Hey Homes, ‘sup? Did y’all know you was being played for a chump? Played by people with more agendas than congress.
Which brings me to your statement on Monsanto’s herbicide, RoundUp, and more specifically, its active ingredient, glyphosate.
You issued a press release on March 15, 2017.
“New questions about the safety of Monsanto weed killer Roundup are deeply troubling. I worked on the glyphosate issue last term and I believe consumers should immediately stop using Roundup, whose core ingredient glyphosate has been labeled a likely carcinogen and has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We need to find out if Monsanto or the Environmental Protection Agency misled the public.”
“Reports suggest that a senior official at the EPA worked to suppress a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review of glyphosate, and may have leaked information to Monsanto. I believe that a Department of Justice investigation is warranted to look into any potential misconduct by employees of the EPA. I also believe a congressional hearing is immediately warranted.”
Gilles-Éric Séralini holding a tumor-ridden rat
So Ted, you met behind closed doors with some folks from NGOs who said they are independent scientists, so you could get the down low on Monsanto and all. These “independent scientists,” no doubt, told you that glyphosate, after forty years of use with no one ever reporting any ill effects, had now turned up suppressed evidence that it caused all kinds of shit. No doubt, they showed you pictures of tumor-ridden rats.
I know I wasn’t there, but trust me, they blew smoke up your ass, Homes. They blew smoke so far up yo ass, that you be now jonesing for a cigarette.
How do I know that these “independent scientists” lied to you? They lied (the same kind of green ecology experts) to me about how pollution was getting worse (it wasn’t it was getting better) and stuff they are still going on about. And what these “independent scientists” didn’t tell you was a) The breed of rats used is subject to spontaneous tumor development. b) The control group is never shown. This is a big Red Flag. The control group, given the species, would also have had tumors. c) The study size was woefully inadequate. Beware small study sizes. Not enough rats were used for decent statistical analyses. d) The Séralini rat study was redacted due to these problems.
Do you have any idea how ill-informed this statement is: glyphosate is “linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma” by IARC. You are too smart a guy to not know that correlation does not mean causation, but somehow, after forty years, these guys have “linked” it to NHL. How? Fucking smoke and mirrors, Ted. Smoke and mirrors. Oh, and lying their asses off, using real scientific research and claiming effects the polar opposite of what the research papers found. See what I wrote a few days before for more on this (https://normbenson.com/timberati/2017/03/17/congressmans-ted…orse-rides-again/).
As an example, take a look at how pseudo-science works, I’ll link sales of organic to autism for you. Are they really linked? Of course not. Although affluent people who are more likely to buy organic food, will have more ability to have their children diagnosed for such ailments.
So despite what you heard about glyphosate, despite what these independent experts with PhD in their titles told you, they don’t know the scientific process. They start, and end, with the hypothesis, that is their narrative. If they don’t get the “right” answers, they tweak the data or simply lie. Nothing matters but the narrative.
Bullshit dressed up with sciency-sounding jargon is still just bullshit. Bullshit may be good for organic gardens but it is not something to base policy on.
Forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself. I am Norm.
Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith of canals in Venice, California
You don’t know me but I grew up in your district, in Venice, in fact. Though I graduated from Venice High (go you mighty Gondos!) before you were born and the neighborhoods have upscaled, it is still the progressive liberal area it was when I lived there. Old Abbot Kinney would never recognize the place now.
There weren’t going to be any forests left
In fact, I chose my career, in part, due to facts I learned from my liberal friends, that the coast redwoods were being made extinct by Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, and any other lumber company. The redwoods would disappear in a generation, according to the emerging ecology movement. I attended Santa Monica City College (to say I studied at SMCC would be stretching the truth) and heard all about the peril of the redwoods (and the earth) at the first Earth Day event.
The Four Horsemen were about to mess us up
Y’all might have read about it. The speakers said something like this: “Brothers and sisters the world careens toward a Malthusian catastrophe, the likes of which the world has never seen.” The high prophet of 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich summed it up for us: “The battle to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines–hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” We were accelerating toward the brink; the point of no return. We will see droughts and mass starvation; forests reduced to stumps, no oil, foul air, frozen earth [scratch that frozen bit, and put in scorched due to global warming instead] and polluted water.
As a result, Ted, I decided to be a forester to save the forests. Hey when you are in your teens, you can do anything. Also, more importantly, when you listen only to your tribe, you believe anything they say. After all, why would they they lie?
Do you know how many of their predictions came true or even close to true? None. Nearly fifty years after that first Earth Day, and literally nothing I heard was right. What did happen was exactly the opposite of what these experts predicted–and are still predicting–but unlike a broken clock they won’t be right even once. Johan Norberg shows here what really happened.
