The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

52 the world according to monsantoduction of Penta “releases 75 different dioxins,” including “TCCD and hexadioxin,which is 5000 times more toxic than arsenic,” she explained to theCanadian magazine Harrowsmith in 1990. 13As soon as she became aware of the materials put together by Rex Carrand picked up by Greenpeace, Jenkins grasped the implications that theserevelations might have for U.S. government regulation of dioxin. In fact, relyingon the only epidemiological studies then available, that is, the onesconducted by Monsanto, the EPA had concluded in 1988 that “the humanevidence supporting an association between 2,3,7,8-TCDD [dioxin] andcancer is considered inadequate.” 14 The agency had therefore decided toclassify dioxin as a type B2 carcinogen in the EPA system, a “probable humancarcinogen” for which there is “sufficient” evidence that it is a carcinogenfrom animal studies.* Consequently, dioxin was not considered apriority pollutant and thus was not subject to regulation on atmosphericemissions provided for under the Clean Air Act. It seemed apparent to Jenkinsthat if the Monsanto studies had not been manipulated, the EPA’s conclusions(as well as those of the rest of the world, which had adopted theAmerican position) would have been different.As a conscientious public servant, she therefore decided to prepare a confidentialmemorandum entitled “Newly Revealed Fraud by Monsanto in anEpidemiological Study Used by the EPA to Assess Human Health Effectsfrom Dioxins,” which she sent on February 23, 1990, to the chairperson ofthe Executive Committee of the Science Advisory Board of the agency, aswell as to the office of the EPA administrator. 15 She attached a portion of abrief from the Kemner case and asked that a scientific audit of the Monsantostudies be conducted, an initiative that would soon cause one of the stormiestepisodes in her career.Unfortunately, I was unable to meet Cate Jenkins, who refused to grantme an interview. When I contacted her in May 2006, she was in charge ofcoordinating EPA analyses of toxic waste in the ruins of “ground zero,” thesite of the World Trade Center towers in New York destroyed in the attackof September 11, 2001. “It’s a very delicate issue,” she explained in a ratherenigmatic e-mail, “and I’d rather concentrate on that.” She strongly sug-*The EPA classification adopts the one recommended by the International Agency for Research onCancer. It includes five groups: group A (human carcinogen); group B (probable human carcinogen),with two categories, B1 (limited human evidence) and B2 (no human evidence but sufficient animalevidence); and so on, down to group E (not a human carcinogen).