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I APR 1 1993 THE t4'4&.L STR,EP: r af)i?I3.NAl:. THI:.'R SIDAY. Af'€?iI. 1, 1993 ---- - - ------ - - • ^ 'Frontline' Perpetuates Pesticide. Myths By IaswtY'ts T. Asestx "Frontline," the Public Broadcasting • System's investigative journatism show, is famous for Its controversial points of view. But it's now outdone itself. In an episode titled "I1a Our Children's Foad." which aired in most markets earlier this week, a well-meaning Bill Moyers and his PBS colleagues made recommendations that would increase our cancer and heart disease rates, increase the risk of world hunger, and plow down millions of square miies of wildli€e habitat. Apparently the "Frontline" staff didn't realize that those calauaities would be the result of giving up the farm chem- icals it warned us against. The show was prepara d to cele- brate the 30th anniversary of Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring." Miss ~ Carson blamed farm chemicals for wildlife losses that we now know were due to lost habitat and to industriafl pollutants like mercury and PCBs. In her ignorance, she also feared that pesticides caused hu- man cancer. We now icnow that farm pesticide residues contain less cancer risk than mustard and pickles or even than the en- vironmentalists' beloved mushrooms. We now know that 99.Ko of the cancer risks in our food supply come in the foods them- selves. So much for the cancer risks in pesticides. But the indictment against "Frontline" is worse than an omission of these facts. Medical practitioners across the country tell us today that the best way to reduce both eancerand heart disease is to eat twice as many fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables contain powerful chenatcals that inhibit cancer. They are low in fat and high in fiber; their con- sumptian works against heart disease. But organic farming-fanning without ehemicals-can't produce low-cost, attrac- tive fruits and vegetables. Organic farm- ing produces expensive fndts and vegeta- bles because the insects and diseases eat most of them before they can be har- vested. The few that survive look shabby, and it's hard to get kids to eat shabby- iooking produce. On that basis, organic farming would produce more cancer, not less. Biotechnology may eventually help us engineer the pest protection into plants and creatures so we won't have to spray anything anymore. But most of the ardent environmentalists say they are against biotechnology, too. The worst indictment of an or- ganic farming system is that it could not provide enough food to supply even the current human population of the world. By 2050, there would be billions of organi- caIly induced starvation deaths. (The U.S. is one of the few counkies that could survive organic farming without risking starvation, but we have more farmland than almost anybody else.) Yes, the world could plow more land to .make up for the low yields on organic farms. But already, the world is cultivat- ing about 5.8 million square miles (the land area of South Americal for food. With organic farming, by 2050 we would plow down and cultivate 30 million to 40 million square miles of land. That's the combined area of South America, North Arnerica, Europe and most of Asia! Even Rachel Carson might have thought that a strange way to preserve wildlife. As evidence of farm chemical dangers, "Frontfline" offers one farming town in California that for years has had an un- explained high rate of cancers. But this town is famous in medical citcles because its cancer pattern is unlike any other town's. Medical studies have tried to tie the famous "McFarland Cancer Cluster" to pesticides. All have failed. Next, hir. Moyers cuts to a guilt-ridden California farmer whose son came down with leukemia 10 years ago. The farmer is afraid that his use of pesticides might have caused the leukemia. But farmers and farm kids have lower rates of leukemia and cancer than nonfann kids. Where is the medical evidence to tie the California farm boy's disease to farm chemicals? The "Frontline" hosts don't tell us anything except how "won°ded" they are. The program also ridicules a Public Health Serc-lce toxicology study that re- ported: "There is no evidence that the small doses of pesticides that we do get are causing any harm. The only effect that can be measured. .. is the storage of one of them-DDT-in the tissues of mcst people. This storage has not caused any injury which ive can detect." Then Mr. Moyers crows: "DDT would be banned 10 years later, just as Rachel Carson had predicted," This was in the early 1970s. But Mr. Moyers fails to tell us that DDT was banned against the recommen- dation of scientists and the Environ- mental Protection Agency's own hearing examiner. The dozens of experts who testified at the EPA hearing overwhelmingly said Df)T should keep its EPA approval because it wasn't dangerous to peo- ple or birds. Thepoiitical appointee who headed EPA feared a public autery if he concurred with the hearing examiner because so many people had read Miss Carson's book. Is the rest of PBS's widely noted envi- ronmental reporting based on evidence this shaky? Mr. dany is a fellow at the Hudsorr In- stitute. He is director of Fludxosa's CeTSterJor GPabal Food Issues. ~ ~ d ~ ~ a ~ ~ CCt? ~ 00