Congressman Ted Lieu who represents California’s 33rd district (which includes Beverly Hills, Calabasas, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Palos Verdes Peninsula, and Santa Monica) issued a statement on his concerns about glyphosate. Below is his statement:
REP. LIEU STATEMENT ON NEW GLYPHOSATE SAFETY CONCERNS
March 15, 2017
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington – Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) issued the following statement regarding reports that unsealed court documents raise new questions about the safety of Monsanto weed killer Roundup and its chief ingredient glyphosate.
“New questions about the safety of Monsanto weed killer Roundup are deeply troubling. I worked on the glyphosate issue last term and I believe consumers should immediately stop using Roundup, whose core ingredient glyphosate has been labeled a likely carcinogen and has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We need to find out if Monsanto or the Environmental Protection Agency misled the public.”
“Reports suggest that a senior official at the EPA worked to suppress a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review of glyphosate, and may have leaked information to Monsanto. I believe that a Department of Justice investigation is warranted to look into any potential misconduct by employees of the EPA. I also believe a congressional hearing is immediately warranted.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let’s unpack this.
“New questions about the safety of Monsanto weed killer Roundup are deeply troubling. I worked on the glyphosate issue last term…”
According to Judy Frankel, an anti-biotechnology campaigner writing in Huffington Post, in June 2016, Lieu met behind closed doors with “independent scientists” and “EPA scientists” and “urged the EPA to ban RoundUp.” These scientists provided “testimony that it [glyphosate] poses an unreasonable risk to humans, animals, and the environment” These scientists contended glyphosate is “linked to autism, Alzheimer’s, cancer, birth defects, obesity, gluten intolerance, among other health issues.” The other health issues are probably cooties and stuff that chemtrails also covers. The first red flag here is “linked to.” This is not linked in the same way smoking and cancer is linked. No, this is in the way if two different variables have increases over time, they can appear linked. You can link autism with sales of organic food, which is supposed to magically prevent all the things that glyphosate magically causes.
“and I believe consumers should immediately stop using Roundup, whose core ingredient glyphosate…”
I suspect the city park’s employees of Petaluma might disagree with Rep. Lieu.
Recently, the tony City of Petaluma stopped using RoundUp as an experiment. The result was a 1700% increase in cost for less effective organic treatments and real health problems for the applicators. According to a story in Petaluma Argus-Courier, “The treatments are also said to be extremely pungent during application, with several workers complaining of eye irritation and one experiencing respiratory problems….Those attributes have required the use of new protective equipment, something that was not required with Roundup.”
“[glyphosate] has been labeled a likely carcinogen and has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.“
To get glyphosate into the 2a classification took a monumental effort to distort findings. As toxicologist Frank Schnell says, They are “designed to make your head hurt, so that you won’t hear that soft little voice of common sense in the back of your head whispering ‘this is all bullshit, isn’t it?.’…Stupid nonsense dressed up to look like complicated science is still just stupid nonsense.”
Myles Powers and his friend James, scrutinized the IARC monograph (as the report is called) and found that the citations the mongraph uses say something quite different than the results cited in IARC’s report. The video is less than 20 minutes and well worth your time, especially if you are Rep. Ted Lieu.
As for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, here is what the Environmental Protection Agency concluded: “there is conflicting evidence for the association between glyphosate exposure and NHL. No association between glyphosate exposure and NHL was found in population-based case-control studies in the United States, Canada or France. Additionally, the large prospective Agricultural Health Study (AHS) with 54,315 licensed pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina did not show a significantly increased risk of NHL. A population-based case-control study from Sweden suggested an association between glyphosate exposure and NHL; however, this finding was based on only 4 glyphosate-exposed cases and 3 controls.” Got that? 54,315 licensed pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina showed no increase versus a small study of “only 4 glyphosate-exposed cases…”
In the right light and the right camera angles, you could make this molehill to look like a mountain.
“Reports suggest that a senior official at the EPA worked to suppress a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review of glyphosate, and may have leaked information to Monsanto. I believe that a Department of Justice investigation is warranted to look into any potential misconduct by employees of the EPA. I also believe a congressional hearing is immediately warranted.”
Because, here is what the EPA found regarding glyphosate: “Based on a weight of evidence approach from a wide range of assays both in vitro and in vivo including endpoints for gene mutation, chromosomal damage, DNA damage and repair, there is no in vivo genotoxic or mutagenic concern for glyphosate.” That’s sci-speak for “we found bupkis.”
The technical scientific term for what the EPA found with regard to harm from glyphosate is “diddly squat.” They were as lucky at finding problems with glyphosate as I was with getting to second base with Mary Sue Horsley. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, either by the Obama administration or me, I’m sure.
This hobbyhorse in the activist’s apocalypse rodeo keeps getting trotted out and this time Congressman Lieu decided to ride it. Yippee-ki-yay, Motherfucker.
Damn, I am pissed. I was supposed to be dead by now. Hell, we all were.
Baby-boomers weren’t supposed to live longer than their parents’ generation. Experts expected pesticides and other synthetic chemicals to kill us. We would be killed by the very technology meant to save us—hoisted with our own malathion petards.
