About the recent controversy concerning municipal water fluoridation, this Fort Smith Times Record editorial hits the nail on the head:
“In our neck of the woods, fluoride overdose is largely limited to children who eat large amounts of toothpaste.”
Fluoridation hasn’t failed us; parents have failed their children.
Just published online in Environmental Health Perspectives is a study attempting to link failed in vitro fertilization with PCBs. But the researchers ignored the classic multiple comparisons problem. Here, 57 congeners were tested and only one produced significantly elevated dose-dependent odds of failed implantation — less than you’d expect by chance at a 5% error level. Moreover, the association between all PCB congeners and failed implantation wasn’t significant. Finally, the researchers considered no other confounding risk factors for the failed implantation. No wonder this was published in EHP.
Walmart has announced that, starting June 1, it will begin testing and rejecting its retail inventory for polybrominated diethyl ethers (PBDEs), heretofore used in flame retardants — even though there’s no evidence of harm, plenty of evidence of effectiveness and no government action against PBDEs. The Washington Post labeled this sort of action “retail regulation.”
Faced with a $700 million remediation effort, Mayor Bloomberg says school kids are exposed to more PCBs from a tuna fish sandwich than the light fixtures in city schools. But when cash-strapped New Yorkers turned to local waterways for food in 2009, the Mayor said “common sense” dictated that anglers shouldn’t eat fish from PCB-contaminated water.
Now we know what the PCBs-in-New-York-City-schools hysteria was all about. Continue reading PCBs in NYC Schools: Mystery Solved
Maine Gov. Paul Lepage was correct about the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) when he recently stated that, Continue reading Maine guv right on BPA science; wrong on joke
The federal government is taking steps to remove mercury thermometers from use, reports the Baltimore Sun. Continue reading EPA discovers new mercury isotope?
by Steve Milloy
How cynical is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about the potential mercury hazard of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)? Continue reading EPA's Mercurial Hypocrisy
There’s a reason CFLs aren’t made in the USA. Continue reading Green lightbulbs poison Chinese workers
By Steve Milloy
December 08, 2008, FoxNews.com
One in three toys was found to have “significant levels of toxic chemicals, including lead, flame retardants and arsenic,” according to a new report from the anti-chemical industry. But don’t let the report’s political agenda distract you from very real toy safety issues.
In what is pitched as its second annual “consumer guide to toxic chemicals in toys,” the Michigan-based Ecology Center reported that, among the 1,500 toys that it tested: 20 percent contained lead, with 3.5 percent exceeding the current recall threshold for lead-based paint; 2.9 percent contained bromine at levels greater than 1,000 parts per million (ppm), indicating the use of brominated flame-retardants; 18.9 percent contained detectable levels of arsenic, with 1.4 percent containing greater than 100 ppm; 2.4 percent contained detectable levels of cadmium; 4.2 percent contained detectable levels of mercury, with 1 percent containing levels greater than 100 ppm; and 27 percent of toys were made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic.
All these chemicals and ppm-levels may sound scary, but what’s the reality?
First, it’s important to keep in mind that there are no reports of any children being harmed by toys containing brominated flame retardants, arsenic, cadmium, mercury or PVC. Brominated flame retardants, in fact, help keep children safe by slowing the burn rate in case of a fire.
That no documented harm has been caused by these chemicals in toys comes as little surprise since, as the basic principle of toxicology goes, “it is the dose that makes the poison.” All substances even air, water, sugar and salt, are “toxic” at sufficiently high exposures. All of us come into contact with potentially toxic substances every day in our air, water, food, clothes, jewelry, and personal care products, for example, but not at levels that cause harm. The Ecology Center made no effort to explore whether and to what extent children are actually exposed to the chemicals detected — much less did it establish that any such exposure is harmful.
The Ecology Center aims to scare parents merely based on the mere detection of these chemicals in toys, which is nothing less than classic junk science. But what’s more interesting — and revealing about the Ecology Center’s motives in fomenting the toy scare — is that it entirely missed warning parents about a very real and deadly threat posed by some of the toys it tested.