-39- lnvestot°e BtTsiness Dally * ra .. r 1 0+ A t. t s S U e Killing Fields ARE PESTICIDES REALLY SO BAD? 0 Despite Fears, Food Is Safer And More Plentiful By Michael Fumento fn Los Angdcr "The only word that de- scribes it is war." That was the first sentence Bill Moyers ut- tered in Tuesday's Frontline show, produced and broadcast by PBS. The war Moyers was talking about is the one waged by pesticides against inscctsandwxds. But the Moyers show itself may reflect another war, that of envirommn- talists and their sympathimrs against pesticides themselves. And many scientists and other critics say the anti-pestidde, proorganic au- sadc may actually be haardous to our health. "The biggest threat to human food supply today, to human cancer, and to wildlife maintenance would be organic farming," said Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues, part of the Hudson Institute think lank in Indianapolis. "It couldn't give us the food supply we need today, it couldn't give' us attractive fndts and vegetables, and it ldn't give us Ihe yidd to protea ife hibitats" OWfrom whal would rwise be evertapanding aopland. he said. The Pnlltic Broadcasting $ystan's Frontliue show, which eoncsmed pri- matily pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables, comes at a time when ' Congress is coosidering legislation to replace a 1958 Cedetaal law called the Delaney Clause. It regulates additives, including pesticides, to processed foods. Environmental groups such u the Natunl Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund arc working hard to baa as many man- made pesticides as possible. Last year, the NRDC won a federal court deci- sion, which the Supreme Court allowed to stand,.that effectively would ban 35 such pesticides. The NRDC was also the group that launched the,public relations campaign in 1989 that succeeded in having the apple growth regulator Alar pulled otf the market. Most of the health conams oC pesticides revolve around the possibility that they awe aneer: . 77te Frontline show contained a clip of. Moyers interviewing farmer Paul Buxman, whose son was diagnosed with leukemia. . 'Moyers told 8steners,'Today (Bux- an) worries about pesticides. A recent uonal Canar Institute study found t, if you hve on a farm, you hare a fu greater chance of getting some forms Domustidaales'dl U,S: producsd pHs82itl4s' In mlllionss otfountls.. • y ' ;000 m-'ta AF'H 1 i9yJ Thursday, April t, 1993 evenlually ftnd natural rodent arono- gens in essentially everything we rat. ', "There are over 1,000 naiural chemr als in a cup of coffee;" said Ames.- "Only 22 have been tested. Of these, 17' are(rodent)arcinogens." !. . In a paper published in the journal Science, Ames and Berkeley colleague Lois Gold said, "One cup of coffee I pesticide residue. contains 10 milligrams of known (natu- '. Moyers told his viewers that •'indus- mt) rodent arcinogew, about equiva- try's own tests suggest that 65 pesticides ' lent in wnBht to the potentially now in use may cause cancer." Mcycr- ' carcinogenic synthetic pesticide residues holf wrote that "68 pesticide ingredients one ats in a year." have been determined to cause ancer." Said Kolbye, "We am surrouruied by Neither made any reference to thosc a sea of carcinogens, most of which are anccs being not in humaos but in wlural compounds occurring normally laboratory animals - usually rats or taavarietyoffoods." . mice-speciallybredtodeveloptumors But he explained that the body's eu8y. These rodents ue typially daud defrnse mechanisms are able to resist with 400,000 times the amount of them arcinogens in small doses, though chemical a human would teceive.. often not in the massive amounts which. Increasingly, such massive dosing of hboratoryrodentsreceivey rodents has come under fire in the Many of those naturaBy occmring' ~ scientific community as being of little chemicals jim themselves p°u°det, ' value in determining human causes of developednotbyindustrialchemistsbut cancerby mother nature For one, srys Bruci Ames, a anecr Said Ames'"Plantscouldn'tsurviveif ' researcher at the University of Califor- they wercn'l ftlkd with toxic chemical, , nia at