Document dnY849EZRBp4ByyvqMZwNOd1R

EDITORIAL COMMENTARY Flunking the Peanut Butter Te TO; ( Q iviYrvd--V_c_A,_ FROM: JF-tt-k. DATE: si0'1 FYr -&-A-W.J Most Claims That Chemicals Cause Cancer Are Bunk eregulation, one of the Ren* D ten Administration's leading claim* 10 feme, somehow hu bypassed Walter Olson Is a vice president of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. the huge U.S, chemical industry. Other businessmen may be freed from govern ment control, but those whose products arc labeled "tonic'*--and just about ev erything has some degree of tonicityeach year come under increasingly strin gent controls. That should surprise no one: Public fear of chemicals has proba bly never been higher. By far the most potent fear in peo ple's minds is that artificial chemicals cause cancer. Millions of Americans are convinced that they, face a significant e America is not sulTering from a n The normal human diet is loaded "Cancer epidemic.'' Once you factor out with naturally occurring carcinogens. the advancing age of the population and Aflatoxin, a very strong cancer-causer, the cases caused by smoking and overex results from mold on nuts and grains posure to the sun, death rates from the and is common in the human diet. The disease are not rising. barbecue ptt is anolher notable penl, e Most cancer is "environmental," in the sense that it's not hereditary. But that term covers tobacco, alcohol and along with browned and burnt meat in general, but the vegetable kingdom is scarcely benign: Plants generate toxins in high doses to ward off insect, animal drug use. viruses, fat intake, reproduc tive behavior and so on. Ordinary con sumers face very little risk of cancer and fungal predators. These natural pes ticides often work by the same biochem risk of the dread disease from the sir from industrial processes, and virtually ical mechanisms as their man-made they breathe, the additive- and pesti none from food additives, pesticides, equivalents, and there is scant reason to cide-laden food they eat, and--espe drinking water contaminants or nuclear assume that the one kind is much safer cially--the water and soil around them, power: General air pollution risks are than the other Of 390 suspect chemicals contaminated by seeping wssles from minimal, with a yeat's worth ofexposure tested, 6099 of the artificial and 41% of leaky storage tanks and chemical to Los Angela smog no worse than the natural chemicals were shown to dumps. Anxieties were worsened last smoking two packs of cigarettes. On-the- cause cancer in rats or mice. Americans Wednesday by a headline-making report job exposures arc more serious, at least cat at least 10,000 lima more of the from the National Academy ofSciences, which said that under "worst-case" as for the relatively few workers who en counter high concentrations, hut there, natural pesticida, by weight, their artificial counterparts. than of sumptions, residua from pesticides too. the risks turn out to be fsr lea than Many compounds, though Carci posed an alarming cancer risk. what was widely assumed 10 yean ago. nogenic, are known to provide health * Such concerns are vastly overblown. In a remarkable article, in the April IT issue of Science, three Berkeley re searchers, led by the eminent biochemist Bruce Ames, sum up the present-day scientific knowledge on the subject of cancer. Companion articles by other sci benefits. They include a number of valu Radiation and toxic substanca are able drugs and several common metals important cancer risks, but in both cases that are' essential to nutrition in trace the background levels found in nature quantitia. Other carcinogens arise from dwarf the relatively small contributions the body's own metabolism. The culprit of man. Most radiation exposure, for In the disease may often be the absence example, coma from elements like rs5000, the gas that seeps into basements, of anti-risk factors, rather than the pres ence of risk factors. and altitude. (Denverites and frequent entists in the same issue add more de (lien absorb more cosmic rays.) tails. According to the reports: Hay 23. 1*17 The Berkeley lam devised an elabo rate index to rank relative cancer risks for humans by reference to known risks in lab animals. They focused on actual likeUat-case risks, not the "wont-case" analysts publicized in the NAS study (which, if it were applied to natural carcinogens a il is to sttifidaL would make the natural risks seem truly astro nomical). In (crated parties should check the details and aveals in the Science article, but, simplified, one could translate the index into x pexnut buucr sandwich test. Each such snack poses a tiny cancer risk (from aftstoxin in the peanuts) that can be ailed I on the sale. By comparison, the allyl isothtocyanate in s teaspoon of sU-natural brow* mustard scores 2, or twice the cancercausing potency of the panui butter, while the