Rachel Carson predicted dire cancer consequences from chemicals, primarily DDT, though it might have been ozone or acid rain or cooties. Who remembers? I mean if you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there. Right? Anyway she said:
“`No longer are exposures to dangerous chemicals occupational alone; they have entered the environment of everyone-even of children as yet unborn. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that we are now aware of an alarming increase in malignant disease.” [There wasn’t–other causes of death had dropped] She expected “practically 100 per cent of the human population to be wiped out from a cancer epidemic in one generation.” [Editor’s note: It didn’t.]
Later on, doomster Paul Ehrlich hedged:
“the U.S. life expectancy will drop to forty-two years by 1980, due to cancer epidemics.”
If the cancer didn’t kill us, according to Ehrlich, the population bomb would by causing a worldwide famine.
But wait there’s more! Because we humans were so damned greedy (present company excepted, of course) forests were being decimated; acid rain falling on the forests would obliterate what forest remained, the earth was losing species at a spectacular rate—though no one could say by how much—deserts devoured fertile land by a mile or two a year each year. Oil was predicted to dry up within a decade making the Mad Max dystopian future look like a Sunday school picnic. And, for our grand finale, the earth was entering a new ice age due to the particulates we tossed into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, thus blocking the sun’s life-giving rays.
We knew that our parents and ancestors had ruined earth for us, and in the Church of What’s Happening Now, we recited our eco-litany:
“The water is polluted and the air is worse. We’re washing away topsoil from our farmland; and what we aren’t washing away, we’re paving over. The more technology we manufacture, the less livable becomes our world. Humans produce too many babies. Our exploding population increases poverty and misery and decreases habitat for every other living thing that we share this tiny and fragile world with.”
Thanks to our parents, we had an overcrowded planet, short on food, short on oil, and global cooling would finish us off (just look at the droughts, the signs are all around us). We were completely, absolutely, and irretrievably, boned.
That was more nearly fifty years ago and we Boomers are still here.
…Well, a lot of us anyway. Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, and Jimmy Hendrix bit it long ago. And Keith Richards may or may not be dead; who can tell?
Here is what I am getting at: Not only did humanity survive all of those apocalyptic prophecies; life is better than it has ever been.
“In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: ‘dentistry’”
– P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World
And yet, Apocalypticists keep tossing up more clay pigeons to be shot down by anyone willing to do minimal research. These pigeons are foisted in the name of ‘saving the earth’s environment for coming generations,’ always call for everyone, though not themselves (see examples of diCaprio and Gore, hereafter listed as exhibits A and B), to live frugal and simple lives of less.
Interestingly, they take us for pigeons. One need only get on the mailing list of the Sierra Club, Audubon, or Friends of the Earth, to see that money is their lifeblood and they will tell you the direst or worst-case scenarios to get a transfusion of cash. This tactic doesn’t work on everybody. For instance, if you tell P. J. O’Rourke “By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,” he will say, “Your point is?”
Catastrophic climate change appears to be the latest pigeon du jour.
Its staying power has been amazing. ‘That’s because it’s Science,’ I hear you saying.‘ So for purposes of argument, let us stipulate that anthropogenic climate change has scientific bases. I agree. I hope you do.
I will further stipulate:
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing,
The primary reason for the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels,
On average, our world is warmer than it was 50 to 150 years ago,
Our burning of fossil fuels–thereby increasing CO2 in the atmosphere–has contributed to the warming of our atmosphere.
That, in a nutshell, is the 97% consensus. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising and we are putting most of it there and CO2 contributes to the warming of our planet (for a fascinating write-up on how we know of CO2’s rise, its fossil fuel origins, and the warming, see Brian Dunning’s explanation https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4549).
Easy peasy: throttle up CO2 in the atmosphere to make it warmer, throttle back on CO2 to cool. Kick back. Put your feet on the desk. it’s Miller Time.
Wait there’s more! There’s a whole theory on how global warming works.
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer has an understandable explanation at his website (http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/). I’ll quote the parts I think are critical to this discussion.
“Global warming theory starts with the assumption that the Earth naturally maintains a constant average temperature, which is the result of a balance between (1) the amount of sunlight the Earth absorbs, and (2) the amount of emitted infrared (‘IR’) radiation that the Earth continuously emits to outer space. In other words, energy in equals energy out….As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthening the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface….the lower atmosphere must then respond to this energy imbalance (less IR radiation being lost than solar energy being absorbed) by causing an increase in temperature (which causes an increase in the IR escaping to space) until the emitted IR radiation once again equals the amount of absorbed sunlight….”
