Thoughts on balance reporting--part 2
After yesterday's post on balance in reporting, Roger W added a comment, saying:
I appreciate Roger’s comment, and wanted to follow up on it here. I am actually familiar with Ms. Whelan’s name, and I think Roger’s assessment is fair to some extent. I think she does believe in her stands, and isn’t strictly taking stands for pay, but there is no doubt she is paid handsomely for taking those stands by corporations that tend to place their bottom-line interests' above all other considerations. And though I think her stands may have been somewhat rational when she began taking them decades ago (she started ACSH in 1978) they are far from rational when the body of evidence is piling up that indeed most of these chemicals are dangerous. Our traditional approach has been, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. Today I think we need to move toward the precautionary principal, which says in a nutshell, they are dangerous until proven innocent.
But, Roger, since you bring up Alar, let me talk about that: Not long after my husband, Ken Woodard. and I moved to a farm in Minnesota, Alar dominated coffee-klatch discussions among farmers: It was 1989 and CBS’s 60 Minutes had just aired a piece about the chemical and its potential ill effects on children.
For background: Alar is the trade name for daminozide, a chemical that was used on fruit as a growth regulator and ripening aid. It allowed farmers to control the timing of harvest for their fruit crops, and though it could be applied to many crops, it was used most frequently by the apple industry after its introduction to the marketplace in 1968. Studies in the 1970s linked a breakdown product of it, ”unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine,” or UDMH, to cancer. By 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency added both daminozide and UDMH to its list of probable carcinogens, but they allowed it to remain on the market.
Baby food manufacturers, including Gerber and Heinz, reported detectible levels of UDMH in apple sauce and apple juice, and in 1986, after the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban of the chemical, some major baby food manufacturers quit purchasing apples from producers who were using Alar. Yet still, the chemical remained on the market. That spurred the Natural Resources Defense Council to investigate Alar. In February, 1989, they released a report, Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food, that showed up to 30% of apples purchased at a grocery store still had traces of the chemical. Intolerable Risk provided the foundation for the 60 Minutes report.
One night shortly after the 60 Minutes piece aired we went to our neighbor’s for coffee. Willie was in his 60s at the time—a traditional Midwestern farmer living on the farm his grandfather homesteaded a hundred years earlier. Willie knew Ken and I were farming organically, so the Alar piece became a point of discussion. Willie pointed to an apple in a bowl of fruit on the table, and said the little bit of chemical on that apple isn’t a problem. There's not enough pesticide on it to make you sick.
I tended to agree. I didn't eat and farm organically because I thought the traces of pesticides found in foods were a big health problem, but because I didn’t want to handle pesticides, and because I did think it would make a difference to the environment and thus to society at large. I believed that organic production helped maintain biodiversity, and that maintaining good habitat for all God’s creatures—great and small—was a key to our own species long-term survival. I also believed that the profligate use of pesticides and herbicides became an endless and spiraling cycle that sickened and bankrupted family farmers, poisoned streams and wildlife, and didn’t actually resolve weed and pest problems.
Now remember, Ms. Whelan, whose organization had a $25,000 grant in 1989 from Alar-manufacturer Uniroyal, is credited with leading the charge against the “Alar scare”. In fact most people who watch the balancers credit Alar as lifting ACSH and Ms. Whelan to new heights, and really giving her a platform as a balancer.
Several years ago, when I became interested in the interface of environment and health, I sat down to coffee with Suzanne Wuerthele, a career toxicologist with EPA Region 8 in Denver. Our conversation drifted to Alar, and Wuerthele said, “ They still lie about it; they say it was an ‘Alar scare’ as if it was artificial. But guess what—it wasn’t. Alar is a carcinogenic chemical.”
Yet as recently as 2004 (not long before my conversation with Wuerthele), ACSH was still painting Alar-as-victim in their “Review of the Greatest Unfounded Health Scares of Recent Times.” (See it here.)
Intolerable Risk (available here) found:
If that seems inconceivable, consider that preschoolers consume far higher quantities of fruit per body weight (all that apple sauce and apple juice for example) than adults. Would you want your kids, or grandkids, eating those chemicals if NRDC's 'conservative estimate' is right?
With regards to Ms. Whelan, you might take the time to interview her. She's actually a rational person who has a personal goal of going after those who demonize chemistry.
One of her early targets was alar, and the evidence of alar in apples pretty much wiped out that year's crop. Whelan was one of those who challenged the manner in which the government evaluated the impact of alar and its use of rats as stand-ins for people.
Her emphasis is that you need to prove that there is a problem, or a reasonable possibility that there is a problem, rather than assuming that all chemicals are bad.
I appreciate Roger’s comment, and wanted to follow up on it here. I am actually familiar with Ms. Whelan’s name, and I think Roger’s assessment is fair to some extent. I think she does believe in her stands, and isn’t strictly taking stands for pay, but there is no doubt she is paid handsomely for taking those stands by corporations that tend to place their bottom-line interests' above all other considerations. And though I think her stands may have been somewhat rational when she began taking them decades ago (she started ACSH in 1978) they are far from rational when the body of evidence is piling up that indeed most of these chemicals are dangerous. Our traditional approach has been, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. Today I think we need to move toward the precautionary principal, which says in a nutshell, they are dangerous until proven innocent.
