Angela Logomasini

TSCA Reform: Reasonable Certainty of Harm to Animals

by Angela Logomasini on February 8, 2013

in Odds & Ends

European animal rights activists made a big mistake in 2006 when they failed to fight passage in the European Union of REACH, which is short for Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals. Now that the U.S. Congress may soon consider a similar law, will American animal rights groups fight it or repeat the mistakes of their European counterparts?

Sometimes animal testing is necessary for scientific discovery and to ensure both safety and efficacy of of drugs and consumer products—including cosmetics.  But I have to agree with animal rights groups in Europe for complaining that the REACH program demands excessive and unnecessary animal testing.

REACH demands companies submit data, which in many cases requires animal testing,  to demonstrate their products are safe. This includes thousands of trace chemicals manufacturers have used safely for decades. This program has obvious economic costs, is bureaucratic and is unlikely to improve public health, as CEI documented in our study on the topic  before the program became law in 2006.  We also argued the REACH concept was fatally flawed and could not be fixed.  But animal rights groups did not put up a good fight; instead they negotiated a few amendments in an attempt to reduce the number of animals that would be tested.

Animal rights groups now appear to be the only ones who recognize some of the program’s fatal flaws.  In a recent statement, the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) notes:

However, the ECEAE has experienced many problems related to animal testing and we are disappointed to see that the Commission’s REACH review appears not to have gone far enough to acknowledge these issues.

One of the central goals of the legislation is the promotion of alternative methods with the requirement that animal testing would be a last resort. The Agency, the Commission and the Member States have however, failed, in our opinion, to uphold these principles. After all the promise of an ‘intelligent’, science-based approach, the Agency has reverted back to conservative, tick-box toxicology. We are seeing routine additional requests for animal tests in some areas, an almost complete failure to reject proposals to test on animals and a lack of leadership from the Commission or the Agency on the promotion of alternative methods that already exist.

Although it is good these activists finally stepped up to the plate, it’s too little, too late.  The big question remains: Why have these groups compromised their principles on REACH and worked to mitigate it rather than fight passage?  Perhaps they think government-mandated testing is more acceptable than private testing.  They never give private firms the pass they gave the EU on REACH, even when the testing makes sense.

In fact, after these groups dropped the ball on REACH, they then pushed the European Union’s 2011 Cosmetics Directive, which placed bans on the use of animals for cosmetics testing.  Although REACH imposes largely indiscriminate testing mandates, the cosmetics industry engaged in a very limited testing regime only where necessary. For example,the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association noted the number of animal tests conducted in Europe to ensure cosmetic safety in 2008 amounted to just 1,510 animals of more than 12 million animals used for scientific testing in Europe that year. REACH requires far more rodent testing than did the cosmetics industry.  The ECEAE estimates REACH will require 13 million to 54 million animals for tests conducted between 2009 and 2018, and REACH testing will continue beyond 2018.

Unfortunately, members of Congress, industry and environmentalists are negotiating reforms to the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that  are modeled after the REACH program. The final bill is likely to include a provision that will demand chemical testing that ensures “reasonable certainty of no harm” to humans, a standard the federal government currently uses for pesticide regulation. Despite the standard’s terminology, the final result won’t be reasonable. Like REACH, it will demand massive retesting of trace chemicals that have been used in consumer products safely for decades. There is no certainty the law will generate any health benefits, but you can be sure it will needlessly harm lots of lab animals.

Will American animal-rights activists–as well as the more mainstream groups that support humane testing–step up and oppose such policies in the United States or will they  compromise their principles?

Herbicide Poses No Cancer Risk In Drinking Water

by Angela Logomasini on February 4, 2013

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

Over the years, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have repeatedly issued bogus reports claiming that Americans face serious cancer risks from trace chemicals found in drinking water. A new study challenges their claims regarding one of these activists’ key targets: the herbicide atrazine, which farmers use to control weeds rather than tilling the soil.

This study, published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, underscores why we need not fear atrazine or listen the green hype. It employed a “weight-of-the-evidence” test for assessing safety of this chemical, which examines the full body of research on a topic and then emphasizes the best quality research to draw conclusions. Such weigh-of-the-evidence tests provide much better information than cherry-picking studies — as the NRDC and EWG usually do — to support predetermined, politically driven positions.

The study authors report:

The aim of this study was to evaluate the conflicting reports from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Scientific Advisory Panel (Panel) on the carcinogenicity of atrazine in order to determine whether the results from epidemiologic studies support a causal relationship between atrazine and any specific cancer. We reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency and Panel reports in the context of all the epidemiologic studies on the specific cancers of interest. A weight-of-evidence approach leads to the conclusion that there is no causal association between atrazine and cancer and that occasional positive results can be attributed to bias or chance. Atrazine appears to be a good candidate for a category of herbicides with a probable absence of cancer risk. Atrazine should be treated for regulatory and public health purposes as an agent unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.

