Precaution & Risk

When The Nanny State Kills

by Hans Bader on March 25, 2013 · 4 comments

in Features, Health and Illness, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

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The government told people to switch from saturated animal fats to unsaturated vegetable fats. But that advice may have killed a lot of people. As David Oliver notes, a recent study “in the British Medical Journal” shows that ”those who heeded the advice” from public-health officials “to switch from saturated fats to polyunsaturated vegetable oils dramatically reduced their odds of living to see 2013,” incurring up to a ”60% increase in risk of death by switching from animal fats to vegetable oils.” This possibly deadly medical advice has a long history:

Fifty years ago the medical community did an about-face . . . and instead went all in on polyunsaturated fats. It reasoned that since (a) cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease and (b) polyunsaturated fats reduce serum cholesterol levels, it inescapably followed that (c) changing people’s diet from saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats would save a lot of lives. In 1984 Uncle Sam got involved – Time magazine reported on it in “Hold the Eggs and Butter” – and he made a big push for citizens to swap out animal fat in their diet for the vegetable variety and a great experiment on the American people was begun.

As Oliver, an expert on mass torts, points out, it is hard to ”think of any mass tort, or combination of mass torts, that has produced as much harm as the advice to change to a plant oil-based diet” may have done.

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The Cancer Clusters That Weren’t

by Angela Logomasini on March 25, 2013 · 4 comments

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

e_brockovichA recent post in ACSH Dispatch examines an interesting question: How likely is it that some U.S. communities have elevated cancer rates, a.k.a, “cancer clusters,” because of chemical pollution? The answer: not very.

ACSH points to an enlightening article published in Slate by George Johnson, who notes:

Time after time, the clusters have turned out to be statistical illusions—artifacts of chance. … The Erin Brockovich incident, one of the most famous, is among the many that have been debunked. Hexavalent chromium in the water supply of a small California town was blamed for causing cancer, resulting in a $333 million legal settlement and a movie starring Julia Roberts. But an epidemiological study ultimately showed that the cancer rate was no greater than that of the general population. The rate was actually slightly less.

Johnson also discusses the alleged cancer cluster in Toms River, N.J., which is the subject of a new book: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, by Dan Fagin. But contrary to Fagin’s book, Johnson concludes: “… no matter how hard I squinted at the numbers, I found it hard to be convinced that there had been a cancer problem in Toms River.”

It is true that chemicals cause cancers where people are exposed for long periods of time to very high levels. For example, populations in Taiwan whose drinking water was contaminated with extremely high levels of arsenic for many decades experienced elevated rates of skin cancer. Is that a cluster? Surely it is. Does it convey information about the risks to populations exposed to much lower concentrations? Not particularly.

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The Dangers Of Crying Wolf On BPA

by Angela Logomasini on February 28, 2013

in Environment, Precaution & Risk

Anyone with an interest in the science of bisphenol A (BPA)–a chemical used to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line food containers — should read Trevor Butterworth’s recent Q&A with researcher Richard M. Sharpe, who specializes in male reproductive health issues at the University of Edinburgh.

I’ve commented many times on significant problems surrounding many of the recent studies on BPA and how hype about its risks can harm human health. Sharpe has been critical as well, and in December 2009, he lamented:

“research on Bisphenol A has … become literally bogged down in the mire of controversy, much of which stems from the earliest findings and seems to have little to do with the current state of the science … Fundamental, repetitive work on bisphenol A has sucked in tens, probably hundreds, of millions of dollars from government bodies and industry which, at a time when research money is thin on the ground, looks increasingly like an investment with a nil return.”

Judging from the Butterworth’s interview things have not changed much. Sharpe notes some additional dangers that arise from alarmist journalism and bad science:

My concern is that by feeding the public a continual stream of alarm stories that are poorly based, as with many of the stories about bisphenol A, people will become desensitized; the public is not stupid, people know it cannot all be true, especially when they see that everyone is living longer. But what happens if we discover an environmental chemical (or mixture) that we really do think poses a threat to human health, how are we going to get them to take serious notice of it, rather than filing it away with all the other alarmist stuff?

