Tobacco Documents Online

i . Netws of tfte Week period to be consistent with the or- der, which authorizes an initial 90- day call-up and a possible 90-day ex- tension. We will consider extending leaves as circumstances may dic- tate." Wr7hom Storck ,F~INAWVGTAN A CS pfenary focuses \on risk asseisment "1he supertanker [of envi~ inental btueaueracylis. going-aftd it's very hard to turn around," says biochem- ist Bruce N. Ames, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center at the Uni- versity of California, Berkeley. Ames is among those who have been prodding and pulling in an effort tb get the ship to change direction. The latest prod came last week in Washington, D.C., at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. Ames and F. Henry Habicht II, deputy administrator of the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency, spoke at the presidential plenary, a session dealing with risk assessment and the public perception of chemistry. "There is a major difference be- tween perception and the real world," ACS president Paul G. Gass- man, chemistry professor at the Uni- versity of Minnesota, said at a press conference in explaining his choice of the theme for the plenary. The public is told it's at risk for one thing or another, he noted, but what it isn't told is what this risk is. "Un- HibicAt (left).• put risks in context. Aates: hazards lower than assumed • rNplMnOw 3. 1990 GiEN derstanding risk and understanding benefit-versus-tisk is extremely im- portant," Gassman said, "because [without that understanding) being told that one is at risk means noth- ing at all. It is merely frightening." That is the general idea underly- ing the theme that Ames has staked out in recent times concerning envi- ronmental and dietary carcinogens. Animal cancer tests, he points out, are done at enormous, nearly toxic, doses of the test chemical. New evi- dence, he says, suggests that it is the risk priorities so that we aren't just attacking the chemical of the month." Habicht paraphrases :Villiam D. Ruckelshaus, I:PA's first administra- tor, to the effect that EPA represents a shotgun wedding between science and policy in the environmental area. "My message today," Habicht says, "is that the shotgun wedding is not on the rocks, and that, in fact, we're going to work very hard to make it a success." )anm Kritgrr high dose itself that auses cancer through inducing chronic cell divi- sion, often as a result of killing cells. Thus, he says, one would expect a high percentage of all chemicals to be carcinogenic at these doses. And this is exactly what is found-name- ly, that about half of all chemicals tested chronically at these high dos- es are carcinogens. Ames has calculated, moreover, that 99.99% by weight of the pesti- cides in normal diets are naturally occurring chemicals that plants pro- duce to defend themselves. Only 52, he points out, have been tested. Again about half, 27, are rodent car- cinogens, and these are present in most common foods. "We conclude," Ames says, "that natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in high- dose animal cancer tests, are similar in their toxicology, and that at the low doses of most human exposures where cell-killing does not occur, the hazards may be much lower than is commonly assumed and of ten will be zero. Evidence from both epidemiology and toxicology sug- gests that synthetic pesticide resi- dues are not likely to be a significant factor in cancer (or birth defect) au- sation " There was evidence at the plenary that Ames' supertanker, if not turn- ing arotutd, may nevertheless be in the process of changing course. Habicht believes the current envi- ronmental climate is such that EPA has a chance of putting some re- forms into place-"of introducing more scientific rigor, more candor, more thorough explanation of our risk assessments, and spending more time putting risks into context so that we develop as a society more of a strategic sense of risk, a sense of fFM wAS4VGMN Science needs of East Europe probed East Europeans-stifled for 40 years under communism-are beginning to westernize their scientific and technological establishments. Some steps in that process were outlined last week at a special evening syn- posium on chemistry in East Europe sponsored by the Committee on In- ternational Activities. Almost 300 people came to hear about scientific conditions in Hun- gary, Poland, Czechoslo.•akia, and Bulgaria, and about the kind of help needed from the West. Romania, whose reform process has been slower and where many party hacks are still hanging on, was not repre- sented on the program. And East Germany-soon to merge with West Germany-was left out. The speaker from Poland was To- deusz Diem, a chemist who now is deputy minister of education. Po- land jumped into the market econo- my with a big splash last January and everything, including science, has had to take second place while Poland's economy adapts. Diem says that now, however, the country is beginning to give attention to a sci- ence policy, and a bill establishing both a budget for science and a Pol- ish version of the National Science Foundation is expected to be ready in 1991. The goal is to earmark 2.2°i of the budget for science. Diem says the biggest problem facing science and technology in his country is the need to bring autono- my to the universities-an issue also