Does CO2 control everything? No. It turns out that there are plenty more knobs and these control other stuff. In fact, according to the theory, doubling the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide concentration causes less than one degree centigrade of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). So why the fuss? It’s all about the feedbacks, which are processes, which cool or warm the earth. For instance, evaporation occurs as the sun warms a surface of water. This water vapor may either hold heat or condense into clouds that cool the affected area by reflecting sunlight back into space. Feedbacks are the turbochargers of climate change theory. I had a turbocharged Volvo 240 GT once. It ate transmissions like Orson Welles ate Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks.
Spencer points out that, “clouds, water vapor, and precipitation systems can all be expected to respond to the warming tendency in some way, which could either amplify or reduce the manmade warming….the sum of all the feedbacks in the climate system determines what is called ‘climate sensitivity’.”
It is this climate sensitivity that settled scientists are arguing about. How do the models (and there are more climate models that Zsa Zsa had husbands) test whether they are right or not? I, and others, like the Richard Feynman method:
“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it…Then we compute the consequences of the guess…to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature, or we…compare it directly with observations to see if it works.”
Has this been done with climate models? You bet your sweet bippy it has.
Here is a graph of 102 model runs for the tropics by Dr. John Christy. The red line is an average, and the blue circles and green squares are balloon and satellite readings. The tropics are “the key region in which climate models respond to greenhouse gas warming with a large and distinct signal.” Dr. Christy testified to congress in 2013. “The focus on the tropics is important because of the consistent and significant warming that climate models indicate should have already occurred as a result of the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases we have put into the atmosphere. It also represents a part of the global atmosphere in which the critical water vapor and cloud feedbacks have major influences. In addition, changes in this region were determined by the EPA [Ed note: EPA is the US Environmental Protection Agency] to be a key line of evidence of greenhouse gas caused climate change. Finally, the tropical atmosphere is also a huge and easy target for modeling projects to hit if the physics are well represented….The comparison shows that the very latest climate model simulations used in the IPCC Assessment released two months ago indicate that their response to CO2 on average is 2 to 5 times greater than reality.” (emphasis added)
The models are, as Bob Euchre said in Major League about Wild Thing’s first pitch, which missed the strike zone by about ten feet, “just a bit outside.”
Let’s go back to Feynman’s method: You guess. You make computations. You predict results. You compare your predictions to your observations. If the predictions do not match your observations, you are wrong. “If it disagrees with the experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with the experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
There is another method and it’s the one that is apparently in vogue (meaning it’s popular, not that it has a spread in the magazine Vogue). It relies on multiple runs of the models. Dr. Kerry Emanuel is a proponent, so he can explain it better than I can.
“[We] have built over the years a hierarchy of increasingly complex models that really are some of the most complicated pieces of software that the human race has ever constructed. They have their origins in models that were built for a much more pedestrian but important purpose, which is weather forecasting. And they are very complex. In the case of weather forecasting, arguably you can test them twice a day and see how well they are doing. With climate, it’s much more difficult to test them because we don’t have that many climate states….We try to hold certain variables constant, like sunlight. And vary another external factor, like carbon dioxide, to see how the system responds….[These] models are not just run once. They are run many times, to try to account for their own internal random variability. And you can find 15, 20, 25 year stretches in all of these projections where the temperature not only flattens out but it actually goes down a little bit. So, if you take the ensemble mean, then it’s correct that the last 30 years, the models have overpredicted the temperature. I might add that 30 years before that, they underpredicted it. And this is what happens when you superimpose natural variability on forced variability.” (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/john_christy_an.html)
I encourage you to listen to the whole EconTalk podcast. I came away almost liking Kerry Emanuel. He came across as a decent guy. My take away message for his view that global warming was a threat was that it was a feeling and not one he could produce much evidence for.
My experience is that models can be wonderful tools, but they always, always, always, have to be compared to the observed results. Without feedback from the real world, to refine their designs, the computer models are just mathematical magic eight balls: giving answers down to the ten thousandth decimal point but lacking any accuracy. The climate models are “just a bit outside.”
And to circle back to where I started, they are being used once again, to predict doom to the human race in the not too distant future. To scare us into giving up, repenting for our sins of hubris, thinking we could be like gods, and turning back.
Many [people, even those with digital watches,] were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Catastrophic Climate Change is another example of the Precautionary Principle—“don’t try anything new, it might be dangerous.” It’s just another clown in the Rodeo of the Apocalypse.
Now I think I understand what Dr. Tyson was getting at: Where has our sense of adventure gone? When you are an astrophysicist your priorities encompass galaxies.
Cheer up, Dr. Tyson. we have landed unmanned probes, one on the planet Mars and one on a motherfucking comet! I suppose it would have been cooler if Bruce Willis had landed on the comet and blown the sucker up but it was still goddam freaking awesome.
You know what else is freaking awesome, Dr. Tyson? What we humans have done here on earth in these past forty-five to fifty years.
“…if you look at what actually happened in my lifetime, the average per-capita income of the average person on the planet, in real terms, adjusted for inflation, has tripled. Lifespan is up by 30 percent in my lifetime. Child mortality is down by two-thirds. Per-capita food production is up by a third. And all this at a time when the population has doubled.” –Dr. Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist.
