Pesticides, Labels, And Liability

In the latest episode of Going Under, we unpack how federal preemption for pesticide labels could limit lawsuits and reshape accountability, and we trace the health stakes from farm fields to the foods we eat. Along the way, we compare tobacco and vaccine liability models, share a family story tied to Parkinson’s, and map practical lower-risk alternatives.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Sponsor Spotlight: Handheld Ultrasound
• 1:59 Setting The Topic: Pesticides And Law
• 3:52 What FIFRA Preemption Means
• 6:59 Tobacco Analogy And State Lawsuits
• 9:40 From Farm To Table Risk
• 12:20 Do Chemicals Drive Cancer?
• 15:10 Parkinson’s, Agent Orange, And Field Work
• 19:05 Natural And Lower-Risk Alternatives

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

This is going under Anesthesia Answered with Dr. Brian Schmutzler. I'm Vahid Saderzati. We're brought to you by the Butterfly Network.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

All right, I'm going to let you in on something that's completely changed the way that I practice. I've been using Butterfly Propes for years. It's a portable ultrasound that plugs right into my compatible smartphone or tablet so I can start scanning at the bedside in minutes. Seconds? Milliseconds. Milliseconds. If you use the older version or even if you're new to the held handheld ultrasound game, let me tell you why this new IQ3 is a game changer and really impressive. First off, having an ultrasound that literally fits in my pocket means I can move faster. Whether it's vascular access, procedural guidance, or just getting real-time insights from my patients. And the tiny tech inside this device is pretty incredible. Biplane imaging lets me see short and long access simultaneously, which is huge for procedural guidance and honestly a great tool for learners. The new needle out of plane preset even shifts the scan plane digitally, so I can see the tips sooner, needle tips sooner, which makes a real difference when precision matters. And the image quality, honestly, the IQ3 holds up to some of the high-end cart-based systems I've used. That's pretty impressive for something this portable. If you're looking for a device that supports your practice, I can't recommend the Butterfly IQ three enough. And right now they're running a special offer. You can get$750 off the latest IQ three. Check it out at Butterfly Network.com. From the Fields. Oh, oh, Fields? Fields?

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

From the Fields to the Courtroom. From the Fields of Minnesota? From the grain from the From the Fields. Isn't it Fields of Minnesota? Yeah. To the something. I don't know. I can't remember. Of LA or something. Yeah. I should do a better job. I used to play that song on the radio when I first. Oh man. And they do.

SPEAKER_00: 2:02

They do have pesticides.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03

Pesticides are back in the news, and here's why. Because lawmakers, people who are trying to get pesticide companies to be liable and not just say, hey, we're sticking a warning label on something and then we're calling it a day and we're not responsible. That's the gist of what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_00: 2:27

So it's called the FIFRA preemption. And so the the basic outline is that if the manufacturers of the pesti pesticides put on the labels of the pesticides that they're dangerous and can cause, you know, cancer and deformity and blah, blah, blah, that they aren't held liable at all if you use those pesticides. So a pesticide is a chemical. Yeah, it's a chemical. I mean, I don't know the official definition of a pesticide, but yeah, it's a chemical that would kill the bugs that would damage your crops. I mean, that's a bit we should have Dave Schrock back on. He probably has a better definition.

SPEAKER_01: 3:05

But that essentially that's it, right? And it's used by farmers all over the world. It's been used for many, many, many years.

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

Yep. Well, I mean, and there's a pesticide called Roundup. Uh, I guess that's not a pesticide, it's a weed herbicide. Yeah, herbicide. And um, it it caused a lot of issues. Like you see all all the you know on the news and stuff and and all the TV commercials for did you use Roundup? You know, call us, we'll sue. So um, yeah, and so this this kind of goes along with the whole um, you know, we're we're we're pretty pretty open about the fact that we like natural stuff, right? Like let's eat some natural foods and not eat processed foods and that sort of stuff. So uh this goes a little bit along the lines of that. But yeah, so so basically what in practice what this means is that a uh worn a a war failure to worn lawsuit cannot be brought against the manufacturers of pesticides if they comply with this new EPA label requirement. That's what the law says.