Read the full interview on Forbes.com.

Breast Cancer Victims Suffer From Foolish Priorities

by Angela Logomasini on February 12, 2013 · 2 comments

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk

In government, political priorities often supersede science and good health policy. In fact, a recent government report may shift funding away from useful research to study the most unlikely causes of breast cancer. More women will suffer in the future than necessary as money for useful research shrinks.

Released by the Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee, which an act of Congress created in 2008, this report says more funding should go to “breast cancer prevention.” But rather than identify known causes women can address (such as poor diets), it suggests government agencies “intensify the study of chemical and physical factors.”

This approach flies in the face of the best research on  cancer, such as  the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer.

At the end of the 20th century, breast cancer among women had risen, particularly in developed nations, and activists like to say chemicals play a big role. Yet NCI pointed out breast cancer rates appeared higher in part because better screening and increased detection found more cancers. The percentage of women age 40 to 49 who obtained mammograms doubled between 1987 and 1998 from 32 percent to 63 percent. The percentage of women age 50 to 64 who received a mammogram increased from 31 percent to 73 percent in the same period. In addition, hormone replacement therapy appears to have increased breast cancer risks, an unfortunate situation that was unknown at the time.

In its most recent report, the NCI said breast cancer has stabilized after “sharply decreasing” following the reduction of hormone replacement therapy. NCI does not identify chemicals as a significant cause of breast cancer.  Likewise, the American Cancer Society notes on its website: “At this time research does not show a clear link between breast cancer risk and exposure to things like plastics, certain cosmetics and personal care products, and pesticides.”

In addition, the most scientifically robust studies on the topic have failed to find a convincing link between breast cancer and chemicals. For example, U.S. researchers produced one of the largest such studies, which was conducted among women in Long Island, N.Y.  It was unable to establish a link between the chemicals most often cited as a potential cause of breast cancer—DDT (dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane) and other pesticides as well as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)—and an elevated level of cancers in that area.

Risk factors associated with breast cancer are related to lifestyle choices available to women in industrial societies—which explains why breast cancer is more common in Western nations. These include dietary choices such as consumption of too much fat, alcohol, or both; obesity among children (which increases risks as it can affect hormone levels and produce early menstruation); weight gain after menopause; and weight gain after 18 years of age. Delaying or refraining from childbearing also can affect hormone levels, thereby increasing breast cancer risks.

Not emphasized by anti-chemical activists or this recent government report is the fact modern medicine—and its many chemicals—are saving women from breast cancer. A woman with breast cancer in the late 1970s had a 75 percent chance of surviving five or more years, while today she has a 90 percent chance, according to data on NCI’s website.

For more details about cancer and chemicals, see SafeChemicalPolicy.org.

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.

SEC’s White May Be All Right, But Cordray’s CFPB Still A Constitutional Catastrophe

by John Berlau on January 24, 2013

in Features, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

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Today, President Obama will send to the Senate two nominations for two key financial regulatory posts. Noting that both of the nominees subject to Senate confirmation “are former prosecutors,” The New York Times declares that “the White House is sending a signal about the importance of holding Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing.”

But the signals are, to say the least mixed, and one of the nominations almost mocks the importance of holding government regulatory bureaucracies accountable to Main Street.

Obama will nominate Mary Jo White, U.S. attorney for New York under the Clinton administration, to replace Mary Schapiro as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And he will renominate Richard Cordray, the Democratic attorney general of Ohio until his defeat in 2010, as permanent head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created by Dodd-Frank.

Obama appointed Cordray a year ago in an unconstitutional “recess” appointment while Congress was in pro forma session. This appointment and the structure of the CFPB and other edifices of Dodd-Frank is currently being challenged in a lawsuit by my organization the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the center-right seniors group 60 Plus Association, and the Texas community bank State National Bank of Big Spring.

