocol on how to test their own product, in any other way.
Last but not least also as requested by /u/yukichigai I am going to attatch some studies on effects of Atrazine on human health. Disclaimer: Those are really just some random studies I stumbled upon, I did not look into this extensively. Going to just copy and paste my comment:
You find quite a few studies regarding that topic. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives (referenced in the article I linked) found Atrazine to be a risk factor for reproductive cancers in humans similar to prostate cancer. Another study in the same magazine found evidence of associations with adverse birth outcomes following fetal growth restriction during the pregnancy. A study published in the journal Toxics concluded:
The effects of atrazine on the female mammalian HPG axis have shown numerous adverse impacts from in vitro, gestational, peripubertal, and adulthood exposures. These alterations ranged from delays in puberty, altered estrus cycles, atretic ovarian follicles, reduction in gonadotropins, and cellular and genetic alterations. These studies provide support of atrazine as an EDC and its ability to elicit reproductive dysfunction throughout multiple life stages. While questions still remain on human health relevancy of doses at which these adverse effects are observed, results from these studies begin to provide insight into the reproductive dysfunction observed in epidemiological studies.
A study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics showed "modest, but consistent, associations between medium-low and/or medium levels of estimated periconceptional maternal residential atrazine exposure and every male genital malformation category evaluated". Unfortunately I can't find a free copy of this study online.
In general, Atrazine is a endocrine disrupting chemical, and all research I know shows consistently that it in fact has severe adverse effects as expected from such chemicals. But those are really just a few studies I stumbled upon, you should probably investigate for yourself.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/actualconspiracies/comments/jjyv5v/2018_elsevier_reports_on_supression_of_research/
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