Document Vj3qaXj9v7rXwJBz0ZXKKzg6Z

FMSI 05737 CLEII I IATEB-REPR be thrown out of work and the c:auntry will go to the dogs. The stnJD& suuestm is tbat eatla&. drlnldD8 and breathing a certaiJl amwnt of toxiD8 Is the inevitable price of p.CJIIess. We are, in effect, ..... CCJDditiolled to accept man-made po18oDs in our air, food and water as being nor- mal. The vast majority of people, ).loweer, never think of cbal- leJt&ln& these choices until a Love Canal starts bubbling under their feet or a James tal; then the taxi and its wake ofnmric!Qs vapors become emi- nent1y acceptable to driver and passengeralike. Altbougb corporate lawyers and economists, as wen as many in the public sector, mamtain tbat it is perfectly fair to make production decisions and set acceptable levels after a careful weigbiDg of all likely costs and benefits, otbers are beginning to cballeDge the concept on two grounds. First, cost-benefit tries to anes, tbey stand DOt so much between bealth and illDess as betweenprofit and loss. 0 The vast majority of those in cancer research think that enviromnentany caused cancer is the result of sometbiDg called a dose-response relationsbip. 1bis meaus that there is most likely some kind of direct relationship between tbe amount of the cancer-causiDg chemical a person is exposed to and tbe length of time IATNIOIIEW...IIfIt'.4\1.1s1 0 SuedeCraftel cleans Suedes and Sheepskins. Spray on, safe, easy to use. 0 LeatherCraftll cleans smooth- finished, genuine & synthetic leathers. Spray on, rub soil away. 0 Suede & Leatller SHIELD for lcmg-lasting water repellency, soil, and stain resistance. Will nat change color, or fextule. Spray on, fast-dlying. Riverisclosedtofishing. Then they react with outrage; not becaupe it happens, but be- causeitbappeas to them. Lawyers play key roles in level setting because the equate what is economicaUy, let alone morally. unequat- able: kilowatt-hours of electricity produced by a nuclear power plant versus the num- berof cancer deaths caused by it takes to. contract tbe disease. A dose-response cbart would baw a line goiDg from zero to maximum dose, with tbe risk accelerating and the time span shol'tening in pro- All dMioped by ORe of America's falemost leather cleaninc specie6sts. Wilen JI!Ur Suede. --------Leather, orShelpsllillGanaents 11q111111c:am- plela professioul deaniq. send them to us. process is not so much an on- a slow radiation leak at tbe portion to the increasing dose. pill& clash of opposins scien- site where the spent fuel is Tbe big question, tbougb. is tific truths as one between con- stored, for example. 1bis kind tbis: At precisely what point fllding social and economic of equation makes no seaseun- alOIIg that line will someone prior:tties. Replatory qen- less we can decide bow many contract cancer? Given the cies bave a reel fear of being kilowatt-hours of electricity a fact that individuals vary, tbat sued by industry, aCCOI"dbb& to human Ufe is worth. there are long latency periods Dr. Sidney Wolfe, a physician Secmd, those Wbo pay the for most cancer-c:ausiqg sub- who was onthe staff of the Na- costs and those Wbo derive the stances, and that combina- tional lniJtituteS of Health be- benefits are DOt necessarily tioos of chemicals are un- fme hec:mniD8 director of the same. Men who dig coal doubtedly wone tban the sim- Relpb Nader's Health Re- pey a beevy cost in terms of pie sum of their elements, it aeerdl Group in Washingtm. cave-ins, poisoDed air and becomes impossible to pick a "In order to keep the agency black lung, yet their mouetary point on that line and say with out of court, they act only benefit is not commensurate certainty that it represents the w.Jal tbeyhavetbe mostopen- with those risks. start of a malignancy. Tbat is 8JJCI..elmt caae," be claims. Before a meaningful scien- wbat Leo Hetling meant wben "W'Jien we go into a hea.rlng, we QOl only 8818 lawyers from lnduatry, but Wall Street ana- tific basis can be establlsbed for setting truly ac:ceptable levels, a deeply important be asked about the number of cigarettes that can be safely smoked. No dprette can be UpCountry lysts, too. There's big money atstake." 0 question needs to be an- swered: Exactly bow much of a given substance does it take safely smoked, but it is im~ sible to tell which of the tbousands upon tbousencts will be The Magazine of New England Living Wbats acceptable and what isn't is most often associated with sometbiDg called cost- to cause a human cell to turn cancerous? If no one knows, then every person Wbo beUeves that there is some the one tbat IJe&inS the process of wild cellular powth tbat is cancer. Tbere are currently two For New En1landcrs in fac:t or in drams, .a 111011tbly mqazine c:elebratiaa the joys and cxamiain& the problems of COUDUJ livina. In our 6tll year, nur c:ireulation is 390,000. 