These findings are not surprising since America’s drinking water is not a likely source of cancer risks from atrazine or any other trace chemical. In their landmark study on the causes of cancer, scientists Richard Doll and Richard Peto noted that “with the possible exception of asbestos in a few water supplies, we know of no established human carcinogen that is ever present in sufficient quantities in large U.S. water supplies to account for any material percentage of the total risk of cancer.”

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Cancer Risks Unlikely From Foam Cups

by Angela Logomasini on January 31, 2013

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

Whatever happened to plastic foam coffee cups? Visit any to-go coffee shop and you will most likely only find paper cups that burn your hands and let your coffee go cold.

Cups made with polystyrene foam are disappearing from the marketplace because a bevy of misinformation about their environmental effects, including claims styrene — the chemical used to make them — is a carcinogen.

But a new study issued by the consulting group Gradient Corp. questions claims this chemical poses cancer risks. Specifically, it undermines the National Toxicology Program’s classification of styrene in 2011 as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” The Gradient researchers find:

The epidemiology studies show no consistent increased incidence of, or mortality from, any type of cancer. In animal studies, increased incidence rates of mostly benign tumors have been observed only in certain strains of one species (mice) and at one tissue site (lung). The lack of concordance of tumor incidence and tumor type among animals (even within the same species) and humans indicates that there has been no particular cancer consistently observed among all available studies. The only plausible mechanism for styrene-induced carcinogenesis — a non-genotoxic mode of action that is specific to the mouse lung — is not relevant to humans. As a whole, the evidence does not support the characterization of styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” and styrene should not be listed in the Report on Carcinogens.

Greens may criticize the Gradient study because it was funded by the styrene industry, but they can’t adequately dispute the data. In fact, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) ranks styrene cancer risks at a lower level than does the NTP. Rather than “reasonably anticipated,” IARC says styrene is “possibly carcinogenic to humans” — the same classification they give to pickles and the coffee I like to enjoy in a foam cup. Like the gradient study, IARC couldn’t even find significant risk among workers exposed to relatively high levels of styrene.

A big part of the problem, as Richard Belzer well documented in a paper for CEI, is that the NTP isn’t particularly scientific. Both its criteria and terminology for classifications are purely subjective, lacking scientific meaning.

Unfortunately, it may take a long time — if ever — for NTP to revise this classification. Consider that it took nearly 30 years for NTP to remove the harmless sugar substitute, i.e., saccharine, from its list of carcinogens. Somehow saccharine survived and remains on the market today. Hopefully, 30 years from now, if I am still alive, I will be able to drink my coffee from a foam cup.

Image credit: HeyRocker on flickr.

Germs In Reusable Grocery Bags Can Prove Deadly

by Angela Logomasini on January 30, 2013

in Environment, Features, Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk

Cloth supermarket bags may be fashionable, but they can also prove deadly, according to a recent research paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The researchers point out that after the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags, the number of emergency room visits for bacterial related diseases increased significantly. A Reason.com blog post explains the connection:

Basically people were schlepping leaky packages of meat and other foods in their canvas bags, then wadding to the bags somewhere for awhile, leaving bacteria to grow until the next trip, when they tossed celery or other foods likely to be eaten raw in the same bags.

It is in fact plausible that at least some portion of these illnesses did in fact result from reusable bags. Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University in 2010 measured bacteria in a sample of reusable bags, finding many containing dangerous bacteria, such as coliform (found in half the bags) and E. coli (found in 12 percent of bags). They also noted that consumers reported that they rarely wash the bags in an attempt to control the development of such pathogens.

That is why I am not so surprised to read this in the University of Pennsylvania report:

We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increases by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

Ironically, plastic bag bans are not even better for the environment. Reusable bags require far more energy and other resources to make. It is not clear they save resources unless they are used many, many times over.

For example, a study produced for the Environment Agency in the United Kingdom found that cotton bags would have to be used 103 times before they yielded environmental benefits. But the government study estimated that cotton bags are only used 51 times, making them worse for the environment than plastic. This study did not even consider the energy and water use associated with washing the bags, which increases their environmental impacts and costs.

For more details on why plastic bans don’t help the environment, see my paper on the topic.

Here is yet another example of how green advice forcing us to substitute one consumer product for another can be dangerous. For other examples, my recent posts on green advice related to BPA and bottled water. The list continues to grow.