SPEAKER_01: 4:08

So we we kind of discuss this um off-camera, kind of comparing it to tobacco companies. Yeah, absolutely. Because, hey, it if you if you're smoking, you there's a label on the box, and the label on the box says, hey, yeah you can't go back to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and say, I'm sorry, big tobacco firms, your tobacco killed your caused me lung cancer, so now I can sue you for$300 million. Right. You can't do that. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 4:39

And and so I think you could technically uh create a federal lawsuit just looking through the law. I think what the this definitely prevents is state lawsuits, right? Let's like you said, with with the with this similar technique that the that the uh big tobacco industry used, um it prevented people from going to, like you said, let's go to North Carolina and sue them there, and then let's go to Indiana. You can't go from state to state. Right. So I think you could try to do a federal lawsuit, at least on, and I'm trying to dig through the the actual bill, but um you could try to do a federal lawsuit, but as long as the company put the warning on there and it was accurate, right? It didn't say like this might cause nosebleeds and you gotta, you know, sure your foot fell off. You know, as long as it was an accurate warning label.

SPEAKER_01: 5:28

You can't you can't be the Howard Dean of lawsuits and go from state to state state, right? Although going to Wisconsin. Wow. Yeah. So um this is interesting on a lot of levels, and here's why, because it it doesn't only affect the farmers anymore, it affects everybody you and me. Yeah. If I go to the grocery store to Whole Foods, Whole Foods or anywhere, anywhere, and I'm buying an apple, I'm expecting that that apple doesn't have pesticides in it or PFAS or whatever, yep, that's gonna come back and give me cancer in 10 years. Now, this is a question I'm gonna ask you as a medical expert. Do you think this is one of the main reasons that cancer numbers have gone up across the world, and here in the United States, especially?

SPEAKER_00: 6:20

So I'm gonna I'm gonna answer that in a qualified way. I think inflammation is probably chronic inflammation is probably the cause of the increased cancer. If you look through all the data, right, even it's really hard to point to one thing like this absolutely causes cancer, this absolutely causes cancer. But what they do find is that the the generalized mechanism is increased inflammation in the brain over long periods of time. Yeah. So these glyphosates, PFAS, all of these, they're they're external molecules that cause inflammation. So can I say that those specifically cause cancer? No, but anything that's going to chronically inflame your body, so does so does processed foods, right? So high fructose corn syrup, lots of it over time, same thing. Lots of inflammation. So you know, it's a it's probably three or four steps down the line, but they probably contribute.

SPEAKER_01: 7:15

That that's interesting. So I'm gonna share a quick story and then we can kind of talk about the the nitty-gritty and the nuts and bolts of this this law that they're trying to pass or not trying to pass. Basically, um my father was a farmer for a lot of years, or had a farm for a lot of years. He wasn't directly a farmer, but he had he had a farm, and we were growing pistachios. Now, back in Iran, back in, you know, way back, his parents were farmers, pistachio farmers.

SPEAKER_00: 7:52

And way less regulation in Iran in 40s or 50s or whenever his parents were.

SPEAKER_01: 7:57

What regulation? Exactly, exactly. You know, and and what were the methods back then to keeping bugs or any of that stuff off nuts on the tree. Right. Like what what was the method back then? You just didn't have a method, or you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00: 8:14

I mean, you go all the way back to like DDT, right? And and I think they were even there was some like analog of thalidomide. I don't know if you guys remember Correct. There was some analog of that that they used to put on, which caused all kinds of issues. So they I think they just tried everything. Yeah, thalidomide was I mean, well, that that was a medication that they used for nausea for women. But I mean there was like I I distinctly remember reading that it they adapted it from some goofy thing that they tried on crops anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 8:40

I could be wrong on that one, but now they have found that some of these herbicides and stuff like that, they're being linked to Agent Orange. And if you know Agent Orange back in the day, it was used during Vietnam. Right. And some of our Vietnam vets came back with this disease, yep, and it causes Parkinson's.

SPEAKER_00: 9:05

Yep. Yeah, you have it, right? It's multi-organ, right? So it's lungs, it's heart, it's brain, it's the nervous, it's everything.

SPEAKER_01: 9:14

So there was a study, probably, and I'm getting back to this story. There was a study probably a couple of years ago, where people who worked in fields in Brazil, in the banana fields, plantain fields. Using what? What what pesticides were they using? They were using I mean, there was the standard stuff. The standard stuff. That the increase in Parkinson's of those individuals skyrocketed because of their thinking, because of the pesticides that they used. Yep. Well, my dad, now fast forward years later, he worked on and off in the fields for years. In Iran as well as here? Correct. Okay. His his parents were pistachio farmers. So he helped with that. He helped with that, and then he bought some pistachio bought some land here, turned it into pistachio land in California. And he's mid-80s now. Yeah. But 10 years ago, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's.

SPEAKER_00: 10:17

So is that in run in your family at all?

