Safe to eat
Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), an industry funded organization.
[ Response to this op-ed below | Info on ACSH ]
Last week the Environmental Protection Agency proposed that General Electric spend $490 million dredging the Hudson River to remove what are known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
Until 1977, PCBs were used in the manufacture of transformers, adhesives and capacitators, among other things. GE legally dumped them into the river north of Albany for decades. The PCBs are now embedded in the mud beneath the Hudson, and are not generally dispersed in the water.
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Media coverage has been murky as to exactly what the EPA hopes to accomplish with half a billion dollars of dredging. To clarify the agency's intent, I contacted EPA official Kevin Matthews. He explained that the EPA was worried about both the "health of the river" and about human health problems, particularly an increased risk of cancer from eating Hudson River fish.
But contrary to EPA assertions, there is no credible evidence that PCB exposure in the general environment, in fish, or even at very high levels in the workplace, has ever led to an increase in cancer risk. While reasonable people have suggested that dredging would displace buried PCBs and make matters worse, at this point we have no evidence that even high-level human exposure to PCBs causes any problem other than eye and skin irritation.
The EPA's assertion that PCBs in fish pose a human cancer risk is based solely on observations that high-dose, prolonged PCB exposure causes tumors in laboratory animals. But this is very different from the question at hand: Is there any evidence that the traces of PCBs in Hudson River fish increase the risk of cancer in humans? The EPA, an environmental regulatory agency, isn't known for its competency in the scientific discipline of cancer causation. We therefore need to turn elsewhere for expert opinions on any causal relationship between PCBs and cancer.
An examination of the bible of cancer causation, "Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention" by David Schottenfeld and Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr., reveals no reference whatsoever to PCB-containing fish (or any other source of PCBs) causing malignancy. This 1,500-page volume focuses on real human cancer risks, like tobacco use and overexposure to sunlight. But perhaps the ultimate authority on cancer risk is the National Cancer Institute. I put the question to the institute's director, Richard Klausner: Does NCI have any evidence that eating fish from the Hudson River contributes to the toll of human cancer?
This wasn't the first time I'd queried Dr. Klausner on cancer causation. Over two years ago the organization I head up, the American Council on Science and Health, composed (and had peer-reviewed) a similar, but broader, question for which we unanimously agreed the answer was no. (ACSH is an independent consortium of 350 physicians and scientists, funded by private foundations and corporations, including the GE fund, which accounts for about 1% of the group's total budget.)
Specifically, we asked Dr. Klausner: "At this time, does the NCI know of any credible scientific evidence that exposure to trace levels (parts per million or less) of synthetic chemicals in the general environment -- even if these chemicals have been shown in high dose to cause cancer in laboratory animals -- contributes to the toll of human cancer in the U.S.?"
As should now be obvious to GE and every other U.S. manufacturer, this is much more than a theoretical question. It has immediate, practical and costly implications. Congress, for example, has passed laws based on the premise that a "mouse is a little man." One, the "Delaney Clause," states unequivocally that any synthetic food chemical that causes cancer in lab animals must be assumed to pose a human cancer risk -- no matter how minimal the human exposure -- and must be banned. Similarly, California's Proposition 65 requires that all consumer products containing even trace levels of animal carcinogens be banned or labeled. In short, decisions are being made, and limited resources are being committed, based on the assumption that trace exposures to animal carcinogens like PCBs pose a human cancer risk and must not be tolerated, no matter what the cost.
For over two years, NCI has refused to answer our original question. Presumably NCI has been resisting stating the obvious -- that there is no evidence that trace levels of animal carcinogens pose a human cancer risk -- to avoid a head-on collision with the EPA, which for decades has been on a regulatory carcinogen witch hunt.
This week, however, the National Cancer Institute found its voice. Susan Sieber, a scientist and director of communications, told me that the institute knew of "no evidence" that eating fish from the Hudson River posed a human cancer risk. Why should we tolerate government policies that purport to prevent cancer by targeting environmental risks our nation's top cancer experts say don't exist?
Comments on Whelan's op-ed by Our Stolen Future 12dec00
With significant funding from GE, it is not surprising to see Elizabeth Whelan, President of the industry PR front group, American Council on Science and Health, defending GE's attempts to avoid their legal and financial responsibilities to clean up the Hudson River of PCB contamination caused by GE. What is surprising is to see how blatantly she misrepresents the facts in her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Contrary to her assertions, there is solid evidence linking PCBs to human cancer. If there ever were any doubt about the ACSH biases, they are laid bare by her distortion of science in this op-ed.
Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on 12 December 2000, that "contrary to EPA assertions, there is no credible evidence that PCB exposure in the general environment, in fish, or even at very high levels in the workplace, has ever led to an increase in cancer risk."
Whelan says she asked the National Cancer Institute "Does NCI have any evidence that eating fish from the Hudson River contributes to the toll of human cancer?" and then quotes the National Cancer Institute's director of communications, Susan Sieber, as having said that the NCI knows of "no evidence" that eating fish from the Hudson River posed a human cancer risk."
That would seem to do it. Eating fish from the Hudson River must be safe... until one looks more carefully at what Whelan asked, how Sieber responded, and what evidence there actually is about the health risks of PCBs.
Whelan asked about evidence on the cancer risks of eating fish from the Hudson River. There have been none from the Hudson River that prove cancer risks. But there have been studies elsewhere of PCBs, consumed in fish as well as accumulated through other diets, that show significant health risks, both to cancer as well as to other health endpoints. Whelan's question was cleverly worded and the answer then misleadingly conveyed. These studies done elsewhere are directly relevant to the health risks of people eating PCB-contaminated fish in the Hudson. Whelan's sleight-of-hand to avoid acknowledging these other studies is nothing short of deceitful.
Data from the National Cancer Institute itself, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control, established in 1997 a very strong cancer risk for PCB exposure. This paper, summarized elsewhere within www.OurStolenFuture.org, reveals that PCBs interacting with Epstein-Barr virus elevate the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a hormone-related cancer, by over 20-fold. NHL is one of the cancers that has been increasing steadily in the United States over the past 2 decades. By itself, the virus appears to have little impact on NHL risk. PCBs by themselves elevate the risk only modestly (but significantly). Together, however, the impact on risk is dramatic.
Whelan's dismissal of PCB-related health risks also ignores significant PCB impacts on cognitive and immune system function of children exposed in the womb. Her debating technique of ignoring these impacts may be effective for readers who have heard only about the cancer risks of environmental contamination, but it is dishonest. The studies have been published in major scientific outlets, including Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Environmental Health Perspectives. Anyone public health science expert working on contamination cannot help but be aware of them. Whelan's failure to mention them confirms her biases as a GE apologist, not a disinterested commentator on public health science.
[The two links in the preceding paragraph are to two specific, recent studies. More general coverage of contamination effects on neurological and immunological development can be found at "Brain and Behavior" and "Disease Resistance," respectively.]
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