Of the top ten lead-containing toys, six were jewelry (necklaces, charm bracelets and a pin) containing from 0.2 percent to about 41 percent lead, according to the Ecology Center. If you then go to the group’s web page to find out why you should be scared about lead in toys, you first, and foremost, get the old environmentalist myths about how there is no safe exposure to lead and that lead causes lower IQ scores and other development problems. While the Ecology Center does mention some real health effects of lead poisoning, including muscle weakness, anemia, and kidney damage, it omitted the big one, death, and then fails to mention a real death that parents might find instructive.
In February 2006, a 4-year old Minnesota boy was taken to the hospital because of vomiting. He was diagnosed with gastroenteritis and released. Two days later, he returned and was admitted to the hospital. Ten hours later he was placed on a mechanical ventilator. The next day, blood work revealed that the boy had an extraordinarily high blood lead level of 180 micrograms per deciliter, and studies indicated that his brain was receiving no blood flow. He was removed from life support and died.
An autopsy retrieved from his stomach a heart-shaped charmed imprinted with “Reebok.” His mother recognized the object as a charm that came with a pair of shoes belonging to another child whose home her son had visited, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was not aware that her son had ingested it, since he had no history of ingesting non-food substances. When tested, the charm was found to consist of 99.1 percent lead. Reebok voluntarily recalled the charms shortly thereafter and instructed parents to “immediately take the charm bracelets away from children and dispose of the entire bracelet.”
Did the Ecology Center spotlight this incident and its outcome on its lead information page? No — even though its “most dangerous” lead-containing toy is a Disney-brand Hannah Montana necklace with heart-shaped charms that are 40 percent lead. Study leader Jeff Gearhart told me that he had heard of the Minnesota poisoning case, but couldn’t explain why mention of it was omitted.
Blinded by its anti-chemical agenda — Gearhart told me that he was glad to see that companies were responding to the unwelcome spotlight of his research by reformulating their toys — the Ecology Center apparently can’t see the true dangers in the forest because it’s focused on the politically incorrect “chemical” trees. If a public interest group, which is what the Ecology Center holds itself out to be, is really concerned about toy safety, how about alerting parents to real and specific dangers — like swallowing small lead trinkets? But that’s not all.
In 2007, there were 232,900 toy-related injuries among all ages, including 18 toy-related deaths among children under age 15, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Riding toys, including non-motorized scooters, and small toy balls were associated with most of the deaths. Most of the 232,900 injuries were lacerations, contusions and abrasions, most frequently to the face and head. Notably, there were no reports of injuries from chemicals in toys.
The Ecology Center seems to be worried about toy safety only to the extent that it helps the anti-chemical political agenda. But there are plenty of genuine toy safety concerns for consumers to consider. They ought not to be distracted from those realities by trumped-up, bogus scares.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
By Steven Milloy
September 18, 2008, FoxNews.com
Anti-chemical activists opened a new front in their jihad against the plastics chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) this week. Continue reading Activists Hit the (Plastic) Bottle Again
By Steven Milloy
August 7, 2008, FoxNews.com
Former New York Times environmental reporter Phil Shabecoff is so green he even recycles debunked health scares.
Shabecoff’s new book, “Poisoned Profits: How Corporate America Is Poisoning Our Children With Toxic Chemicals,” claims to “reveal the frightening and expanding dimension of children’s chronic illnesses in the U.S. and link this epidemic to industrial toxins.”
In attacking virtually every sort of industrial chemical, Shabecoff implies that almost all childhood illnesses, failed pregnancies and birth defects are attributable to the “42 billion pounds of chemicals per day” either made in or imported into the U.S.
Shabecoff asserts that industrial chemicals are barely regulated, companies “have knowingly put and kept toxic products on the market,” children are more vulnerable to chemicals, “no one is safe,” the health care costs attributable to chemicals exceed $100 billion annually, and that the solution is to go “chemical free.”
If Shabecoff’s book were turned into a movie, however, it would have to be titled, “The Night of the Living Dead — Chemical Boogeyman Edition.” Scares about all these substances have been debunked over and over during the last few decades.
This column has addressed most of the scares that Shabecoff tries to resurrect, including those about phthalates; bisphenol-A; flame retardants; triclosan; volatile organic compounds; PVC; PCBs; dioxin; pesticides; lead; mercury; rocket fuel; arsenic; antibiotics; and steroids.
Shabecoff’s attempted resurrection of these scares isn’t surprising given the usual suspects he digs up for interviews. They constitute a veritable Who’s Who of Junk Science, many of whom have been featured at one time or another in this column including: Charlotte Brody (Health Care Without Harm); Carol Browner; Richard Clapp; Devra Davis; Lois Gibbs; Lynn Goldman; Tyrone Hayes; Michael Jacobson; Philip Landrigan; Bruce Lanphear; John Peterson Myers; Herbert Needleman; Ellen Silbergeld; Shanna Swan; and Walter Willett.
And if Shabecoff didn’t personally interview a junk scientist, he cited their anti-chemical activism. Some of these individuals include: Erin Brockovich; Rachel Carson; Theo Colburn; Ken Cook (Environmental Working Group); David Michaels; Arnold Schecter; and Neils Skakkebaek.
And if these sources aren’t enough to cast doubt on “Poisoned Profits,” then there’s Shabecoff, himself, whom the uber-liberal New York Times reassigned from environmental reporting in 1991 because he was too green.
Then-Times Washington bureau chief Howell Raines told Shabecoff, “New York is complaining. You’re too pro-environment and they say you’re ignoring the costs of environmental protection. They want you to cover the [Internal Revenue Service],” according to a 1998 report in The Nation.
Shabecoff subsequently quit the Times. “Poisoned Profits,” therefore, is precisely what one might expect from a biased journalist who depends on dubious and discredited sources to breathe life into alleged “problems” that have escaped scientific detection despite more than 40 years and tens of billions of dollars of research.
When you think about it, Shabecoff’s hypothesis is really incredible. He suggests that, because we make or import more chemicals than ever before, emissions, exposures and risks to health are greater than ever before.
“There is abundant evidence that the trillions of pounds of hazardous pollutants that have been poured into the environment are, in all likelihood, responsible for much of the sickness, suffering and, too often, death of America’s children,” he writes.
And in the grand environmentalist tradition of hyperbolic imagery, his media release states, “The effect on children’s health is like a World Trade Center in slow motion.” But the facts don’t match up with Shabecoff’s hysterics.
First, industrial emissions and the public’s exposure to them have declined over the past few decades. Air emissions declined 67 percent between 1993 and 2002, emissions of volatile organic compounds declined by 50 percent from 1980 to 2007, and overall industrial releases to the environment declined 59 percent between 1988 and 2006, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Contrary to Shabecoff’s claim of deteriorating public health, life expectancy, the most objective standard for measuring health, is the highest it has ever been across all race, age and gender groups, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall cancer incidence and death rates are declining, and childhood cancer rates are stable, according to the National Institutes of Health. Most importantly, there is not a single study that credibly links typical or legal industrial emissions to the environment as a cause of any disease in anyone, including children.
Shabecoff wrestles with this fact early in his book when he writes that “Often … the scientific evidence is cloudy.” But he quickly resolves his dilemma by suggesting a conspiracy among the chemical industry, politicians and government officials to ignore children’s health.
What follows are 200-plus pages of innuendo and half-truths. An example of Shabecoff’s penchant for omitting key facts arises when he praises environmental groups working “for” the children. He laments that “there is no sheriff leading this posse.”
He then nominates Mt. Sinai School of Medicine’s Philip Landrigan, “called by some the father of environmental pediatrics,” to assume the role. Landrigan chaired the National Research Council Committee that produced the 1993 “landmark” report Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, a study that was used by activists to scare politicians into enacting the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996.
But anyone who actually read that report knows that it utterly failed to make any link between pesticides in food and health risk to children. Shabecoff’s hero was forced to publicly acknowledge in the wake of the report that “no disease has ever been documented that stems from legal applications of pesticides.”
The environmental scare movement started in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s anti-chemical screed, “Silent Spring.” It’s comforting to know that 46 years later the alarmist case against industrial chemicals remains evidence-free.