Image credit: preetamrai on Flickr.

Greens Complain About BPA-Free Products They Helped Spur

by Angela Logomasini on January 23, 2013

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Post image for Greens Complain About BPA-Free Products They Helped Spur

Anti-chemical environmental activists rarely consider the consequences of their policies. They demonize chemicals that have been used safely for decades and advance chemical bans based on weak science without considering whether the replacement products will be any safer.

This is why it is particularly ironic that they are now complaining about the replacement chemical for bisphenol A (BPA), which greens have pressed government to ban.  BPA is used to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line food cans among other things. Suddenly, greens are up in arms because new clear plastics are made with an alternative product to BPA called bisphenol S (BPS). “[S]wapping out BPA for BPS may have meant ‘jumping from the frying pan to the fire,’” reads an article on CommonDreams.org. But the greens only have themselves to blame.

Last year, some activists pointed out that BPS may be a more potent “endocrine disrupter” and that the human body does not metabolize BPS as easily as it does for BPA. Now a research paper on the topic has appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives.

But there are many reasons to doubt that trace exposures to BPS — or any synthetic chemical for that matter — could have significant hormonal effects. Synthetic chemicals simply are not potent enough. Consider the fact that natural substances in our diets that we consume every day — such as soy, almonds and a variety of legumes — contain “endocrine mimicking” substances that are tens of thousands of times more potent than that of synthetic chemicals. And we all know, soy and nuts aren’t only safe — they are pretty good for you.

Other options are potentially more dangerous. For example, greens suggest glass because somehow they think that melting sand into a hard clear substance is more “natural” than making lighter weight, more energy efficient plastics. But who could seriously deem it safer? We all know the risks associated with broken glass. Indeed, children face far higher risks from cuts and subsequent infections than they do from a trace chemical that has been used for decades without any documented adverse health impacts.

Bans on BPA resins that line cans may pose more serious risks. Specifically, BPA resins line food containers — from soup to soda cans — to prevent the spread of deadly pathogens like  E. coli. Accordingly, bans that force us to buy inferior alternatives may mean increased food-borne illnesses. Now that’s something to complain about.

Problematic Green Advice On Reusable Bottles

by Angela Logomasini on January 17, 2013

in Environment, Features, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk

Environmental activists launched a campaign several years ago to demonize and promote bans on bottled water, suggesting that people find more “energy efficient” and “environmentally sound” alternatives, including reusable plastic or metal water bottles. Some even recommended the dangerously breakable reusable glass bottle! CEI pointed out why the greens’ advice was not only unnecessary but also carried drawbacks, including the fact that reusable alternatives are not only inconvenient, they can become breeding grounds for bacteria.

But apparently, there are other problems. For example, the reusable plastic bottles and metal alternatives that greens originally advocated contained the chemical bisphenol A, which greens also unfairly demonized. Accordingly, reusable bottle manufacturers responded by producing BPA-free products, but those containers use a similar chemical called bisphenol S, which some say is even worse than BPA (although both are safe, if you ask me). Still, greens advocated BPA-free versions including metal bottles. Little mention is made of the energy-intensive effort necessary to make metal bottles. But even setting that issue aside, a real and verifiable health problem has resulted from these reusable metal bottles: children have trapped their tongues in them because of a vacuum effect related to the rigid container. A recent New York Daily News article reports on one case of a young girl who suffered these effects:

‘The doctors said the two worst-case scenarios were: one, it could block her airway and she could suffocate, and two, her tongue would die, basically — she wouldn’t be able to speak anymore, she would lose her tongue,’ her father Andy Person told ‘Today.’ The family is considering legal action.

Aluminum water bottles seem like a safer, more eco-conscious choice to many parents, but they carry their own health hazards.

Doctors think suction, coupled with the inflexible metal and the bottle’s narrow, rigid opening, combine to trap the tongue.

If the family wants someone to sue, perhaps they should look to the environmental activists whose misinformation and scare campaign advanced these alternatives. The company that produced them was simply trying to respond to consumer demand.

This case just goes to show that forced-product substitution is not an easy solution to any problem, particularly when the problem that greens define doesn’t really exist. Products win a place in the market because they meet real needs. When products are removed for political reasons through bans and unfair and unscientific political causes, there may be, and usually are, unintended consequences.

Dumb And Dumber BPA “Science”

by Angela Logomasini on January 16, 2013

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

Post image for Dumb And Dumber BPA “Science”

Rationalizations to support claims that the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) poses a real and serious health threat have gone from dumb to dumber! Even reputable researchers make their case by regularly citing one inconclusive study to suggest another inconclusive study is meaningful. But science doesn’t work that way.

