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A Movie Star Pares the Apple Industry By JOHN NICHOLSON Hysteria among mothers. School the rats' livers; then cancers grew. Con- administrators dumping apple juice , tinued testing at lower levels is now try- down the drain. Newsc....ers relishing ing to determine if the cancers grew the -role of sternly warning America.. because of renal failure or because of Action footage on TV of apples being the chemical. processed mechanically. Meanwhile, because of the scary That's what took place recently for news, virtually all use in the U.S. of several weeks, all because of one movie ' Alar was stopped voluntarily by apple star who decided she wanted to "get in- growers after the first test results volved." became known and EPA issued its pre= Meryl Streep, who was made famous liminary warning. by her role in the anti-business Silk-' NRDC put into its computers residue wood movie, told her friend Robert levels primarily from FDA's inspectors Redford that she wanted to do some- in southern California-not exactly ap- thing politically as a mother. Redford ple country-and then adjusted_thcm sent her to a group of which he's a. for national rates which augmented the STREEP director, called the Natural Resources Defense' Council (NRDC), which was supporting (behind the scenes because it's a non-profit 501 [c][3] tax-exempt group) a legislative battle to stiffen the pesticide laws last year. "They sent me the [draft] report and I read it and the top of my head came off," Streep recalls. Alar findings. Further, as scientists from the National Food Processors Association have explained, NRDC used an out-of-date potency constant for UDMH, a breakdown component of daminozide. "This potency constant was based on data acknowledged to be flawed and inap rp p te -for' purposes of risk assessment," NFPA said. "This error alone is expected to lead to a ten-fold overestimate of risk from UDMH ex- posure." Regardless, the company's refusal to take Alar off the market until tests are complete to verify the one case from extremely high dosage has created the aura of in- " dustrial obstinacy, fueling Sireep's emotional message. "We firmly believe," says Uniroyal Crop Protection. Manager James A. Wylie Jr., "that if we submit to the pressure created by the sensationalism of the media and environmentalists and voluntarily withdraw a product that we honestly believe to not present a risk to public health, then we should not be in this business." Finally, as the hysteria grew, EPA and the FDA and the USDA's Food and Consumer Services took the highly unusual step of issuing a joint press release. "Data used by NRDC, whicFi claims cancer "risks from Alar are 100I times higher than the EPA estimates, were rejected in 1985 by an independent scientlfiCadvisory. board created "liJ Congt=ss,°' the release said. "Not since Orson Welles landed the Martians in New Jersey has an enter- tainer unleashed such hysteria on the land," wrote Washington Post colum- nist Jerry Knight. "Streep and her pesticide-paranoid understudies have irreparably damaged the American ap- ple industry, using tactics no less terror- ist than poisoning grapes." . "Both consumer and institutional outlets just stopped buying apples [and apple products]," complains Paul S.. Weller, president of the Apple Proces- sors Association, a leading trade group. "Th"e eovernment has acted respon- sibly. Our industry has. The chemical company is acting within the law in good faith. Who's responsible for the financial devastation? "Maybe it's time for a 'truth-in- allegations' law to make these self-ap- pointed guardians of the public health be held personally responsible for the economic consequences of their acts. If Ms. Streep or others were forced to ob- tain insurance to protect their personal wealth, tlaen perhaps this might rein in their zeal •to capitalize-on their personal popularity." That the issue is complex and contro- versial is proven by EPA's request last year to the National Academy of Sciences to study how to translate animal toxicity findings into possible I effects on humans at adult and child levels of use. "EPA and others have pointed to the lack of scientific val'rdity in the sugges- tion by the NRDC that the risk is much greater than has been stated by EPA'.... Risk estimates for Alar and other pesticides based on animal testing are rough and are not precise predic- tions of human disease. Because of con- servative assumptions used by EPA, ac- I tual risks may be lower or even •zero," the government said.  . t4T9tsszaz

In a~1 ashington I'ust article, Streep explained how.slie and NRDC devised a new lobbying arm called "Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits" (as if there were none now). She arranged for a town meeting in her Connecticut village to be televised by "60 Minutes" for in- stant reaction to the horrible tales to be Iold by NRDC's paid cvirntists. ivRVC decided to use Streep to pub- licize its latest attack on governmental regulators -'this time for not ade- quately considering the effects on chil- dren, when relying on animal testing to gauge the effects on humans in evalu- ating pesticides to be used on foods. To do so, NRDC aimed at several chem- icals to determine residues left on the produce, within legal _limits, and then extrapolated from those levels what could be regarded as potentially toxic to children. NRDC hit a public relations bonanza with "Alar"-daminozide produced by Uniroyal. First fingered by EPA in 1985, Alar (or more precisely, its meta- bolite UDMI-I) was found in one test of extremely high dosages on rats to ruin .Nr. Nicholson, a Washington free-lance writer, operates a public affairs firm that has done Nvrk in the past for several of the major chem-' ical companies producing pesticides. 10 / Human Events / MAY 13. 1989 t S4T9?1IIVISSZ0z