18~or 11111t.. =-~ .=.-.ra..:a:niarltyi-:~:yillili8ighi~cniifoderamBtuhlDaIrt!hMasetrioucsolyni!sNRtriT-'1;;Dupsir.iD.,scel.sJFI<8i~1&:f'wcaanycesr*i1n-"lwlanhdiictih11ts1cboiwea.n=-: '"' featurina " 'UpCountry Ptoperties The place to list or locate "''" res. Tbe beaefb of, say, ...... ate added: fire. .resistaDt homes, sdlools and offices, plus jobs for asbestos worlrels, and tbelr combmed effect on tbe economy. The .s.b.a..J.p,.ly..ilalcrne!laalisJioaltnotuamlebde: tbe n of ..,.. dJing frOID lung can- 'Ill..mJspided. Ifthere areboundSPIIIIIII There are about 100,000 ,_.:.,_natural chemical enti.....,,.... ties, 1 to 5 percent of which of it is too much: studying groups of llum.- and testing animals. Neither method Is wholly satisfactory. Epidemi- olOSY compares groups tbat are exposed to certain kinds of chemicals and radiation with control groups that are not exposed. It has some serious -------------prime New England real estate. 1 0 Subsc:ription 5'.95 for 12 months I I 01=:=:...-:u.~lllll I I IIII1 Name Address II ip_ _ I1 Mail to UpCountry etbeer,manadntdhseucpopsot rotfincgatrhineasfuorr- lwrs. are thought to be carcinogen- ic, according to Dr. w. Gary Flamm, a toxicologist in tbe shortc:ominp, however. For one thing, it is impossible to isolate people, like laboratory .._ 33 Eaale st., Pitlsfldd. Mass. Ol:ZOI ~ ~------------ _.., If betaefits clearly outweigh Food and Drug Administra- animals, for most or all of ClOid8, it.is fuD speed ahead. If tion's Bureau of Foods. So, their lives, so it is impossible CQIIts far outwei8b benefits, wbat do toxicologists eat? tbe pnJduct either never sees "Everything," he says. to know about everythins tbey eat, drink and breathe. Fur- Ifyoulove tile Jl8ht of day or, if .u.cty "My philosophy is to spread tber, the cause and effect relaon the market, is canceled. the risk. If I ate one tbiDg [in tionship in epidemiological New York, . 1'Jae are ....,.Uy no clear- excess] I'd be in trouble." studies is often week. Asbestos cut IJnbalanees. however, so Most grains, including workers do baw a higher per- you'llfmd - level tbiJu&ht to be ac- ceptable is illveDted. 1'lds raises a fuodamental quiesuon: To whom, exactly, is the level acceptable? Wben a ' newscaster says tbat "the quality of air today is ac:c:ept- com, and peanuts develop a :rnmold called Aspergillus - : : : : -~'tm! a a known carcinogen. Peanut butter contains an almost in- c:entage of lung CPDCer tban does the geoeral public, but that does DOt nec:essarily mean tbe asbestos causes the cancer; it may mean tbat asbestos fibers in the lungs triger something else tbat causes the plenty to love in Metropoltan able," to whom is be or she finitesimallevel of aflatoxin cancer. Finally, epdemio refeniua? Wbat Is acceptable B, says Dr. Flamm. But he giJts are hampered by usually Diaiy to the taxi driver Wbo must adds, "This doesn't mean small groups, individual earn a HviD8 with his automo- that you shouldn't eat peanut resistance to participation Wednesdav in bile Is DOt necessarily accept- able to the asthmatic breath.: ID8 the fumes- except at the moment wben the asthmatic, baving a seizure, needs the butter. AU it means is tbat you'dbesmartDOttoeatpee- nut butter, or anytbing else, exclusively. -W. E. B. and, in a society as mobile as this one, the difficulty of access to good records. Animal experiments, generally with rodents, bave for the TheLi_wlag Section taxi in order to get to a hospi- most part been very effective FMSI 05738 By 'WUUcaa E. BUI'rOWS Meanwhile, the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment has scheduled hearings on saccharin this Sometimes a simple question put by a spring amid what is one of the fiercest layman can get to the heart of a com- lobbying battles in memory. plex scientific problem more surely Levels of acceptability- the doses of than expert interrogation. So it was at chemicals and radiation people may the New York Academy of Sciences' In- safely absorb - are becoming criti- ternational Conference on Public Con- cally important now that so many can- trol of Environmental Health Hazards cers are thought to be environmentally last year. Peter A. A. Berle, then New caused. And since most cancer-causing York State's Environmental Conserva- chemicals have long latency periods, tion Commissioner, had just unveiled a the real effects of the petrochemical ex- plan for dredging heavily contami- plosion of the 40's, 50's and 60's are only nated "hot spots" along the upper Hud- just beginning to be felt. An estimated son River of 340,000 pounds of the PCB's 400,000 Americans will die of cancer that had been dumped into the water- this year and it is thought that 