hydrxzina in a single raw mushroom score 3, as does the oingolc in a one-gram pinch of dried bssiL What about Ihc over-publicized haz ards of the American diet? A 12-ounce an of saochsrin-sweetened cola hu a score of 2, same u the mustard. The nitrosamina in n helping of bacon are much lea dangerous, at s score of 0.1, while the pesticide ethylene dibromide, which the Environmental Protection Agency aw fit to ban during s grai officially iriggered nationwide scare, is still more innocuous by s factor of eight: for the average consumer of grain prod ucts, two and a half months' worth of exposure before the ban was about u hazardous as one peanut butter sand wich. CBY 1912366 RSV0034180 Remember the panic when polluted welli in Silicon Valley were cloeed down ms unsafe to human health? It luma out that a liter of water front the worst of than was only an eighth as hazardous as the peanut butter. Water from wells in Woburn. Mast, site of another memora ble scare, was 10 times safer itiU. Ordi nary tap water, with iu alight residue of chlorination, is on atrcrs(C far more circiaotenicthan either source. Most of these conclusions are not really new; investigative journalist Edith Efron told the story three years ago In her book 77ir Apocalypikr Canter ani Ik* Bit lie (Barnn't, March Id, 19*4). Another,writer ahead of hit time was the late William Havender, the biochemist 'rose untimely death last month was a great toss for sensible science policy. But it took a while for the work of Ames and others to find its way into popular health columns. Now that it has, the implications for public policy are profound. Time and again, federal regulation has gone to extremes of expense and coercion to attack what now seem trivial risks. The famous Delaney dauac, for example, ham all additives linked to cancer in rata, however weak the-link and however strong the substance's benefits. Such laws can actually increase overall risk by driving society to less safe alternatives. Similarly, when fumigants are re stricted, the risk of mold toxins rites, and fsraters start breeding plants for better insect resistance, which often means higher toxicity. When cyclamatcs art banned, people consume mot* sugar instead. When nuclear power is stalled, more wood and coal get burned (at a muds higher toll in deaths per BTU) and people seal more radon and other cardnogenic fumes into their houses by weather-stripping. Regulatory excess may have lost its rationale, but Use throat persists: de mands for virtual bans on common sub stances like formaldehyde (it occurs nat urally in many.'foods, and substitutes for it carry risks that are not well under stood), as well as looming political grid lock on chemical and nudear waste, with all possible methods of dtspoaal-- incineration, land burial, ocean burial- blocked by one or another pressure group. As usual nowadays, moat of the ac tion and even more of the money is to be found not in regulation, but in litigation, where the 'toxic tort' suit against big business b being perfected by the plainlifts' bai. Such suits follow a simple model: l) find a community or group svilb a `'duster' of health problems; 2) find a substance to which they have arguably been exposed; 3) sue the maker or user, and collect money; 4) see I). There is nothing inherently wrong with this inferential approach to iden tifying risks: genuine epidemiology (ns opposed to the pop variety) has revealed real links like asbestos/mesothelioma and vinyl chloride/angioearcomi among heavily exposed workers. The fudge fac tor comes in when the diseases are var ied and ill-defined, the clustering of the kind that can occur by chance, the expo sure low-level, and the causal link one that can't be verified by the experience of groups exposed to higher concentra tion!. Consider the latest big toxic-tort suit, in which residents of the Denver suburb of Friendly Hills arc claiming that con taminants escaped from s Marlin Mari etta plant six miles away and caused cancer and a variety of other dtsetses among their children. According to the Times'* account of April 19, state heaUh statisticians found no excess child mor tality in Friendly Hilts; EPA tests showed no pollution of the local water; there's no evidence that major contami- nation ever escaped from the Martin Marietta plant; and the plant's water shed is pan of a different water system, where no health problems have been reported, sod which is linked to the Friendly Hills system only by s conduii used for occasional water-sharing More and more companies, fearful of high legal costs and nasty publicity as well as uapredicUble juries, arc cough ing up Urge stints to settle Uwsuiti whose merits art not much mote appar ent than those of the Friendly Hill suit In the Agent Orange case. Judge Jack Weinstein approved an estimated BOO million settlement, even though he said the evidence failed to show thst the