How cool is that, Dr. Tyson? Happy Monday.
We made these advances because when ideas have sex, innovation happens:
[Voiceover]
Welcome to FFN’s (Food Fetish Network) Sunday talk show, Plate the Nation; where we discuss current food issues on the nation’s plate with movers and salad shakers in the news. And here is the host of Plate the Nation, Bob Sheep-Sheerer.
A Photo of Food By Unknown
[Camera focuses on Sheep-Sheerer: a man in his late 60s with white hair and white teeth wearing a sharkskin blue western-cut suit and a bolo tie.]
Sheep-Sheerer: This week on Plate the Nation, we talk with a homeless guy who hangs around Trump Towers, who will speculate on what Presidential Candidate’s (I can’t believe I’m about to say this) Donald Trumps “grab ’em by the pussy” remarks will do to the price of taco bowls there.
But first we will talk with spokesplate, Platey McPlateface for the Plate of the Union, who says the current capitalist market system has made a hash of the country’s food affairs and only they can tell the incoming president how to fix it.
[Camera settles on “Plate of the Union” (PU) spokesplate, a modified MyFoodPlate logo.]
Plate of the Union’s spokesplate, Platey McPlateface (remember this is satire–it’s from the author’s fertile imagination)
Sheep-Sheerer: We have to dive right in to discourse, because I understand you are making the rounds today.
Platey McPlateface: Indeed, I have a full plate today. *chuckles* After this, I’ll be on Eat the Press with Chuck Steak, and then ‘Tis Greek With George Stephanopoulos.
Sheep-Sheerer:What about the fourth Sunday show?
Platey McPlateface: They bumped me to talk with Roger Ailes about proper etiquette. So I’ll be on Lox and Frenemies tomorrow.
Sheep-Sheerer: For the folks at home, could you quickly spill the beans on what Plate of the Union is and how it came about?
Platey McPlateface: Sure, Bob. May I call you Bob?
Sheep-Sheerer: No.
Platey McPlateface: Plate of the Union is a grassroots organization founded by guys in the food movement, who have never grown any food in their lives: Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, guys who write about food; and Tom Colicchio, a chef who cooks $300 meals out of food.
Sheep-Sheerer: And–
Platey McPlateface: I’m sorry to interrupt but I just remembered, one of the grassroots founders is an urban farmer.
Sheep-Sheerer: *rolls his eyes and sighs* I’m glad you cleared that up…Can’t get much more authentic than an urban farmer.
Platey McPlateface: You bet your grass-fed wagyu beef, you can’t. Urban farmers can deliver fresh eye-wateringly expensive sustainable organic onions grown in contaminated soils to rich people within bicycling distance of where they are grown!
Sheep-Sheerer: And what is Plate of the Union’s raison d’etre?
Platey McPlateface: No raisins. We’re a grassroo–
Sheep-Sheerer: No its purpose. What is Plate of the Union’s reason for being?
Platey McPlateface: We want to start a national conversation….We believe it is vital that everyone hears what we have to say.
Sheep-Sheerer: You say in your petition to change, and I quote, “Our food system is out of balance, and it’s time to take action.”
Platey McPlateface: Absolutely. Our food is too affordable.
Sheep-Sheerer: Too affordable?
Platey McPlateface: Oh my yes! The federal government subsidizes junk food. That makes it cheap and drives up rates of obesity, diabetes, and even cancer.(1) If it were more expensive, people would make sensible decisions. Why if everyone in the U.S. were to switch to just organic produce, it would cost an additional $200 billion more annually. They wouldn’t have money for frivolous things like books and clothing or healthcare. But since eating organic food magically prevents any ailments healthcare insurance will be a thing of the past.
Sheep-Sheerer: Or people could go Chef Coliccio’s Craftsteak restaurant, where they’re sure to get trimmer because then they could afford only one meal a month.
Platey McPlateface: *smiles widely* Hey…that’s a great idea!
Sheep-Sheerer: You mentioned cancer–
Platey McPlateface: Right! Everyone knows there’s a cancer epidemic in this country due to GMOs and RoundUp! That’s because our nation’s food policies are prioritized by corporate interests like Monsanto *makes the sign of the fork over the organic protein* at the expense of our health.
Platey McPlateface: Lies! Lies! Agro-corporate, Monsanto lies! *again makes the sign of the fork over the organic protein* It’s all a conspiracy between the government and Monsanto to lull you into a false sense of security! Everyone knows there’s a cancer epidemic happening all over the world.
Sheep-Sheerer: You’re aware, of course that, according to research, obesity has little to do with diet, and is more about exercise and staying active?
Platey McPlateface: Lies! Lies! Agro-corporate, Monsanto lies! *again makes the sign of the fork over the organic protein*
Sheep-Sheerer: A critic of your policy proposals says they, and I quote, “tend to represent a hodge-podge of ideas that have already been tried, are already being undertaken by the USDA, or fail to hold up under close scrutiny.”