20 per- way by the General Electric Company. cent of all Americans now living- per- A succession of health officials, scientists and corporate representatives rose to question Mr. Berle about the de- haps one out of every five reading this -are going to die of some form of cancer unless something is done about it, tails of removing the PCB's (poly- and quickly. chlorinated biphenyls - heat-resistant Yet none of the public-health officials chemicals used for insulating trans- who set acceptable levels for the thou- formers and capacitors), which have sands of chemicals we eat, drink and been shown to cause birth defects, reproductive failure and cancer in animals, and are strongly suspected of being carcinogenic to man. breathe can be absolutely sure that those levels adequately protect the public from serious illness or deadly disease. Any dose of a toxin, however low, When her turn came, Carolyn Cun- involves some risk. But trying to calcu- ningham, the head of the Conservation late the precise degree of risk is incred- Advisory Council for Rye, N. Y., whose ibly difficult. "Tuesday Only" tag Indicated her lim- ited status at the meeting, stepped to make matters worse, the the microphone and asked a question so level-setting process elementary that none of the experts in takes place in a regulatory the room would have dreamed of rais- morass involving several ing it. Yet the answer to it-continues to Federal agencies and a elude and confound them all: "The ac- dozen laws (each of which is ceptable level for PCB's has been set at to some extent vague, incon- 5 parts per million. Is that level safe?" sistent or contradictory), Mr. Berle deferred to Leo Hetling, state and local agencies, the courts, then his director of pure-waters re- Congress, business interests, environ- search, who answered: "That's like mentalists, ''independent'' testing asking how many cigarettes can one laboratories, the National Academy of safely smoke. The Food and Drug Ad- Sciences, hospitals and universities, a ministration considers it safe for eating legion of lobbyists, and a growing num- fish." ber of health functionaries on virtually Mrs. Cunningham was not satisfied all levels of government. The result is with Mr. Hetling's evasive reply. But pandemonium. his smoking analogy amounted to the In the end, economic, not scientific, plain truth. No one knows exactly how factors frequently prevail. Often these many PCB's the human bodycan safely are incorporated into law. The Toxic assimilate, so setting "acceptable" Substances Control Act, for example, levels for them, as well as for thou- stipulates that health risks be balanced sands of other dangerous chemicals, in- against economic factors and other cluding saccharin, is scientifically ab- "public impacts." It is the scientists surd. andstatisticians, however, on whom we Saccharin, in fact, is currently the ob- must depend to apply data from cellu- ject of a bitter controversy over lar and animal experiments in an effort whether it should be banned in the to figure out how much of which poison, United States, as it is in Canada. Re- individually and in combination, the peated laboratory tests have showed human body can tolerate. But E. that the artificial sweetener causes Cuyler Hammond, a vice president of cancer in animals and almost without the American Cancer Society and an question can do the same in humans. expert statistician, says that the While acknowledging that saccharin process, though seemingly sound, is can be lethal, a National Academy of basically "byguess and by God." Sciences panel recommended to Con- Yet industrialists, lawyers, politi- gress on Feb. 28 that the additive be re- cians and economists in essence take stricted but not banned entirely, since these numbers, imprecise as they are, it is considered necessary for those who and present the public with difficult must restrict their sugar intake. There choices: How much of these poisons are were 12 vigorous dissenters among the you willing to live with? If you don't 37 panel members, however. Some of swallow a little poison every day - a them went so far as to contend that level we agree is acceptable- you will there is really no scientific basis for set- ting human risk levels for carcinogens William E. Burrows, a former Times and that dividing additives into risk reporter, is an associate professor of categories is, therefore, senseless. journalism at New York University. OUR BIACKBERI APRICOTFU BRANDle NEVEROI SEASe The time is alwa~ ReSlnier's fruit-flavor~ LiRe Apricot or E They're deliciou~ the rocRs, or experit one of the recipes y the bacR labels of b REGNI: America's Most Ex~nsivl (Say Ren-ya 70 PROOF PRODUCED ANO BO" ThcNcwYorl FMSI 05739 FMSI 05740 FMSI 05741