During the war in Vietnam, the US tested agents orange, blue, and purple at CFB Gagetown. A 1968 U.S. Army memorandum titled “defoliation tests in 1966 at base Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada” explained: “The department of the army, Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been charged with finding effective chemical agents that will cause rapid defoliation of woody and Herbaceous vegetation. To further develop these objectives, large areas similar in density to those of interest in South East Asia were needed. In March 1965, the Canadian ministry of defense offered Crops Division large areas of densely forested land for experimental tests of defoliant chemicals. This land, located at Canadian forces base Gagetown, Oromocto, New Brunswick, was suitable in size and density and was free from hazards and adjacent cropland. The test site selected contained a mixture of conifers and deciduous broad leaf species in a dense undisturbed forest cover that would provide similar vegetation densities to those of temperate and tropical areas such as South East Asia.”
Online comments / older articles also mention that New Brunswick is basically owned by the Irving family, which has lots of money and deep industrial connections, and unsurprisingly there is strong skepticism that they would be the ones who caused the sudden pivot from Federal to provincial and ensuing coverup.
It's a glaring omission either way that the NYTimes doesn't mention this at all...
In a piece like this, a decent journalist would not mention speculation like that without more concrete proof which I assume they do not have or did not look into
Assuming it is true that NB politics is elite-captured by wealthy interests it is an omission of investigative journalism to at least raise the issue. The Irvings are likely "talk of the town" regarding this controversy, it would actually be the decent thing to voice the complaints of the locals. "Many locals have pointed finger at X corporation, and made the accusation Y" is also still journalistic documentation, if you want a paper of record. Journalism isn't narrowly about facts like in science, it is also about people and the complaints different groups have about each other, so it is not speculation to elucidate those conflicts and power dynamics by merely recording that they exist. An in depth article should have addressed this, somehow even if it were to conclude for the moment there is no substance to the locals' complaints about the Irving family. The Elephant in the Room is not to be dismissed as mere speculation.
tl;dr: “Ninety percent of Marrero’s patients came back with elevated amounts of glyphosate in their blood, in one case as high as 15,000 times the test’s lowest detectable concentration.”
that means almost nothing. a Geiger counter can pick up radiation from a single banana. that just means the detector is sensitive, not that bushels of bananas are a health hazard. the detection threshold is completely irrelevant.
I grew up in the Deep South. the water table is notoriously contaminated with herbicides and ag runoff. I'm sure it causes health hazards, but I haven't seen early-onset neurodegenerative disorders. if it's glyphosate, why don't we have that here?
Not saying glyphosate isn't the problem, but 15,000 times the lowest detectable amount doesn't really say how high it is.
Maybe the test is really sensitive?
Maybe farmers in non-cluster areas also have similar levels?
What about the average? The highest was 15k times the minimum detectable, were the rest 5 on a scale of 100k? Were the rest higher than random people from elsewhere in the world?
Seems to be reporter bias in that bit of the article.
The reverse problem exists too: Something could have insanely high levels of X, but for engineering reasons our tests for X aren't very good, then it gets falsely downplayed as "It's just 5 times higher than the minimum detectable level."
That line struck me - as an example of innumeracy, or at least misunderstanding of tests. Or maybe it was willful ignorance intended to sound more shocking than it is.
Without a control group, this information is little more than a hunch - and the article clearly states so immediately after.
While I'd like to see this angle investigated, pretending that this is a conclusion is not really useful. That area has also been used for testing multiple chemical agents with dubious health effects in the past.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/canadas-use-of-chemical-weapon...
During the war in Vietnam, the US tested agents orange, blue, and purple at CFB Gagetown. A 1968 U.S. Army memorandum titled “defoliation tests in 1966 at base Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada” explained: “The department of the army, Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been charged with finding effective chemical agents that will cause rapid defoliation of woody and Herbaceous vegetation. To further develop these objectives, large areas similar in density to those of interest in South East Asia were needed. In March 1965, the Canadian ministry of defense offered Crops Division large areas of densely forested land for experimental tests of defoliant chemicals. This land, located at Canadian forces base Gagetown, Oromocto, New Brunswick, was suitable in size and density and was free from hazards and adjacent cropland. The test site selected contained a mixture of conifers and deciduous broad leaf species in a dense undisturbed forest cover that would provide similar vegetation densities to those of temperate and tropical areas such as South East Asia.”
New Brunswick oil and natural gas history:
https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Corporate/pdf/ShaleGas/e...