Dr. Jonathan Latham, Director of the Bioscience Resource Project talked about the importance of the 20,000-document collection and how it exposes problems with both the internal culture of the EPA and its legal framework that are often fraught with industry influences that prevent precautionary decision-making, even when the science clearly points to danger. The documents that have come to be known as the Poison Papers were collected over a period of 40 years by Carol Van Strum, Diane Hebert, Eric Coppolino, and Peter von Stackelberg, who served as custodians of the documents, gathering, storing, scanning, and distributing them. Their ultimate goal was to make the documents accessible to anybody and everybody who might need them. The Park Foundation, The Bioscience Resource Project, Center for Media and Democracy, and the late Rosalind Peterson helped fund this endeavor.
Watch the talk:
https://lecture.ucsf.edu/ets/Play/0b4ef9a0f5af41fdb982aa4a1f0753f21d