Platey McPlateface: Obviously a shill in the pocket of Big Something-or-other.
Sheep-Sheerer:That’s all the time we have. Stay tuned as we talk about why Donald Trump eats KFC chicken with a fork, how vulgarity affects the price of taco bowls, and does a Hilary Clinton presidency signal a taco truck on every corner?
As we go to commercial break, here’s Trump’s statement on Trump Tower’s taco bowls.
Pop quiz: Which is least toxic, arsenic, cyanide or vitamin D?
(answer at the end of this post)
EWG’s Golden Shower Gambit
Once again, the non-governmental organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which has yet to find a chemical to not be concerned about to raise cash environmental awareness, wants to be showered in gold to protect you from Erin Brockovich’s favorite chemical, chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium).
“A new EWG analysis of federal data from nationwide drinking water tests shows that the compound [chromium-6] contaminates water supplies for more than 200 million Americans in all 50 states. Yet federal regulations are stalled by a chemical industry challenge that could mean no national regulation of a chemical state scientists in California and elsewhere say causes cancer when ingested at even extraordinarily low levels.
“The standoff is the latest round in a tug-of-war between scientists and advocates who want regulations based strictly on the chemical’s health hazards and industry, political and economic interests who want more relaxed rules based on the cost and feasibility of cleanup.”
Let’s compare a common insecticide of similar toxicity and carcinogenicity to chromium-6: caffeine.
An RfD (reference dose) is the amount of something you can ingest daily for your lifetime and expect no harm. It can verge on the ridiculous. In fact, Dr. Sorell writes, “the RfD process is still very conservative and results in doses that may be many times below actual levels of concern. Conservatism is useful in screening and for ensuring protectiveness, but can present a challenge in risk management. In some cases, conservatively derived concentrations may be overprotective, resulting concentrations that are difficult or expensive to detect analytically, cannot be environmentally achieved, are based on intakes well below typical or voluntary exposures, or are otherwise unreasonably low.” (emphasis is mine)
The RfD for caffeine is 0.0025 mg/kg-day. For a 70-kiligram (154 pound) adult, this dose is the quantity of caffeine in 0.14 milliliters (mL) of cola (based on 35 mg of caffeine per 12 fl oz cola). So based on RfD, one drop of Coca-Cola would be thirty-six times your safe level for ingestion of caffeine.
One drop of coffee is 270 times above the safe level for caffeine consumption. One 16-ounce cup of coffee contains approximately 2700 times the safe consumption level of caffeine based on the RfD.
This sort of campaign has little to do with your physical heath, and much to do with EWG’s financial health. As Tom Knudson wrote in the Sacramento Bee in 2001, “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity. And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”
If you are worried about the carcinogenicity of chromium-6, you should also worry about your intake of caffeine for much the same reasons.
So to be sure you don’t drink an unsafe level of 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine (caffeine), put one drop of coffee into 1/3 gallon of water–or 1 gallon of water, just to be on the safe side.
EWG classifies any drinking water above the California standard to be “contaminated”
California’s standard for chromium-6 is 10 parts per billion.
To dilute a drop of coffee to yield a ten ppb level of caffeine, you would have to put a drop into the equivalent amount of water to fill two Olympic swimming pools.
So to be sure you don’t drink an unsafe level of 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine (caffeine), put one drop of coffee into 13.2 million gallons of water, just to be on the safe side.
EWG Story After Fact Checking
EWG’s managing editor apparently missed some key points involving toxicology during the fact checking of those statements. So let’s help him out.
That should read:
“A new Another EWG analysiscon job usingof federal data from nationwide drinking water tests shows that the compoundchromium-6–a naturally occurring chemical found in well water–is found, unsurprisingly, in thecontaminates water supplies for more than 200 million Americans in all 50 states. Yet, despite numerous research studies to the contrary,federal regulations are stalled by a chemical industry challenge that could mean no national regulationEWG wants you to waste money on aof a chemical that activistsstate scientists in California and elsewhere say causes cancer when ingested at even extraordinarily low levels.”
“The standoffThis shakedown for money by EWG, is the latest round in a tug-of-war between scientists and advocates who want regulations based strictly on chemaphobia and activist sciencethe chemical’s health hazards and scientists and researchers who understand the science of toxicologyindustry, political and economic interestswant more relaxed rules based on the cost and feasibility of cleanup.”
EWG’s chromium-6 campaign is masquerading as scientific fact.
EWG leans on heavily on a 2011 California report on chromium-6. It is quite detailed with lots of references. It is the type of reprot that Frank Schnell told me, is “designed to make your head hurt, so that you won’t hear that soft little voice of common sense in the back of your head whispering ‘this is all bullshit, isn’t it?.’..Stupid nonsense dressed up to look like complicated science is still just stupid nonsense.”
