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For Immediate Release
December, 03 2015, 02:30pm EDT
Contact:
Paul Towers, 916-216-1082 or ptowers@panna.org
New Study on Child-Harming Pesticides Should Spur State, National Action
A new study released today found that children exposed to commonly used pesticides have significantly reduced lung function -- comparable to damage caused by exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke.
Researchers from UC Berkeley's CHAMACOS project in California's central coast region found measured lung function among 279 children, and found that higher levels of breakdown products from organophosphate pesticides in the children's bodies were linked to significantly lower exhalation rates -- about 8% less air.
WASHINGTON
A new study released today found that children exposed to commonly used pesticides have significantly reduced lung function -- comparable to damage caused by exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke.
Researchers from UC Berkeley's CHAMACOS project in California's central coast region found measured lung function among 279 children, and found that higher levels of breakdown products from organophosphate pesticides in the children's bodies were linked to significantly lower exhalation rates -- about 8% less air.
Responding to today's study, PAN policy director Kristin Schafer, and co-author of A Generation in Jeopardy: How pesticides are undermining our children's health and intelligence, released the following statement:
"For years, pediatricians have warned that children are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of agricultural pesticides. This latest study confirms -- yet again -- that these chemicals are harming children right now in communities across the country.
"It took a lawsuit to finally prompt EPA to take action on chlorpyrifos, one of the worst offenders -- and they're still not doing nearly enough. And after more than a decade, we're pressing the agency to implement a full and rapid ban of this dangerous pesticide, and protect children from exposure to similar pesticides as well.
"In California, we're urging state officials to support 'agricultural innovation zones' around schools in rural areas, to replace child-harming pesticides with safer, more sustainable farming. As this latest study shows, action to protect our children is long overdue."
PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five autonomous PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.
LATEST NEWS
DOJ Unit That Defends Trump Policies Sees Exodus of Lawyers
"No one wants to defend Trump's bullshit policies before the courts," said one critic of the president.
Jul 14, 2025
Reuters reported Monday that nearly two-thirds of attorneys in the section of the U.S. Department of Justice charged with defending President Donald Trump's policy have voluntarily left the unit or announced plans to resign since his November election.
The list of "69 of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch" who have ditched the unit or plan to leave was compiled by former DOJ attorneys. Reuters was able to confirm the departure of all but four names based on court records and LinkedIn accounts. The news agency also spoke with four former members of the unit and three others familiar with the resignations.
The sources—all granted anonymity by the news outlet—described the degree of turnover as highly unusual and said that some members of the unit "had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump's administration," Reuters detailed, summarizing their comments. They "cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable," along with fears that "they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court."
According to the news agency, worries about retaliation grew after DOJ leadership fired Erez Reuveni, a former supervisor in the Office of Immigration Litigation, another Civil Division unit, over the Kilmar Ábrego García case. Reuveni then filed a whistleblower complaint that has generated concern about Emil Bove, now nominated by Trump to serve as a federal appellate judge.
"Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system," one lawyer who left the unit during Trump's second term told Reuters. "How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?"
Mark Zaid, who has a long record of facing attorneys from the Federal Programs Branch in cases against the U.S. government, said on the social media platform Bluesky that they were "usually top-notch professional, nonpartisan lawyers. Shameful what has happened."
No one wants to defend Trump's bullshit policies before the courts. www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...
[image or embed]
— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Also sharing the report on Bluesky, Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts for Slate, wrote: "Really good piece—but the numbers don't include those who left shortly BEFORE Trump's reelection, when it seemed alarmingly possible, to ensure that they never had to defend lawless, fascist policies in court, even for a day. I understand that group is not small."
"Lawyers who have remained at Federal Programs to continue defending Trump's policies are a disgrace to the legal profession and will carry the immense shame of complicity with authoritarianism for the rest of their lives," he added.
Jonathan Cohn, political director at the group Progressive Mass, similarly said on social media that "the others would resign too if they had any professional or personal ethics."
DOJ lawyers have had to defend Trump's anti-immigrant agenda—from mass deportations that led to hundreds of men, including Ábrego García, being sent to a Salvadoran megaprison to Trump's attack on birthright citizenship, which recently led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges. They also have had to defend the administration's attempts to slash government jobs and spending, and the president's targeting of major law firms, which, so far, courts have shot down.
The DOJ told Reuters that the department "will continue to defend the president's agenda" and is hiring to maintain staffing levels from the Biden administration, while a White House spokesperson, Harrison Fields, lashed out at critics of Trump. He said that "any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the president's policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on."
Since Trump-appointed Pam Bondi became attorney general, she has faced widespread accusations of "serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice," as over 70 legal experts and three groups put it in a June ethics complaint sent to the Florida Bar.
"The gravamen of this complaint is that Ms. Bondi, personally and through her senior management, has sought to compel Department of Justice lawyers to violate their ethical obligations under the guise of 'zealous advocacy' as announced in her memorandum to all department employees, issued on her first day in office, threatening employees with discipline and possible termination for falling short," the filing states.
Bondi has also faced intense scrutiny in recent days over the DOJ's handling of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced Saturday that this week he plans to introduce a measure "to force a vote demanding the FULL Epstein files be released to the public."
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Family Demands US Probe Into Israeli Settlers' 'Lynching' of American Citizen
The family of Sayfollah Musallet called his killing by Israeli settlers "an unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face."
