PCBs are taken in via ingestion, inhalation and skin contact, the city points out. PCBs show up in breast milk. Exposure can start very early. PCBs damage the human body in a variety of ways and cause cancer.

The natural and human assault caused by PCBs and other pollutants are devastating. So is the financial tsunami to make even the most basic and belated cleanup attempts. Times reporter Lynda V. Mapes reports Seattle’s share of the entire Duwamish cleanup could run $342 million, not including another $27 million for a water-treatment plant to remove pollutants from only 1.25 percent of the 20,000 acres that drain into the Lower Duwamish.

The Securities and Exchange Commission slapped Monsanto with an $80 million civil penalty for violating accounting rules and misstating past earnings related to rebates on its flagship weedkiller Roundup. Two accounting executives and a retired sales executive also agreed to pay penalties to settle the charges.

And while the SEC found no personal misconduct by Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, the biotech seed giant disclosed Tuesday that Grant already had reimbursed the company $3.2 million in pay due to the restatement of corporate earnings in fiscal years 2009 through 2011.

The penalty is another black eye for the Creve Coeur-based company, which has had a number of high-profile setbacks in the past year.

The Assembly’s Committee on Consumer Affairs and Protection passed a bill Tuesday that would require mandatory labeling of food made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

The bill, A.617, passed through the committee with nine affirmative votes.

Monsanto Co. is facing another lawsuit alleging that exposure to glyphosate, the primary ingredient in the company’s flagship product Roundup, causes cancer.

Christine and Kenneth Sheppard, the former owners of Dragon’s Lair Kona Coffee Farm in Honaunau, Hawaii, have accused the multinational agribusiness of falsely masking the carcinogenic risks of glyphosate and is responsible for causing the woman’s cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported.

The civil suit, Sheppard et al v. Monsanto Company, was filed Feb. 2 in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by the Miller Firm of Orange, Virgina and Honolulu attorney Brian K. Mackintosh on behalf of the husband-and-wife duo.

The plaintiffs seek unspecified monetary damages, including compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorneys’ fees and court costs.

According to the complaint, Christine Sheppard had used Roundup on her commercial coffee farm in Hawaii in or around 1995 and continued to use the herbicide until 2004. She said she was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and, as a result, was forced to sell her farm and move to California to undergo treatment.

Nearly 75 Percent of All Glyphosate Sprayed on Crops Came in the Last 10 Years; Surging Use in both U.S. and Globally Raises New Concerns for Health and the Environment

WASHINGTON – Monsanto’s signature herbicide glyphosate, first marketed as “Roundup,” is now the most widely and heavily applied weed-killer in the history of chemical agriculture in both the U.S. and globally, according to a landmark report published today.

The paper, published Feb. 2, 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, reports that to date 18.9 billion pounds (8.6 billion kilograms) of glyphosate have been used globally. Glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called “Roundup Ready” genetically engineered crops were introduced in 1996.

In 2014, enough glyphosate was sprayed to leave more than three-quarters of a pound of the active ingredient on every harvested acre of cropland in the U.S., and remarkably, almost a half pound per acre on all cropland worldwide (0.53 kilogram/hectare).

The paper by Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., titled “Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and Globally,” is available free online at Environmental Sciences Europe.

“The dramatic and rapid growth in overall use of glyphosate will likely contribute to a host of adverse environmental and public health consequences,” Dr. Benbrook wrote.

The FDA is officially blocking GMO salmon imports for now, as requested in the omnibus spending bill passed at the end of last year.

As the food fight over the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) stalls in Congress, state-level GMO mandates are gaining steam. At least 30 states have introduced some type of legislation in recent years, including three states—Connecticut, Maine and Vermont—that have actually passed GMO labeling mandates.

Close to Home: Making this area a GMO Free Zone

There is a grass-roots movement afoot in Sonoma County to join our neighbors to the north and south in creating a coastal GMO free zone. Volunteers for the group Citizens for Healthy Farms and Families can be spotted all over the county collecting signatures to qualify the Sonoma County Transgenic Contamination Prevention Ordinance for the ballot in November.

This ordinance would prohibit the “propagation, cultivation, raising or growing of genetically engineered organisms in Sonoma County.”

Roundup-ready, genetically engineered crops (corn) and grasses (alfalfa, blue grass and fescue) are already moving into Sonoma County. New crops are awaiting approval. This ban on genetically engineered crops is needed in order to protect Sonoma County organic and conventional agriculture from contamination by genetically engineered plant pollen. Without this protection, our families, water and wildlife will continue to suffer from negative health and environmental effects associated with increased Roundup herbicide spraying.

While the overwhelming response to our signature drive has been positive, I have been perplexed over the past several months on the signature-gathering trail by some of the negative viewpoints expressed.

A British Columbia company has petitioned the USDA to deregulate sales of the Arctic Fuji, which is genetically modified to resist browning after slicing.

A recent study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists shows that genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa has gone wild, in a big way, in alfalfa-growing parts of the West.