manufacturers were responsible. And each round of settlemenu tends to lead to another round of lawsuits. Isn't it time reason prevailed? --Waller Obon .i CBY 1912365 RSV0034181 News Release For Immediate Release June 3, 198? TOXIC AIR POLLUTION REQUIRES TOUGH NEW FEDERAL POLICE STATEMENT BY JOHN B, ADAMS fog NRPC Literally billions of pounds of dozens of toxic compounds are emitted into the air, both from "routine" events and "accidents" each year. As a result of this toxic air pollution, according to the EPA's own estimates, thousands of people endure emergency evacuation from their homes, are hilled, become ill, or are injured each year. *we must not wait for a catastrophic accident, for an American Bhopal, before we act. it is time to stop putting the lives of millions of Americans in jeopardy. It is time to stop treating the atmosphere as a hazardous waste dump. For too long, the EPA has approached toxic air pollution as if this level of human grief were somehow Inevitable and had to be weighed against the cost to industry of controlling these emissions. The public rejects a government policy of cost-benefit analysis and "acceptable risk" when matters of life and death are concerned. If we simply treated our air the same way we treat our food we would be much better off. When someone wants to add something to our food, we insist that they demonstrate it is safe to eat. Our air deserves no less protection. The sources of this pollution range from hundreds of chemical plants which pose great danger to the most exposed plant neighbors', to thousands of chemical-using and fuel-burning sources, to millions of motor vehicles, which together create a deadly "urban soup" of toxic chemicals. In the face of a vast number of potentially (mor*> CBY 1912366 1350 Nre> Xirir Ave, hl.W Washington, DC20005 202 783-7500 . W* '*** RSV0034182 deadly agents the regulatory policy must be comprehensive. m 17 years, however, EPA has done very little to control these . pollutants, having set even marginally protective emission standards for only seven hazardous substances. The agency's interminably slow pollutant-by-pollutant approach should be replaced by standards for classes of chronic toxic pollutants emitted from categories of pollution sources. For acute toxic hazards, most dangerous in accidents. Congress should establish a "no release" objective. Certain chronic toxic solvents should be subject to a scheduled phase-out and replacement by safe substitutes. Municipal waste incinerators ana vehicular sources must also be brought under a strict regime of specific standards for toxics and dangerous metals. NRDC will continue to pursue the avenues of litigation and legislation until a responsible policy is in place to protect us from the danger of toxic air pollution. f#t CBY 1912367 RSV0034183 Toxic Air Pot lutants' The national toxic air pollutant control program should ba refocused on controlling toxic pollution from all Its sources, fran chemical plants to automobiles, and from "routine" emissions to "accidents." For major industrial souroes. Congress should: o require epa to set enIsalon standards for classes of pollutants (such as vo I at I le organic compounds and products of Incomplete ocrrtxjstIon), and require state-of-the-art pollution controls (mediately on newer sources and within to years on all sources; o prohibit use of oost-beneflt analysis (weighing lives against industry costs) In choosing control requirements; o improve emissions inventories and rIght-to-kno* provisions to cover short-term releases, and establish requirements to prevent catastrophic releases. f To control missions as products are used. Congress should: o require EPA to reduce toxic emissions by 90K overat I from "area" sources such as chemical users In five years, and give chemical producers and distributors responsibilities to help ensure carpi lance by their smell business customers; o establish an objective of no releases, by a sat future date, for the most acutely toxic air pollutants and for chronically toxic solvents. For municipal incinerators. Congress should; o require state-of-the-art onisslon controls for all pollutants fran now and existing municipal Incinerators; o require EPA to set special health-protective standards to protect against the build-up of lead In tna blood of the exposed population and the level of dioxin in mothers' milk; o require enforceable camnltments to all feasible alternatives to Incineration, Including recyclIng and waste minimization. For mob 11e sources. Congress should: o set stringent standards for diesel particulate; o establish a fuels program that would ban lead in gasoline completely and ban other toxic fuel additives, reduce gasoline volatility, reduce sulfur In diesel fuel and pranote the use of alternative fuels. CBY 1912368 I i I i l j | I ; , i i I j I j j | i | i I Air Coalition -- National Clean RSV0034184