Jul 14, 2025
The family of 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sayfollah Musallet is being joined by a number of advocacy groups in demanding a full U.S.-led investigation into the young man's fatal beating by Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week—and pushing back against the corporate media's characterization of the brutal attack.
"We demand the U.S. State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes," said the family in a statement, referring to Musallet by his nickname.
The family described how Israeli settlers "surrounded Saif for over three hours as paramedics attempted to reach him, but the mob of settlers blocked the ambulance and paramedics from providing life-saving aid."
Musallet's brother finally was able to retrieve him and bring him to a nearby hospital, but he died from his injuries before arriving there.
The State Department has said little about the killing of Musallet, who was a 20-year-old Palestinian-American with dual citizenship who was born in Florida, where he was still living when he traveled to the West Bank to visit family for the summer.
The Trump administration told Al Jazeera late Friday that the department "has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas," and said it was "aware of reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in the West Bank," but did not provide further details about how it was proceeding following Musallet's killing.
Meanwhile, rights advocates condemned The New York Times' reporting on the attack, which it called "a clash." It cited the Israeli government's claim that "the violence began when Palestinians threw stones at Israeli civilians."
"This was a lynching, not a 'clash,'" said Imraan Siddiqi, executive director of the Washington State office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Musallet is at least the ninth U.S. citizen to be killed by Israeli forces or settlers since 2022. The U.S. government has historically accepted the results of Israel's investigations into killings like those of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.
Under pressure, the Department of Justice finally opened a probe into the 2022 fatal shooting of Abu Akleh, but more than three years after her killing it has not released its findings.
None of the Israeli killings of U.S. citizens have resulted in criminal charges.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told Al Jazeera Saturday that the U.S. "must stop treating Palestinian American lives as expendable."
"Israeli settlers lynched 20-year-old Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet, while U.S. officials stayed silent," the group said. "Sayfollah was born and raised in Florida. He was visiting family for the summer in the West Bank when settlers beat him to death while he protested illegal land seizures."
Musallet's family said his killing is "an unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face."
"We demand justice," they said.
Zeteo journalist Mehdi Hasan noted that along with the Trump administration near-silence, Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has so far said nothing publicly about the killing of the Tampa resident.
"Why do Israelis keep murdering Americans?" said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now. "Perhaps it's because they know our government will never do a damn thing about it?"
"Not even a word of condolence offered to his family, not from 'America First' President Trump, not from the Florida governor, not from the State Department," she said. "Seems it's always just really Israel First for these folks."
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'Horrific': Israeli Military Kills Seven Children in Latest Attack on Water Distribution Site
Gaza's Government Media Office said Israeli forces have killed more than 700 people at water distribution sites since October 2023.
Jul 14, 2025
Israeli forces on Sunday killed at least 10 people—most of them children—as they attempted to obtain water at a distribution point in central Gaza, an attack that came as Israel's military was accused of intentionally depriving Palestinians of access to water as part of its U.S.-backed genocidal assault on the enclave.
The attack on Sunday killed seven children and injured more than a dozen people, drawing international outrage.
"Yet again we're seeing horrific reports of the killing of seven children in Gaza, this time as they were waiting for water at a distribution site," said Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund. "This comes just days after several children and women were killed waiting for nutritional supplies."
"The Israeli authorities must urgently review the rules of engagement and ensure full compliance with international humanitarian law, notably the protection of civilians, including children," Russell added. "UNICEF calls for an immediate and lasting cease-fire, aid at scale, and release of hostages."
The Israeli military acknowledged that it carried out the attack but denied it was trying to hit the water distribution point, claiming that a "technical error" caused the missile to miss its purported target—an Islamic Jihad militant—by dozens of meters.
Gaza's Government Media Office said in a statement early Monday that Israeli forces have killed more than 700 people in more than 100 attacks on water distribution sites since October 2023. The media office also said the Israeli government has prevented 12 million liters of fuel from entering the enclave per month, "the minimum amount needed to operate water wells, sewage treatment plants, waste collection vehicles, and other vital sectors."
"The Gaza Strip is today witnessing a major crime of deprivation of water, perpetrated deliberately and systematically by the Israeli occupation, amidst complete international silence and the direct and indirect participation of European and Western countries implicated in supporting or complicit in the crime of genocide," the office said.
Leading humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have also accused the Israeli government of using water as a weapon of war in the Gaza Strip by cutting off supply and decimating the enclave's existing infrastructure, including wells and desalination plants.
The International Rescue Committee said last week that Gaza's "entire water system has broken down" and warned that "there is simply not enough clean water to meet the needs of the population in Gaza."
"When clean water is unavailable, the consequences extend far beyond thirst; families are forced to rely on unsafe water sources for cooking, cleaning, and bathing, heightening the risk of disease outbreaks like skin conditions, diarrhea, and hepatitis," the group said. "This compounds the burden on Gaza's collapsing health system, particularly in overcrowded shelters with limited hygiene options."
Israeli forces have also been massacring civilians at food distribution sites in recent weeks as famine spreads throughout Gaza.
The United Nations said on Friday that it recorded 798 killings at food distribution locations in Gaza between May 27 and July 7, with the overwhelming majority occurring in the vicinity of sites managed by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
"They have a choice between being shot or being fed," said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office.
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