Berkeley, the correlation for rat They don't have immune systems, teeth, and mouse ancen in these tats is only claws, and. they an't run away. So about70X. . ,. throughoutevolutionthey'vebeenmak- d edes d nt If l lat h d e u ~ r o . aae y re e rp ruc yetterchemiststhanl woo Monsanto. o , NRDC General Counsel predict for each other 30Y% of the time, SimOarl They've been at it a long time." Y he aska, what does that say for how they AI Meyerhoff, in a recent New York ' tedietforhtmanaaznp i Indeed,AmaandGoldestlmatethat Times opinion piece, wrote, °Farmen, p 99.99% of all, pesticides by weight are For another,.lhe idea that mamve M turaL i mn exposed to herbicides have a six t doan of chemicals that atue tumors in grcater risk than others of contracting Take the potato. will also ause tumors at a • a few d t ro en s certain ~~ „ But Aaron Blair, ehief of the oecupa- fraction of those doses is swpectl tlonal studies section at NCI, said that "Cenluries ago, science became aware intact,"Farmershavealowermorulity that the dosc makes the poison," said rate overall: lower heart disase, bwer Albert Kolbye, a former assistant sur- ancer,everythingbutaccidents." Bcon general in the Public Hcalth However, said Blair: "If you Iook at Service and also formerly the associate individual anats, there are eight or bureau dircdor for toxicology at the nine tumors that tend he excessive. But Food and Drug Administration. then, them are at least 35 dillerent Thus,foresample,VitaminAinsmall ancersitrs." doses is necessary for life, while large That would mean that fatmers have doses will kill. Eating a lot of saltaurcd equal or decreased levels of cancer at at Insist has been linked to stomach ancer, least 26 different sites. but no one can hve without some salt. William Fischer, director of the Insti- Fully half of all synthetic chemicals tute for Environmental Toxicology at fated in maasve doses on laboratory Michigan State University in.Lansing, animals h.ve auud tumors, a figure chaired a report on that 1986 study for that experts say will probably more or theCouncilforAgriculturalScienceand km applymsynthe4cpestiddes. Technology in Ames, Iowa. ' But what neither Moyers nor Meyer- "It's notcoraa to quote the results of 'ho1T said is that the limited testing of a single study. ... With (our) study we n't"rial chemicals using the same sun- h h lf f h d d h Potatoea contain two chemicals, sola- nine and chaconine, which kill insects in the same way that synthetic organo- phosphate peetiddes do. A single potato contains - about 15,000 micrograms, Ames said, "And yet you're eating only about 15 microgtams of man-made organophosphate peaticidesa day. "And yet," . fafd Ames,' "nobody's worried about (aolanine and chacoNae) becaux they're natural. It's a double standard." Ames says that the irony of the antl- pestitide campaign being based on cancer fear is that increasing evidence points to fruits and vegetables as impor- tant in warding ofFcerhin ancen. "If you eliminate synthetic pasticides, you make fruits and vegembles more expensive," he said. "People will thefs esl less of them and morc will die of anar." own t at a o t em, too, Pesticide critics charge that we are ar s has s looked at all of them." Combined with studies since then, the studies show am°usinBrodentanecn. . . wing more and more chemicals in a wide range of positive and negative Moyers told his atsdientt: "Federal steadily escalating war against bugs, correlationstooerlainancets. 1aw'permtsthemaduaof'bpattades mold, and weeds. In terms of variety, "What that tellsme," said Fischer,'Ss in arrots. EPA now believes eight may this is true. But it's because farmen are .that if there is a higher risk to farmers, licaneeraBeOn'" using so many highly specific chemicals the risk is very low or weak, as . Ames notes thrt carrots naturally that they are able to use so.much less of evidenced by its being so haid to =tafn chemicals have been found to themoveraB. dekcA" . ausc ancerin rodents in massive doses. Whde Meyerhoff wrote: "The use of Blair thinks that herbicides may be This is also true of apples, bananas, pe*tiddes has increased at leaat tenfold" ausing some of those aneera among broccoli, Brussels sprouts, abbage, ~atheDelaney(7ausewasenactedin farmers, but Fischer says it's importanl celery, and many other unproasud 1958, use of two types ofpestieidea that to point out thtse ate Aerbfcidet, R'hioh foods. may leave residues, insecticides and are sprayed on woeda, not on fruits and Ames thinks that further testing will fungicides, has actually declined since Megetables. Unlike insecticides and tm- 1964, the frnt year for which data was . gladea, they have nothing to do with available. - fCMrt'dJ 2074143989 COrnP wxat