But, Roger, since you bring up Alar, let me talk about that: Not long after my husband, Ken Woodard. and I moved to a farm in Minnesota, Alar dominated coffee-klatch discussions among farmers: It was 1989 and CBS’s 60 Minutes had just aired a piece about the chemical and its potential ill effects on children.
For background: Alar is the trade name for daminozide, a chemical that was used on fruit as a growth regulator and ripening aid. It allowed farmers to control the timing of harvest for their fruit crops, and though it could be applied to many crops, it was used most frequently by the apple industry after its introduction to the marketplace in 1968. Studies in the 1970s linked a breakdown product of it, ”unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine,” or UDMH, to cancer. By 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency added both daminozide and UDMH to its list of probable carcinogens, but they allowed it to remain on the market.
Baby food manufacturers, including Gerber and Heinz, reported detectible levels of UDMH in apple sauce and apple juice, and in 1986, after the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban of the chemical, some major baby food manufacturers quit purchasing apples from producers who were using Alar. Yet still, the chemical remained on the market. That spurred the Natural Resources Defense Council to investigate Alar. In February, 1989, they released a report, Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food, that showed up to 30% of apples purchased at a grocery store still had traces of the chemical. Intolerable Risk provided the foundation for the 60 Minutes report.
One night shortly after the 60 Minutes piece aired we went to our neighbor’s for coffee. Willie was in his 60s at the time—a traditional Midwestern farmer living on the farm his grandfather homesteaded a hundred years earlier. Willie knew Ken and I were farming organically, so the Alar piece became a point of discussion. Willie pointed to an apple in a bowl of fruit on the table, and said the little bit of chemical on that apple isn’t a problem. There's not enough pesticide on it to make you sick.
I tended to agree. I didn't eat and farm organically because I thought the traces of pesticides found in foods were a big health problem, but because I didn’t want to handle pesticides, and because I did think it would make a difference to the environment and thus to society at large. I believed that organic production helped maintain biodiversity, and that maintaining good habitat for all God’s creatures—great and small—was a key to our own species long-term survival. I also believed that the profligate use of pesticides and herbicides became an endless and spiraling cycle that sickened and bankrupted family farmers, poisoned streams and wildlife, and didn’t actually resolve weed and pest problems.
Now remember, Ms. Whelan, whose organization had a $25,000 grant in 1989 from Alar-manufacturer Uniroyal, is credited with leading the charge against the “Alar scare”. In fact most people who watch the balancers credit Alar as lifting ACSH and Ms. Whelan to new heights, and really giving her a platform as a balancer.
Several years ago, when I became interested in the interface of environment and health, I sat down to coffee with Suzanne Wuerthele, a career toxicologist with EPA Region 8 in Denver. Our conversation drifted to Alar, and Wuerthele said, “ They still lie about it; they say it was an ‘Alar scare’ as if it was artificial. But guess what—it wasn’t. Alar is a carcinogenic chemical.”
Yet as recently as 2004 (not long before my conversation with Wuerthele), ACSH was still painting Alar-as-victim in their “Review of the Greatest Unfounded Health Scares of Recent Times.” (See it here.)
Intolerable Risk (available here) found:
“Between 5,500 and 6,200 of the current population of American preschoolers may eventually get cancer solely as a result of their exposure before six years of age to eight pesticides or metabolites commonly found in fruits and vegetables. These estimates are based on scientifically conservative risk assessment procedures. They indicate that more than 50% of a person's lifetime cancer risk from exposure to carcinogenic pesticides is typically incurred in the first six years of life.”
If that seems inconceivable, consider that preschoolers consume far higher quantities of fruit per body weight (all that apple sauce and apple juice for example) than adults. Would you want your kids, or grandkids, eating those chemicals if NRDC's 'conservative estimate' is right?
Labels: alar, apples ACSH, balanced reporting
1 Comments:
At October 24, 2007 11:51 AM , roger said...
As a general rule, Carol, I leave personal views out of professional discussions. But I'll answer your query as to what amount of risk is acceptable for my own children .
To begin with, however, the notion that Whelan has a rational argument does not mean I agree with it. She essentially take a business oriented view: don't ban it until you prove it's unsafe.
That is counter to the prevailing public health oriented view of don't use it until you prove it is safe.
A decade ago, I funded research at the Duke University School of the Environment on ways to determine whethe or not a compound is actually teratogenic.
The research involved two species of catfish in the same fresh water environment who were exposed to hydrocarbons. Both species developed genetic markers triggered by that exposure. In one species, the young were born with tumors. In the other, the young were free of tumors or markers.
The EPA rules called for elimintion of the contamination at the source if there are any genetic markers though, at the time, there was no way to tell if those markers were any more significant than the permanent mark on your shoulder from infant vaccinations.
Personally, I back the public health orientation -- ban it unless you can prove it is harmless, particularly if there are any indications otherwise. but I understand the other orientation. I just disagree with it and don't put Whelan in the category of, say, a flaming, amoral capitalist like Sen. Inhofe who, in my view, is irrational.
As for my kids, my 15 year old daughter developed breast cancer. The oncologist gave us a crash course on hormones and other additives in beef, poultry, milk, etc. which, in retrospect, I wish we had embarked on 15 years earlier.
Roger W
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home