While they may be sincere, their plan is to scare you to act and shower them with gold. Their rhetoric is a virtual golden shower on you, tainted with half-truths, innuendo, and fabrication.
One drop of coffee is 270 times above the safe level for caffeine consumption. One 16-ounce cup of coffee contains approximately 2700 times the safe consumption level of caffeine based on the RfD.
Answer to the pop quiz: Which is least toxic, arsenic, cyanide or vitamin D?
With an LD50 of 15 mg/kg, arsenicis the least toxic.
Both cyanide and vitamin D have LD50s of 10 mg/kg.
Today the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to force the Agency to begin turning over documents it promised to release under a May 2016 FOIA request. E&E Legal is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation that “seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.”
The request seeks public records discussing and analyzing the work of the Ramazzini Institute, an organization in Italy that U.S. federal agencies have used to provide them numerous assessments and whose output has become the subject of controversy in recent years. The requested records specifically relate to the Institute’s analytical and toxicological methods and whether Ramazzini’s studies were being considered for use by the EPA.
Although E&E Legal twice narrowed its request to facilitate the promised release of records, EPA has provided nothing, well over three months after promising that the emails and other materials would be forthcoming.
Ramazzini Institute has a growing record of controversy. Examples include:
In 2013, EPA suspended its own assessments that used Ramazzini data.
Additionally, Ramazzini has been the subject of a congressional oversight letter to National Toxicology Program’s director and the EPA expressing concerns about the agencies’ continued use, sometimes undisclosed, of questionable research from Ramazzini.
That 2015 document was produced by IARC, a group singularly dedicated to claiming that everything it casts its gaze to is “probably carcinogenic to humans” — so far, it has only claimed otherwise once in its review of nearly 1,000 substances — even though it has been forced to walk such claims back.
In late April, EPA posted a report, stamped “FINAL”, concluding that glyphosate was not likely carcinogenic, then quickly pulled it offline the next business day. This strange move drew great public scrutiny and, months later, EPA affirmed the conclusion. What transpired behind this odd series of events is the subject of E&E Legal’s request at issue in the suit filed today.
Eight Vol. 112 authors are Ramazzini fellows. The Institute has been lavishly underwritten by the U.S. taxpayer (it has received more than $310 million directly from U.S. government agencies, including including $250 million in funding from one of these federal agencies which is headed by a Ramazzini fellow).
Ramazzini staff, fellow and other relationships raise questions about its role in the movement seeking to reverse accepted research conclusions on glyphosate, long a target of the international environmental movement for its popularity given it kills weeds without killing crops.
E&E Legal notes with interest that earlier in the week the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a request for information to the HHS about its funding of IARC. The extensive overlap between EPA, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, and Ramazzini is relevant to today’s lawsuit — E&E Legal has been forced to sue HHS recently as well, for improperly withholding IARC- and glyphosate-related documents under FOIA. HHS agencies have even claimed that federal employees working at HHS on these matters are really working for international bodies when they don’t want to release such records.
A New York Times article tells of a German forester, Peter Wohlleben, who believes that trees communicate intimately. That they have social networks.
What? Barkbook? Twigger? SapChat? Pineterest?
Wohlleben wrote a best-selling book in Germany, “Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries From a Secret World.” According to the Amazon blurb, trees, “Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group.”
Uh huh. Oooookaaaay. AYFKM? Anthropomorphizing plants to explain a concept is one thing but this takes it to a whole new level of absurd.
In the Times article, he looks at a pair of tall old beech trees, he says, “These trees are friends. You see how the thick branches point away from each other? That’s so they don’t block their buddy’s light.”
“These trees are friends. You see how the thick branches point away from each other? That’s so they don’t block their buddy’s light.”
How about the fact that trees use light in photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates? This process happens in the leaves. Leaves that produce food for the tree stay, those that don’t produce food for the tree wither and die and eventually the branch falls away.
How about phototropism? Plants bend toward light because that is used to power photosynthesis that produces the plant’s food?
How about the two beech trees started as seedlings and vigorously competed for light, water, and nutrients and found what they needed in areas away from each other?
How about Occam’s Razor? when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.”
As for the Wood Wide Web; basically, Wohlleben has offered up a mystical explanation for the result of evolution. Yes mycorrhizal fungi do help plant roots take in water and nutrients; they evolved to do so. Because plants collaborate and compete does not mean they planned anything or that they have a sentient purpose.
“All life on Earth is connected and related to each other,” because of evolution says Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This connection happened through changes in individuals caused by changes in environment or need. Consider the ability of people to drink milk from other animals, people have this ability now because their ancestors herding animals and began drinking non-human milk. Some individuals tolerated this new source of nourishment better than others. They felt better and passed along this ability to their descendants.
The Wood Wide Web should be called the Woo Wide Web.