Used to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line cans containing everything from soda to soup, BPA is a target of the greens who get plenty help from researchers who use creative rationalizations to spin their findings.

A recent example comes from one of the authors of yet another study on BPA using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). It suggests that BPA levels could contribute to heart and kidney disease. But reliance on NHANES data raises a host of questions about the study’s value, as explained in a prior post and in a peer reviewed paper detailing why it isn’t reasonable to draw conclusions from this data. Without even considering that serious defect, we can see from one of the researchers comments that the study isn’t particularly compelling anyway. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, explains in Science Daily:

While our cross-sectional study cannot definitively confirm that BPA contributes to heart disease or kidney dysfunction in children, together with our previous study of BPA and obesity, this new data adds to already existing concerns about BPA as a contributor to cardiovascular risk in children and adolescents.

In other words, the value of this latest study rests at least in part on the value of the prior study for which Trasande is also an author. This prior study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year that suggested BPA contributes to obesity, but, as I noted then, the authors say the findings are inconclusive. Specifically, Trasande and coauthors state within the JAMA study:

BPA exposure is plausibly linked to childhood obesity, but evidence is lacking to date … This cross-sectional study, when considered in isolation, is at best hypothesis generating.

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Mother Tackles Hype About Chemicals On “Stossel”

by Angela Logomasini on January 11, 2013

in Environment, Precaution & Risk

The Independent Women’s Forum’s Senior Fellow Julie Gunlock takes on hype related to bisphenol A and chemicals in general on Fox Business Network’s “Stossel.” Gunlock outlines why smart moms like her need not fall for the false claims and alarmism related to trace chemicals in consumer products. Watch it below:

Not So Rosey Facts About Green Schools

by Angela Logomasini on January 4, 2013

in Environment

It is amazing how public officials will blindly pass mandates even when evidence is abundant to show their policies will prove costly and counterproductive. My colleague Todd Myers highlights one very good example of such regulatory stupidity in a recent blog post. Washington state officials are mandating green building standards even though  such standards are proving costly to taxpayers around the country because they have raised — rather than lowered — energy usage. Myers explains:

Pointing to a recent television news story, the House Democrats yesterday touted the Washington state law requiring that school buildings meet “green” building standards, claiming “taxpayers pay less for electricity every month.” There are several problems with this claim, however, and stubborn support for this failed law despite the evidence has resulted in less money for schools, an actual increase in energy use and more environmental damage.

Check out the entire post on the Washington Policy Center website.

Mice Study Questions BPA-Obesity Link

by Angela Logomasini on January 4, 2013 · 1 comment

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

Post image for Mice Study Questions BPA-Obesity Link

Science is a long-term process that only brings meaning when numerous, scientifically robust studies produce consistent results. But when it comes to politically loaded issues — such as chemical safety — a single study with a “weak association” and a small pool of subjects can capture headlines ad nauseam, creating the impression that consumers face a looming public health crisis where none really exists.

As readers of this blog and that of my chemical policy coalition know well, bisphenol A (BPA) — a chemical used to make hard plastics and resins that line food containers — is the subject of many such headlines. Studies on the substance  come out regularly and sensationalist news stories and blog posts from BPA detractors suggest that each study provides yet more evidence that the chemical is the cause of everything from obesity to heart disease.

But what will mainstream news outlets and anti-BPA activists make of one of the more recent studies, which reports that a prior study indicting BPA as an “obesogen” (a chemical that makes you fat!) is not reproducible.
The researchers note that their study alone also doesn’t “prove” anything… not any more than the original study.

It is worth noting, that this new study included 10 times the number of subjects (in this case mice), which makes its findings a bit more meaningful. In any case, this study stands as a reminder that conclusions should be drawn not from any random study, but from the full body of research, with an emphasis on the best quality studies. That’s what scientific panels around the world have done in regard to BPA. Comprehensive studies conducted by researchers from the World Health Organization, United States, European Union, Canada, Japan, and other places have deemed the current uses of BPA safe. They all repeat the same thing: BPA risks appear negligible and the benefits outweigh those small risks.

Yet the media don’t seem to understand and will likely hype the next study that claims to find a link. For example, one news report notes: “Rosenfeld and Frederick vom Saal, a curators’ professor of biological sciences at MU and a leading expert in BPA research, plan to wrap up a study within the next year that should determine whether there is a connection.” In reality, yet another study can’t settle the issue. But if researchers can secure some “positive” finding, they certainly will capture the headlines while studies – like this recent one – that don’t find a link attract little attention.

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