SPEAKER_01: 10:18

Or is it just not run in the family at all? And that was the worry. It it was the wow, this doesn't run in our family. Where'd it come from? Where did it come from? And the link was back to the fields. Yeah. And, you know, he doesn't have the typical shake of Parkinson's, but it started with the leg dragging and the nerve damage. Yep. And now it's, you know, right, it's slowly. And now it's fit, you know, stage five Parkinson's, which right cause all sorts of problems. But at the same time, you're thinking back, okay, is this linking back to a certain thing? Now, if there was warning labels on it, I mean Would it have stopped him? Maybe, maybe not. Do we still need fruit and vegetables and nuts? Of course, yeah. So eventually we're gonna have to I mean, what what is the natural solution to some of these problems? Is there a natural solution?

SPEAKER_00: 11:21

Yeah, there I think there are a few, and you and I were actually looking this up because we are not. Let's let's qualify this. Neither one of us are experts on pesticides. Or farming. Or farming, yeah. That's what I'm saying. We got to get Schrock back on. But um, yeah, so so there's a and I just this is literally just from the EPA's website. So there's these things called reduced risk low impact pesticides. And so here's just a quick list botanical oils and extracts like neem oil, cedarwood oil, garlic oil, probably mint, and centr and citronella. So these are all things like people do this in their gardens, right? You're like, oh, we these bugs hate cinnamon. Instead of like spraying off on you, you're gonna use centronella oil. Yeah, it's a lot of it. Uh no, garlic. So we um uh because of where we live, we're kind of like below the water table uh up in Granger. And so um our we have a a tank in our um uh sprinkler system. And it it was initially garlic. They use garlic and very, very small amounts of garlic. You can't smell it when it's just spraying, but it keeps the uh the mosquitoes away. Really? And so they're gonna be. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They switched it to cinnamon just because it smells better, but yeah, it's it just keeps the so these are like the natural things, right? So I think your your risk with any of these is very, very small, right? The next is micro microbial and biological agents like bacillus thernages in this Bt. Easy for spin acide and other micro microbe derived substances, then there's mineral and organic compounds like boric acid, disodium, octoborate, tetrahydrate, silica gel, and diadamous earth soaps and oils like potassium salts and fatty acids, and then reduced risk ingredients, um, specific chemical compounds like chloranthro, a bunch of them. Anyway, so so these are reduced risk, they're not zero risk, but I feel pretty comfortable with garlic oil or cinnamon or mint on my as a pet as a pesticide on on my uh we've seen the movies, right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:26

Where m you know Monsanto Monsanto goes into small towns and tries to get farmers to use their products, yep, you know, because they're paying for stuff and whatever. I mean, and and why should you care as a listener? Well, and a watcher of this podcast, because it could be in your bread. Oh, yeah. Could be in your meats, could be in think about the animals that are on the farm.

SPEAKER_00: 13:51

Who are eating the stuff, who are eating inhaling it and all that. Think about driving past I mean, you and I live in in somewhat rural Indiana. We drive past those all the time. What happens if they're spraying, you know, some crazy pesticide on there as we're driving by with the windows down?

SPEAKER_01: 14:06

Unless you're you own the farm, you're controlling, but but also owning the farm doesn't necessarily mean you're clear of any pesticides either, right? I mean, like again, I think like there there is a um inherently it's hard to sit back and say, you know, your f food is ever gonna be clear of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 14:31

Maybe, you know, but what can we do to reduce that risk? Yeah. I I think there's there's a push in the Maha movement for some of these either low risk or zero zero risk uh pesticides, or maybe even, you know, if you keep the farms smaller, I think you can significantly reduce the amount of pesticides, right? So so you talk about an industrial farm that's millions of acres versus kind of like your smaller local farm like Schrock has, which is like I can't remember how many thousands of thousands of acres. So, you know, those there's a big difference there, right? On how much you can control and how much you know, industrial farming versus you know more local farming. Um, but I also think so, like you said, so so here's the problem with this, these warning labels, just to get back to the warning label thing. The problem with this versus cigarettes, and I'm not saying I agree with the cigarette warning labels either. I mean, you know, I have personal experience with multiple people in my family having lung cancer and dying from smoking complic smoking related complications, but so at least though, with smoking, you can decide whether you want to do it or not, right? Right. It's not like it's when you're driving by you know uh you're driving by somebody smoking and all of a sudden you get a little smoke, or you yeah, you walk into the store and you're like chewing up a cigarette, right? It's not the same. You can choose the tobacco intake, right? You can't you can't really choose, nor do you even know, right? Like you said, you walk into the store, you grab an apple, maybe you don't wash it well enough, and all of a sudden you've ingested uh yeah, yeah. Cans, plastic, oh yeah, the metal the PFAS stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 16:09

Yeah, PFAS. I mean, it it goes beyond, right? I mean, like it's things that we don't even know on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00: 16:16

Yep. Uh there was that big study that Notre Dame did on PFAS. Do we ever talk about that?