Neither nomination is perfect — I expect to have major disagreements with anyone the president nominates — but White and Cordray, as well as the respective agencies they would lead, are night and day in terms of serving the interests of Main Street entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers.

White at least has an admirable record as a prosecutor and seems to be fair-minded. She led successful prosecutions of mob boss John Gotti and the terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. She has even prosecuted some union corruption, with Ken Boehm noting in the Capital Research Center’s Labor Watch that her case against the Teamsters and yielded some guilty pleas and “positive results,” though some of the “big fish” escaped punishment.

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Greens Complain About BPA-Free Products They Helped Spur

by Angela Logomasini on January 23, 2013

in Environment, Features, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

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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.

TSA’s Body Scanner Shuffle Continues, Agency Still Flouts The Law On Body Scanners

by Marc Scribner on January 18, 2013 · 1 comment

in Features, Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Regulation

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A great deal of news coverage today has been given to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to remove backscatter X-ray strip-search machines from U.S. airports and to replace them with millimeter wave full-body scanners, with many outlets implying that this is somehow a major win for travelers and those concerned about effective air security and privacy rights. This analysis, however, ignores the bigger underlying issues, as well as recent TSA policy.

This shuffle actually began in October of last year, when the TSA announced it would begin replacing backscatter machines with millimeter wave machines, which run on software capable of producing “gingerbread man” depictions of customers rather than nude images. Then a subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recognized that this shuffle failed to address core criticisms of body scanners broadly and held a hearing on the matter in November. What happened today is that the TSA is ending its contract with OSI (parent of Rapiscan Systems), manufacturer of the original whole-body scanner, because OSI was unable to meet its deadline to come up with software capable of generating the newly required “gingerbread man” passenger depictions through its backscatter X-ray machines.

It is important to keep in mind that this technology was originally developed and marketed for the purpose of protecting high-security environments, such as prisons and sensitive government installations. It was only after the U.S. was swept by a wave of irrational paranoia following the September 11 terrorist attacks that anyone seriously considered putting whole-body scanners in airports — and treating air travelers like prisoners.

The core issues that TSA has repeatedly failed to address began with TSA’s flouting of the law that required them to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. Public and expert comments were never solicited and never taken into account before the TSA began purchasing and deploying these machines. It remains to be seen if they are at all effective in reducing risks to air traveler safety, let alone if these potential risk reductions justify the privacy-invading airport security policies that the United States foolishly adopted after 9/11.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit against the TSA’s illegal deployment of whole-body scanners. A court later ordered that the agency was in fact in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that it must open the required notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding. A year after the court’s order, the TSA still had not complied. EPIC petitioned for a writ of mandamus in an attempt to force the agency to promptly begin the proceeding they are legally required to conduct. The Competitive Enterprise Institute led a diverse coalition supporting EPIC’s petition, filing an amicus brief on the coalition’s behalf. The court rejected EPIC’s mandamus petition, but in doing so effectively set a timetable for the TSA to begin its legally required rulemaking proceeding. The TSA is obliged to announce the proceeding no later than the end of March.

In August, former American Airlines Chairman and CEO Robert L. Crandall and I coauthored an op-ed explaining why the TSA’s use of scanners is both illegal and likely just another cog in the federal government’s growing apparatus of counterproductive aviation security policies. For instance, due to nonsensical and offensive post-9/11 airport security theater, many short-haul travelers have abandoned flying and taken to the far more dangerous roads. Three Cornell University economists have estimated that 500 additional annual road deaths can be attributed to this phenomenon. Have that TSA’s porn-and-grope airport security policies prevented more than a full 747 of airline terrorism casualties every year? I find this highly unlikely given the rarity of terrorism, and especially air terrorism.

What is the takeaway here? While it is true that the millimeter wave scanners coupled with the “gingerbread man” software are less intrusive than the backscatter X-ray machines they are replacing, the underlying problems with whole-body imaging such as the lack of sound, risk- and cost-based security policy and the TSA’s continued lawless behavior remain unaffected.

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