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FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1974 Oct 6 DOC NMA091 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION NYT - Carcinogens Unchecked They Threaten An Epidemic By oeeete D DAVISI - New York Times Currentfile Oct 6 1974 ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times 1851 2002 pg 206 Dee Each Year New Substances Slip Into the Environment Carcinogens Unchecked They Threaten An Epidemic By JANE E. BRODY Cancer invariably arouses fear and anger when it strikes but society has done very little to control the thousand or more substances in the environment that are thought to cause from 60 to 90 per cent of the nearly 700,000 cases of cancer in the United States each year As scientists uncover incriminating evidence about more and more chemical and physical substances to which huge segments of the population are exposed and with hundreds of new substances introduced untested into the environ- ment every year it is increasingly clear becoming something must be done If it is not there could * easily epidemics of cancer in the future that be The ban last week on the production of aldrin and d^>eldrintwo widely used farm pesticides suggest that the Government may take a stronger approach to the problem in the future Principles of action have been set that could become the format for dealing aggressively with other en- vironmental carcinogens causing agents There already is an epidemic of lung cancer because society failed to recognize the insidious hazards of ^igaret- tes some 50 years ago Unlike cigarette smoking however exposure to other known and suspected carcinogens in the environment is involuntary and unknowing constituting what some scientists regard as a uninformed human guinea pigs gargantuan experiment on - . , vate steer Testing a cancer culture Hazards Get Attention performed in man other less exact methods must be used Even tests on laboratory animals are impractical for screen- In recent weeks in addition to aldrin and dieldrin several potential hazards have received public attention notably asbestos arsenic and vinyl chloride . level exposure to asbestos common contaminant development of air food and water has been linked to the some 30 years later of a rare cancer mesotheliomain the children of former asbestos workers Arsenic recently shown to cause cancer of the lung and lymph system in exposed workers had previously been found in many public water supplies in amounts exceeding Federally set limits The limits now may be revised downward Last week the Department of Labor announced final rules designed to reduce worker exposure to vinyl chloride a chemical widely used as a basic material in the manufac- turer of plastics The chemical has been shown to induce exposed incurable cancers of the liver in some workers to it over substantial periods of time The Environmental Protection Agency's action on aldrin and dieldrin is generally regarded as a significant precedent in dealing with causing agents It argues that a ban on carcinogens need not await the demonstration of cancer In people exposed to the pesticides In a ruling culminating hearings on the two chemicals E.P.A. administrative law judge Herbert L. Periman said It would be irresponsible in the extreme to pursue such a course It must be remembered he added that carcinogenesis is an irreversible process with a bomb effect ing the estimated 10,000 or more agents that should be subjected to such tests Testing of each substance would take approximately three years and cost about 70,000 each Therefore scientists are turning to faster and less expensive early warning systems Oneis the laboratory cell culture which a chemical carcinogen can transform to cancer in approximately two weeks When the transformed cells are injected into animals they can produce malignant tumors in 18 weeks Another system developed by Dr. Joseph DiPaolo of the National Cancer Institute involves injecting the substance into pregnant animals and analyzing the fetuses for trans- formed cells There is no general agreement among scientists on the best way to test for carcinogenesis In some cases a laboratory demonstration of causing properties may have no relevance for man in others negative test findings may give false assurance of safety But there is little disagreement that a start must be made and made now An editorial on environmental carcinogenesis in the current issue of the British medical journal The Lancetstates We cannot have new products without risk but it is irresponsible to permit new products without assessment of their effects Beyond testing there remains the problem of what to do about a known or suspected environmental carcinogen The causing effects of asbestos were established develop- a long period elapses between exposure and the ment of cancer two decades ago but this year a United States Court of Appeals said it was all right for some 100,000 residents of determining Judge Perlman said there is no way of a safe level of a carcinogen since theoretically any amount Minnesota to drink containing water because it could not yet be shown that any of them had gotten sick is capable of producing disease in highly susceptible in- as a result dividuals Dieldrin into which aldrin degrades has been As a pragmatic approach Marvin A. Schneiderman of shown to cause cancer when fed to mice at dielary levels the National Cancer Institute recently suggested the follow- commonly found in human tissues and sometimes in human ing Ban those materials known to cause cancer in man foods hold in abeyance those substances that cause cancer in The problem that remains however is how to test exist- animals until enough is known about how man's body ing and new environmental agents to obtain a realistic 4 processes them to show that they are not a human hazard estimate of their causing potential in man and use with great care those that cause genetic changes Since for reasons of ethics and time such tests cannot be or birth defects in laboratory tests . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission