Tobacco Documents Online

During the Alar crisis, scared consumers asked the Enr.lironmental Protection Agen- cy if it was safe to pour apple juice doum the drain-would it pollute the ground water? In the name of environmentalism we are making bad regulations based on emotion and misleading statistics. The wasteful pursuit of zero risk n Rars.a :. froobss N OT 1+M-Y lfoPit reacted as nystaically to the baseless Alar scare as the folks who were afraid to pour apple luice down their drains, but in a way the foolish- ness of a few symboli:es our nation's environmentalism: an emotional re- action that's based on misinformation, disinformation and the faulty use of statistics. Earth Day is Apr. 22, and the self- anointed guardians of Mother Earth are riding high. Profes- sional and semipro- fessional environ- mental activists have learned how to dominate media coverage. Congess is in a mood to in- dulge in, the politi- cal equivalent of not pouring apple juice down the kitchen U....~ V_ paid in one way or another by con- sumeri or taxpayers. Thu would be on top of current pollution control costs estimated at SS 1 billion a year. We know of no one who would be- grudge 2°'% of our gross national prod- uct or even more on the environment if the money were well spent. There is evidence, however, that much of it will be wasted. Al- most in proportion as these costs have climbed. the poten- tui health benefats from additional en- *P10jor sale lev qnas p.+sOtr eila Atar .wrt Aas saads tlws sdlorw sink. Before the end of this summer Congess may pass ameadments to the Clean Air Art tbat wtll force the nation to go to expensive entremes in an effort to control smog and acid rain. The most responsible economic estimates of the costs of that legisla- tion range from $23 billion to S;5 billion per year, all of which must be Y stein, the foanid- le environmental health alarmist, told a congiessional pan- vironaeatal con• trols have declined, as one after another of the maior "ha- zards" of the 1970s turns out to have been a false alarm or a severe exaggera- tion. Alar in apples is the least of it. In 1976 Samuel el that 20:L of Americans were dying in "an epidemic of cancer" and that 70°e to 90% of husun cancers were environmentally induced. This sorn oi testimony gamers headlines and votes on Capitol Hill. Never mund that his analysis was based entirely on hypothetical "nsk models" that ex- tzapolated large estimates of deaths 161

 t I w- ...+w... w from small pieces of evidence. cal carcinogens from food processing. As those risk estimates accumulat- The problem is not that we are ed, they began to predict !ar more making too great an effort to make the cancer than the nation was actually environment cleaner or our lives saf- experiencing. This prompted Con- a. Those are worsbwhile goals. For all gress' Office of Technology Assess- its immease benefits, industrializa- ment to commission a study by Sir tion brtngs with it ruks, which need Richard Doll and Rtchard Peto, two attention. The trouble is that we are world-renowned epidemiologists at maktng the wrong efforts, with re- Oxford. In 1981 they concluded that sults a1l too often the opposite of what pollution accounted for only 2% of is intended. cancers, not the 70% and more that Take the banning of Alar. Paradozi- Epstein found. By contrast, smoking, cslly, the ban may raise cancer nsk. diet and other lifesryle choices ac- Why? Alar, a growth hotmone, counted for 75%. (5er tobk. p. 170.) strengthens the bond between the ap- Consumers barraged by news re- ple and the tree, making the fruit less ports that such-and-sucb chemical or suscepnble to leaf miners. Alar's use pollutant "is killing X thousands of obviates the need for much harsher Americans every yeu" may find this insecticides, whose theoretical cancer hard to believe, but whea epidemiolo- risk is much greater. gists went looking for those "70% to Examples of environmenul regula- 90%" of cancer deaths caused by the tians leading to results opposite to eavironmeat, at least 97% of them those intended csa be seen all over wen nowhere to be found. the regulatory landscape. ln pursuit of In 1986 the National Cancer lasti- the impossible goal of eliminating all eute confirmed much of what Doll risk, the regulations ignore side ef- and Peto reported. The t+a said the fects of the regulations themselves best way to cut U.S. eaacer le.els in that can be more dangerous than the half by the year 2000 was to focus percaved otigiaal nsk. The batmmg y on smoking, diet and sexual of the fungicide abylene dibromide vior. But it is a lot easia for a from most food processing in 1983 coagtessmaa to get on television and probably raised cancer rates: Fung rail agaiast a chemical company than product powerful carcinogens, and re- to preacb that Americans should live placement fungtcides cam• :heu o..a, cleaner, more abstenious ltves. not fu1Jy explored, cancer nsks. Hcnce, we have such legislative con- This February the U.S. branch of sequences as the Delaney clause of Perrier recalled 72 million bottles af- the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, ter a North Carolina county laborato- baaamg the slightest trace of chemi- ry found samples of Perrier wata con- l61 taining 19 parts per billion of benxene, a known carcinogen. Whil.e North Carolina health offi- cials did not think this risk sufficient to warrant recall, they insisted on is- suing a bealth advisory. With the re- percussions of the 1989 Alar crisis still reverberating through the food industry, Perrier bad no choice but to recall the product. In the course of doing so, the company adm.itted the benzene was a natural ingred;ent of N the carbon dionde gas that bubbles up beaeatb its springs in Vugtxe, Framce. 0 For nearly a ceatury, Perrter has fil- N tered the gas to remove the bes`ene ~ before miuag it with the water. Ben- ~ zene levels rose because filters ba: ~ not been changed often enough. Is unftltered Pemer dangerous' lt Q~ all depends upon your perceptions. 4.11 David Caylor, head of biometry at the -4 FOUtS. AtAtt 30, 1990

im me N N RI N N r National Center for Toxicolopcal Re- search in Jefferson, Ark., estimates the addinonal cancer risk of liktime ezposure to a I-liter bottle of the con- tnmiaated Perria every day for 70 years to be somewbae between 1 in 100,000 and I in 10 million. Thus, if evay Ametican were to drtak a liter of Yerna every day f:om birth to death, we might-might-have a cou- ple of hundred essa deaths a year if Fasia's filters didn'tga chaaged. Of eourse, the springs of Pema would have long since gone dry under all that consumption. That we can de:ect such z=inuscule rtsks is something quite new. lt seems that now we are getring too skilled at analytical ehemutry for our own t least if we want to continue living the Delaney clause illusion of sero risk. "Fifteen years ago we couldn't even detect 35 paru pa bil- 1ion," says Gaylor's boss, Ronald Hart, the director of the totdc research center. "Now we identify one part per quiatillion. That's almost the equiva- lent of fillint the entire Great Lakes with gin and putting a single table- spoon of vermouth in it. That I think you would agree would be a pretry dry martiai." Unforrnnately, in today's emotion- eharged media climate Perrta could not afford to have such arcane mathe- matics debated on rv. So $40 million worth of harmless product was added to landfills. Thus dhd Pe-::e: become the perfect paracbp of the 3ypochon- daa that now psps an affluent society frightened by shadows oo the wall. Says Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon specializing in risk perception, "The more the nation speads on regulation, no matta how many billions azr :peat, the less safe che American public seems to feel." Saence Editor Daniel Roshland lam- pooned this mood last Juae when he invented an intervtew wtth "Dr. No- itall" whose "appearance on three talk shows is enough to qualify me as an e:pert." "Are there other dangers about which the uA has fatled to ad- vise us?" Noitall is asked. "Breath- ing," be says. "All breathing gener- ates outygea radicals ... the maia sources of mutauons in aNw. leading to cancer, birth deiects.... Breathing has been observed three s.mut_s 4- fore death in 100°e of all rataltues u. e urge everyone to stop breathutg una proper research has been carrmed out." But :hat kind of hypochondna is no laughing matter. Not when we will sooa be spendmg more than $100 bil- 163

i ,,. I I ~~ j~. li. I lion a yeu in partial response u. . The new Clean Air Act will force the expenditure of up to S50 billion a year on pollution control. This amounts to 30 times as much as the entire budget (51.7 billion) of the Na- conal Cancer Institute. The maic- mum health risk target identified by sre within the Clean Air bill is 2,700 deaths a year, and that is based on models that almost certainly ezagger- ate. That's a cost of about S16 million per life that might possibly be saved, whereas we spend only about 54,500 per life that might be saved from other nuses-alcoholism and drug abuse, for example, which kill 380,000 Amerfcaas every year. The savin~ of lives is worth spending money on, but it doesn't make much sense to spend vast amounts in the hope of saving a relatively few when we cannot seem to afford to spend any thing like mose amounts on things that cause hun- dreds of times more deaths. The problem is that deaths from things like al- coholism or overesting rarely make the 6 o'clock news, while any cancer scare, no matter bow pumped up, seems to do so. It's not bud to pump up the numbers. Dr. Ver- non Houk is director of environmental health at the Centers for Disease Control. He says: '?he ef- fect of irA's exaggerated risk models is very often to force massive atpeadi- twes of money on minus- cule risks. I would call that not conservative but very radical." posure. Of those cases, Durnp:ng ': millio» bortla oJPe.rie>• ft s.er.u.a aereuyi .t,ft to drink sa.aao iotrrss qf leassw.-oeattnnUa.t t..ris.. 5280 per nutritionally caused death. "Do we really want to say that the person who dies of cancer from bad nutritional habits is worth S1,000, while the person who dies of air pollu- tion is worth S30 million or maybe even a few billion?" Office of.Management & Budget Director Richard Darman says: "One of the greatest dangers of the 1990s is our scientific capacity to discover and define ever-dimiaishing levels of risk. This combined with our society's ap- parent willingness to place an infinite value on each humaa life is bound to lead to investing mote and more re- sources on smaller risks with less and less real return in actual risk reduc- non or health smprovement." Case in point: This year American taxpayers will spend over S5 billion to remove asbestos from schools and of- If the people want sweeter-smellfag air, so be it. But they won't necessar- ily get longer life spans from the Clean Air amendments. ia a recent Rrgularion article, economists Wilbur Steger and Frederick Rueter of Carae- gie-Mellon University analyze the age-adjusted cancer rates adjacent to and downwind of the major coke ov- eas of Allegheny County, Pa., one of the principal targets of the "air tox- ics" controls. Those rates came out 20% to 30% beloir those for the coua- ty as a whole. The two professors infer from this-and from expected cancer rates-that the siA's already low esti- mate of 6.9 cancer deaths per year nauonMide ftom coke oven emtsstons is an overestimate of those risks by at least a multiple of 100. Congress and the arA are pushing 166 compaaies to reduce their tbeoretical fice buildings under a 1987 federal emission risks to I in a million. But, law; the ulumate cost, for fixing says Houk, "When we push risk as- 733,000 buildings, could run as high sessmeat to I in a million, we are as $100 billion. Yet scientists are now talking scientific, not to mention eco- discovering that ripping out asbestos nomic, nonsense. Do you know whst often raises risks more than it reduces I in a million really is? It's the risk them, as was reported here three you take in driving your car 40 miles; months ago (Foaats, Jan 81 and later t;kiag a commercial jetliaer 2,500 analyzed in more detail in the pages of miles; canoeing for six minutes." Scienu. In the pursuit of such perfectfon, As with other cancer scares, this says the toAc research center's Ron- one was accompanied by a risk fore- aid Hart, "we are busy trippiag over cast: 67,000 deaths a year from atr- dollars to pick up pennies. For exam- borne asbestos (Health, Education & ple, we kaow ehat diet accouats for Welfare Secreury Joseph Califano, about 35% of all cancer deaths, or 1978). The forecast proved to be wide about 178,000 a year, and maybe a lot of the mark by a factor of 45. In the more. Yet the federal government U.S. population, there are, per year, now spends less than S50 million a 1,500 cases of inesotbelioma, the can- year on nutrition research, or about cer most associated with asbestos ez- 80% are among men over the age of 65 who were asbestos workers years ago, and a sigatftcant per- centage of those workers were also heavy smokers. Like all other such predic- tions, the onginal proiec- tion was based on mathe- matical models, not on human experience or on epidemiology. Here's another risk model prediction. A bill- board on Route 50 near Washington, D.C. an- nounces: "Radou•wtll ka1 20,000 Americans this year." This radon risk is extrapolated from studies of the occupational expo- sures of 375 uranium min- ers who died of lung can- cer--exposures that are as much as 12.000 nmes the level found in average U.S. homes and 600 times the level found even in the nation's "hottest" 01% of homes. But this srA risk model doesn't jibe very well with ecological evidence from the crA itself. Last October the agency issued a report declaring that Iowa has the highest radon danger risk so far found in the U.S., with 71 % of its homes above srA's "waraing lev- el" and an average radon exposure sevea times the aation's. Those num- bers suggest Iowa should be in a lung Yet Iows's cancer death epidemic . age-adjusted lung cancer death rate is ~ 12% below the nation's. Could other factors besides age explain Io..a' Pe:- ~ haps, but a more :borough stattsu:al ~ analysis of 415 U.S. counties turns up ~ ao correlarion between radon levels ~ and lung cancer rates. A leading epide- __ miologist, Yale's Dr. Jan Stolwiik, FORBES. APAb 30, 1 990

I i 3 sums up the situation: "If radon were such a major risk factor it would clearly shine throuth in the ecologi- cal data, but it doesn't. In fact all of the epidemiological studies suggest that without smoking, radon is an tmimaginably small public health >ask." Rosalyn Yalow, 1977 Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology, poiats out that virtually all the rise in tttng cancer death rates came after e9garette smoking took hold. "Befose 1920, when radon was equally prevalent, lung cancers were so rare that a finding was a major event for medical researchers," she says. '9Evea in 1930 the a=e-adjusted lung can- cer death rate for men and women was less than 3 per 100,000. Today it is ~ 57." Anthony Nero, a se- nior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and perhaps the nation's lead- ing authority on radon, says: "The tre has consis- tently and purposefully exaggerated both the ruks aswuated with indoor ra- don and the prevalence of high conceatrations.'• The weaknesses in as- bestos and radon risk models are mirrored in studies of other poisons, which are generally tested on laboratory rats. Here's what toxicologist Hatt says about rat esperi• ments: "Otu risk models are based on at least 50 assumptions, none of which have been scientifi- cally demonstrated. For example, we assume that then is no difference be- tween continuous (as in aaims] tests) or intermit- eent (as in human expesi- ence) dosages. But that ig- nores our gtowing kaowl- edge of the way in which aNA repafrs tbe bnman system-" if humans are exposed to far, fax lower doses? Will they get cancer? Dioxins are such powerful carcino- gens in rodents that even though the highest levels measured in Times Beach soil were very low, federal health authorities felt they hzd no choice but to recottsmmd evacuation of the town. The government speat i33 million to buy up houses and re- sertle residents. Now, afta costly epidemiological studies of individuals exposed to very en rc.r...- hi=h levels of dioxin, in- duaing victims of a 1976 industrial accident in Ita- ly and the Air Force fliers who sprayed Agent Or- Da< Pionr lab rrs at vxrgrin -w.f..d r.f.wxs .ttywvw.~t iwsts. r.e.rrwee rseaAo.l. Mr.IwBts>r.ae..t..rs qj..w..r.• Hart wonders wbetha rat-feediag tests pick up cancers that have little to do with the chemical under study. "We feed rodents 'all-you-ean-eat' buffets every day, yet we know that caloric intake is the single greatest contributing cause of eanca," be says. "In fact, we found you can modi- fy the eancer-eausing impact of one of the most potent carcinogens from 90X down to less than 3 %, just by cutting caloric intake 20X." The rats 1N may be dying from overeating, not from exposure to a specific carcino- gen, but the deaths are attributed nonetheless to the carcinogens be- cause that is what the experiments set out to prove. No one really knows how well risks for those rats t:ansiate into risks for humans. Last year Va- non Houk of the Centers for Disease Control told an Atlanta environmen- tal rymposium, '7tish a:sessment polfcy that reliea solely on screeniag bioasay 6aimal ta4rautts from tbe most sensitive speeia is not based on scientific princt~ples. Nettha is it aedible or reiiable." Consida how extrapolations affect- ed the government's mponse to aa environmental crisis in 1982, the pol- lution of Times Beach, Mo. by diox- ins. Dtoxins, eontaaunaats of the Agent Orange herbicide and by-prod- ucu of many industrial processes, are exqutsitely toxic: A diet consisting of less than one pan per billion of diox- ins would kill a guiaes pig. But what ange on Vietaam, scien- tists are finding no con- nection between the expo- sure and cancer rates. The most serious health effect was cbloracne, a skin rash. What happened? Two things. One is that the early studies of dioxin, for both Times Beach resi- deau and Vietaam veter- ans, greatly overestimated exposures. Where the arA said Vietnam veterans should still have high lev- els of dioxin ia their blood, the Centers for Dts- ease Conaol's blood tests an ground emops showed those levels no higher than the average for the U.S. population. Houk found that 40°.: of the per- sons dassified as havzng had high exposure in Times Beach actually had low exposure. The other factor seems to be that dioxin is far less carcino- genic in humans than in laboratory rats. "To put it bluntly, we found that hu- man beings were not neas- ly as susceptible to dioxin ~~ p~~.. says Hou Rat studies seem sure to doom some vital pesticides. The uw has the power to ban farm ehemieals, which itgcaaally does over the obiec- tions of the U.S. Department of Api eulture. The P.piculcure Department estimates that 4,500 specific applica- tions (the right to use this chemical on that crop' wz11 be lost tn ic : rent round oi frA xvie..•s, :~ them "essenual." Might this be a Pyr- rhic victory for the proponents of safe• ty? It was iust a year ago that the National Research Council concluded FGRIES, ATAM 30. 1l90

one of the very best ways to figbt cancer and all other chron- ic diseases was to increase our consumption of•fiesb fruits and vegetables. Not only that, the report argued that the benefits of such increased consumption iafinitely outweighed the small risks of the cbemicals used w produce them. Do we really want to r.ise tbe cost of fruits and vegetables? Do we really want to drive farmers sway from prodttcing them? The National, Research Coun- cil report didn't get much atten- tfon, though. Three nights be- fore it came out the Natural Re- sources Defense Council got on css' 60 Mmures to reach 30 mil- lion viewers with a report de- daring thai their children were being poisoned by apples. Enough Alar-Uni:oyal Cbemi- tal's trade name for daminozide-was used oa apptes, said the envizonmen- tal activists, to give cancer to 250 to 910 children out of a million. Even at the low end, that risk esti- mate was six times the Irw's. But cas reporter Ed Bradley didn't mention the =rw risk number. Instead, he said that the trw bad told him that if it attempted to ban Alar, Uniroyal would sue. Cut to Representative Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.), declaring, 2et them sue ... then let them go to s cancer ward in any children's hospi- tal in this country. See these bald, wastfng-away kids. And then make a decision whether the risks bal- ance ova the benefits." Emotion won ova reason. Withia hours, apples and apple juice were being dumped out across the nation. It was then that some hysterical consumers called the arw to find out if it was safe to the groundwater to pour apple juice down the drain. Now let's look at the evi- dence. The environmental grottp's report was based on one dueredited 1977 study by can- ca researcher Bela Toth. Since a similar 1966 damiaozide study bad shown no cancers, his find- ings were immediately suspect. In 1978 s National Canca lnsti- tute study on 344 laboratory mice and rats showed no in- creases in tumors. In 1985 a federal Scientific Advisory Panel reviewed the 1977 Toth data and found that be had fed the animals far more than the **+a:i**um toler- ated dosage, sometbing like 266,000 times human espo- rr... a.Y~ sm Baardsd-+rp .ao.r in Tmrs Baicb, Mo We seltt d.w't Jwr Velsas itladw wrti[ Aaos asass[ a+q ..wesr. sure. One of the panelists concluded that the Toth study was "useless for assessing carcinogenic risk from Alar, and provided no basis for can- celing its registration." Even so, in 1966 the uw ordered Uniroyal to conduct additional stud- ies. Those studies failed to produce any cancen at the 20 pazzs per million dosage level. So, too, when the dos- ages were doubled. At 80 parts per million they were able to produce sig- aifi.mant tumon in a group of 90 mice. But that dose level was 22,000 times a typical human exposure as calculated by the arw, and it was high enough that toxicity was killing 80% of the animals prematurely. But note that there is good reasoo to suspect that uwexpo- sure numbers at least for other agricultural chemicals are over- stated. An October 1989 study by Sandra Archibald of Stanford and Carl Winter of the Universi- ty of Califotnia at Riverside found that assumptions used by the National Research Council and the vw about consumer ex- posures to insecticides are too high: by a factor of 21,000 for apples, 2,600 for tomatoes and 300 for lettuce. For example, in- stead of the t+uc's estimated cancer risk of 1,462 deaths per million from pesticides on ap- ples, Archibald and Winter found only 0.07 pa million. Sanford Miller, dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Science at the Univasity of Texas Health Science Center, sums it up: "The risk of pesticide residues to con- sumas is effectively zero." This com- monsense view, however, is still con- travened by the 32-year-old Delaney clause, which outlaws any additive that tests positive for cancer in rodents. Given the nature of aaimal tests, it is not surprising that half of all pesti- cides tested turn out to be carcino- gens. More intriguing, the same tests show nearly half of all tbe nruural plant pesticides tested are rodent car- .cinogens. Says University of Califor- Wbat caasea eanar! It's still not known i tbese are tbe midpoiats of sometimes quite wide ranges of possible percentages. ca.m es.mhnw /..caoa .i t.uw sa.c.n nsa . us c m to iodv,w&A yrodu:n - =dc: i eJs>mowp aed maa . - ' 3 - . 9nduds umuy d pepwLy rid marvnmat lovrr AdW,%MR Do0 w1 R ha. - fAe fsuis d Gncer nia's Bruce Ames: "99.99% of all pesticide carcinogens now ingested by humaas are natu- ral-that is, generated as de- fense mechanisms within the plants themselves.... When I realized that we were already ingesting 10,000 times as many natural carcinogenic pesticides as synthetic, and human health keeps getting better, I began to put the risk into perspcctive." S.ys Sanford Miller: "If we ap- plied Delaney to all food we would never get to die of cancer. We would all starve to death because we'd have to ban all the foods we now eat." It was a biased exposure mod- el that underlay last Decem- ber's decision by the uw to phase out the use of most ethyl- ene btdithiocarbonr.es, the most widely used ::c; :: se:::- cides, at a cost in highe: pnca and ]ost commodities of over S2 billion a year. But if the Food & Drug Administration's expo- sure data are correct, only one- l70 FORBES. APA1130. 1990

third of one cancer risk would be so based society is doomed." "risk budgeteer." Indeed, President avoided. That's S6 billion per cancer. The trouble is that both Congress Bush took pride in his Reagan-era role Worse, the ban puts consumers at and the tra have powerful political in using this agency to inject some even greater risk. As winter, the Cali- incentives to run away from any al- rationality into the regulatory pro- fornia academic, puts it, "Elimiaation leged danger. Who wants to be pot- cess. But under Darman the agency's of specific fungicides could decrease trayed on a network news feature as influence has withered. Darman ad- the safety of the food supply by allow- callously coasigning children to the mits as much. "I have taken some ing the production of greater levels of cancer wardt pains not to allow Ithis agencyJ to be fuagal carcinogens." But, says AFiculture Seetetaty used as a delaying uctic. Otherwise Yet when Agriculture Secretary Yeutter, '1t is simply ludicrous to ap- we will have it taken away from us Clayton Yeutter announced his pIan ply a zero tisk standard to carciaogeas le p'slatively." Darman is like a cop to reform the Delaney clause and be- or anything else in this wo:ld, becsuse who doesn't dare to make arrests of gin weighing risks against beaeffts, the good Lord did not give us a ruk- certain obvious wrongdoers, because environmentalists went ballistic. Na- free world, or a risk-free environment if be does the powers-that-be will take tional Resources Defense Couacil for anythirtg; including fruit. Biologi- his badge away. lawyer Janet Hathaway declared, "Al- cal zero is attainable but mathemati- What really concerns Darman is lowing ttw to consider the continued cal zero is not." that the process of controlliagrisk has use of a chemical whenever the beae- The 1990 Economic Report of the become so manipulative and theoreti- fits outweigh the risks is absolutely President argues that "regulatory cal. "I know it sounds absurd, but you atuthema to the eavironmentai com- goals should be set so that potential can imagiae a situation in which we muaity." ,~he failed to .no longer do animal ex- mention w o elected the periments," be says. "We "environmental com- are not far from a situa- bnnaity" to dictate agri tion where somebody de- cvhural policy. . - - --~- ` velops a model of hu- Right after i+zac's at- maas, a model for aaimals tack on Alar, Steven and models for chemicals, Wood, aa apple grower in and tbeypu t them all to- West Lebanon, N.H. and a . .:~s getbe: and sssemble a risk leading advocate of low- estimate without ever showing any cause and ef- pesticide, integrated pest management, invited fect evidence." Hathaway to come see the '' "He's right," says Ver- damage she'd done. "We ' -Jr ~~ non Houk, the ea.iron- showed her one packing ' %r as mental health expert at house after aaotber the Centers for Disease jammed to the rafters Control. "It's already Inp- with unsold fruit, and one pening to a degree. These farmer after another computer models of risk wiped out by the 60 ttin- S,pnoing jangrcides in Floridc have taken on a life of stra program. She was A wak earetwyes ta iawwas;--as a eatt te their own that has little dearly very distressed at ..etsay y ss beutoR rsr e.*wsr ssata amusa. relationship to reality." what she saw." So here we are on the Distressed but not per- edge of spending tens or suaded. Wood goes on: perhaps hundreds of bil- "Before the 60 .1lrnwes lions of dollars on pro- show we met with Hatha- grams of doubtful benefit, way, as well as Meryl Streep and her benefits to the society from regula- acting not on proven facts but on hys- Broup and the css producer, David tion outweigh the potential costs." teria aad questionable statistical Gelber, and told them abour Alar's That is eminently rational, but it al- models. But who is there to see the big eritical role in lowering pesticide use, most never.happens, simply because ~teture when a minority of activists and that the 1977 bioassay study on every siency involved has the incen- have rbe politicians buffaloed and the Alar had been completely discxedited, tive and the power to regulate as if its media largely snowed? Aaron Wil- Gelber told us in effect go jump in the risk were the most serious. lts budget, davsky, political saientist from U.C. lake." Clearly, be did not want to let after all, depends on frightening peo- Berkeley, warns, "If we hinder prog- the facts get in the way of a good, ple. But no sensible person these days ress on the grouads it brings some scary show. identifies buresucratic interests with 'bads,' we will deny ourselves even The toxicology center's Dr. Hast the interests of society as a whole. greater'goods.' if it seems too cruel to watas that the eurrent methods of Thus the pursuit of zero risk, en- contemplate any barm at all, the even risk assessment are dangerous to our touraged by somervcrnment offi- ~tater cruelty is to abandon net bene- sociery, and not only to apple farmers. cials and fed by legr's al toa nervous of fit, for giving abar up guarantees that He says: "?here's a fundamental in- incurring the wratb of the self-styled more people will have worse health." com;.atib:hry between writing law "envtronmentsl community," threat- It's really verv simple: Before we and doing science. Blackstowan law ens the heal:h oi our economy wrstb• hrbclc our ecoaorrv and our soaea deals in absolutes and in definitions. out doing much for the health of our with costly new laws aad res.ilaaons But science is an evolving beast, con- citiseas. Budget Director Richard we should ask ourselves in each in- stantly chaagiug as new knowledge is Darman supervises aa agency called stance whether the hoped-for benefits acquired. Unless you make laws com- the Office of Information d Regula• justify the costs to our economy and patible with science, a technology- tory Affairs that is supposed to be the our health.  l72 PoAEES, APRa 30, ls9o _