SPEAKER_01: 16:21

I don't know if we did. Um, I know a local station did a special on PFAS because firefighters locally, um, you know, the spray chemical that they spray you down with, basically, like the foam or whatever. Um, some of that foam was causing like these problems, the having PFAS, right? They're PFAS was found. And PFAS was also found in the materials that firefighters were wearing. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 16:52

I read an article too about uh I don't have a uh silicone one on right now, but that there was an article about the Apple Watches, the silicone on the Apple Watches also is releasing a bunch of PFAS. So they're like, I can't remember where I have like 10 of those bands. Me too. It was some study in India or Pakistan or something, but they showed like the the the blood levels of PFAS if you wore one of those Apple Watch bands skyrocketed. So what can you do? I mean, like the the average person, you know, that's it's rough. I mean, what i i I guess you could buy local. I mean, that's probably the right you go farmer's markets, farmers' markets. But still, how do you know? You don't, but it's I think more controlled risk benefit, right? So we talk about this all the time. I think that you walk into a farmer's market, there's a much lower likelihood that they're using, you know, some of these crazy chemicals that we don't even know. I mean, maybe they're using something somewhere in the middle, you know, a moderate risk or even a low risk. I would say it's much more likely that you walk into a farmer's market and they've used like cedar wood and garlic and cinnamon as opposed to 2, 4 D nitro Agent Orange Death medication thing.

SPEAKER_01: 18:05

What what um does that pass down from generation to generation, or is that like a you know, like if my father has something, right, that he inherently got from these chemicals?

SPEAKER_00: 18:18

No, that wouldn't. Um, I mean, again, unless it changed the the DNA before you were born, right? So if there was some goofy change in DNA, but but exposure to um a chemical that causes whatever cancer Parkinson's would not likely cause uh a generational or uh you know passing hand down passing it down to you.

SPEAKER_01: 18:42

So this this likely is going to, by the way, as we close it out, this is most likely going to the Supreme Court, is what we're thinking.

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

Did they pass it already? I think they pulled a lot of the language out. From what I can tell, um let me see if I can find it. We're kind of looking at the nitty-gritty. Yeah, as we go, yeah. The Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act, H.R. 4288. But I think it I think it got gutted a little bit, so it hasn't fully passed. So anyway, yeah. Yeah, it hasn't fully passed yet. The pesticide liability fight shifts to Congress and the Supreme Court. So it's still as of five days ago, um there's still a lot of filings in the states, and then they're trying to, because of all the filings in the states, they're trying to um they're trying to get this labeling to be law. But you know, as with everything, you think it's simple, like, oh well just put the label on it, it'll fix everything. Well, no, if you take away all liability, just like the vaccine companies, by the way, uh, if you take if you take away all liability from a manufacturer, they have zero incentive to actually be good citizens and produce things that don't knowingly harm you.

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

Because they can just go back, they put a label on something, go back and be like, oh, this is cheaper, we'll use this. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 20:19

Who cares if it causes problems, right? And that and that's part of the argument against the vaccine industry, too. Whether or not a specific vaccine causes, let's say, autism or whatever side effect, it doesn't matter, you can't sue them anymore because the man the manufacturers of the these vaccines did the same thing. They say, Well, if if we're gonna have liability, we're just not gonna make the vaccines. Right. Well, that's what the the uh the um companies that make these um uh all of these uh pesticides, yeah, all these pesticides and and herbicides are saying is well, we just won't make them anymore unless you give us liability, uh lack of liability. It's like again, they're taking the playbook. These companies are not dumb. They're taking the playbook from the the the tobacco industry and from the vaccine industry and going, oh yeah, we'll we'll use that. That worked well for them. So it always makes me very, very cautious when a company says we don't want to we don't want to ever have any chance of liability. Like something's going on there.

SPEAKER_01: 21:21

That's a great way to end this segment. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, this has been going, remember, um, BPA free over here.

SPEAKER_00: 21:28

Is it? I don't know. I don't know if this this is actually I love this thing, so just as a little shout out, Ember. It uh it so it wait keeps it keeps it at a certain temperature. Yeah, yeah. Why are you gatekeeping that? That's great. Did you not know about that? No.

SPEAKER_01: 21:43

And can you do it cold too? Mm-hmm. Oh, nice. All right. Sweet. Now he's jealous. I am. Well, that has been going under Anesthesia Answer with Dr. Brian Schmutzer, brought to you by the Butterfly Network. See you next time. And we'll see you in the next one. You beat me too. Tell your line.