Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on glyphosate: what the evidence says · JRE #1999

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Kennedy's claim misstates both the timing/mechanism of the U.S. DDT ban and Monsanto's role as a DDT manufacturer. The ban took effect in June 1972 through an administrative cancellation order issued by EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus, not through a law Congress passed in 1973. EPA's own economic review of the ban ("DDT: A Review of Scientific and Economic Aspects of the Decision to Ban Its Use as a Pesticide," EPA-540/1-75-022) states that of roughly a dozen U.S. companies making DDT in the early 1950s, the last major producers besides Montrose (Geigy in 1966, Allied Chemical and Olin in 1969, Diamond Shamrock in 1970, Lebanon Chemicals in 1971) had already exited before the ban; by 1971 hearing records describe Montrose Chemical Corporation, not Monsanto, as the "sole remaining manufacturer of the basic DDT chemical," and the report contains no mention of Monsanto as a DDT producer at all. Monsanto's major chemical-industry legacy in this era was tied to other compounds, such as PCBs, of which it was the sole U.S. producer from the 1930s until 1977, rather than DDT. The claim's date (1973), its mechanism (a new law), and its characterization of DDT as Monsanto's flagship product are all inaccurate.