“The main rule in toxicology is that ‘the dose makes the poison’. At some level, every chemical becomes toxic, but there are safe levels below that,” wrote Bruce Ames, who is the creator of the Ames Test which determines if a chemical is mutagenic.
A Prop 65 sign in a Starbuck’s Coffee outlet. Photo by the author.
Ames says that in the 1970s the prevailing thinking was that “we should assume that even low doses might cause cancer, even though we lacked the methods for measuring carcinogenic effects at low levels.” The assumption has never left, one need only to look at the ever-present Proposition 65 signs or listen to Vani Hari (aka the Food Babe).
At the time experts also assumed that:
only a small proportion of chemicals would have carcinogenic potential
testing at a high dose would not produce a carcinogenic effect unique to the high dose; and
carcinogens were likely to be synthetic industrial chemicals. It is time to take account of information indicating that all three assumptions are wrong. – Bruce Ames, 2005. (my emphasis)
Ames points out that our test for carcinogenicity of feeding animals near-fatal doses of the chemical is flawed because, “High doses can cause chronic wounding of tissues, cell death, and consequent chronic cell division of neighboring cells, which would otherwise not divide.”
How should a “safe” level be arrived at?
The basic steps to arriving at a safe level are:
Determine a Point of Departure:
This means to review the scientific data available on the toxicity of a compound and select the most sensitive endpoint. So if a chemical causes liver toxicity at a concentration of 1 mg/kg, kidney toxicity at 50 mg/kg and stomach ulcers at 0.1 mg/kg – the 0.1 mg/kg would be selected as the point of departure because if you pick a concentration that prevents stomach ulcers, you will by design also protect against the liver and kidney toxicity (because you need higher concentrations of the chemical to cause those). Furthermore, typically you are looking to pick a NOAEL (No Observable Adverse Effect Level) as a Point of Departure (POD), as this is the highest concentration of a “substance at which there are no biologically significant increases in frequency or severity of any effects in the exposed humans or animals.” (International Council on Harmonisation, 2011)
2. Determine how many modifying factors or uncertainty factors you should use.
The International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) appendix 3 gives examples of the modifying factors to use, depending on what kind of study was conducted to determine the POD. Modifying (or uncertainty) factors provide a cushion to human exposure based on factors like which animal was used for the study, the duration of the study and whether the POD is a “No Observable Adverse Effect Level” (NOAEL) or LOAEL.
The “safe” level is really a concentration that would be highly unlikely to cause an adverse effect in even the most sensitive individuals. Using the modifying factors (in step 2 of appendix 3), this concentration results in a very conservative value. These “safe” levels are referred to as PDE (Permissible Daily Exposure), ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake), RfD (Reference Dose) and other things depending on the agency that is generating them, but they all mean the same thing: the level that would not be expected to produce an adverse effect. These values are expressed as either mg/day (where an adult body weight of between 50 and 70 kg is used as a “typical” body weight) or expressed as mg/kg body weight/day.
That’s it. The equations used, and the modifying factors suggested also differ slightly between agencies, but the general concept remains the same.
So when a safe level is determined by toxicologists using best available science, and regulators arbitrarily increase the safety factors, Schnell correctly notes, “the general public commonly misinterprets those bureaucratically generated ‘safe’ levels of exposure as legitimately established thresholds of effect…”
As Frank Schnell, who is a Board Certified PhD in Toxicology, explained, “If you’re standing near the rim of the Grand Canyon admiring the view, you’re probably safe. Nevertheless, as improbable as it is, it’s not entirely impossible that a very strong gust of wind might blow you over the edge. To make sure that you were safe, even under very windy conditions, you could step back ten paces or so–that’s what regulators call a ‘safety factor.’ But, to imagine that stepping back 100 paces, or even a mile, would make you even more safe under implausible conditions (a tornado?) would be not only misguided, but counterproductive, as well, because then you couldn’t see the Grand Canyon, at all.”
California, chemaphobia, and the ‘Erin Brockovich chemical’ (Chromium-6)
Chromium 6 found in elementary school’s drinking water
On March 11, 2016, Coyote Valley Elementary School near Middletown, California (north of San Francisco), started handing out bottled water following reports that the Hidden Valley Lake municipal water supply had levels of chromium-6 higher than were allowed by the state division of drinking water. As a result the school turned off its drinking fountains and handed out bottled water.
How much higher? Three parts per billion (ppb) higher. In California, 10 parts per billion of chromium-6 is the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for drinking water. Their water tested at 13 ppb. (The regulations are found in California’s Drinking Water Law Book.) One billion is a lot. One billion drops of water (at five ml per drop) is enough to fill more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“Logistically, its been a nightmare,” Coyote Valley Principal Shane Lee is quoted saying in the Lake County Record-Bee, “I’m looking forward to turning our faucets back on.”
The Record-Bee article goes on to say, “Chromium-6, also known as hexavalent chromium, is a highly toxic heavy metal and a known carcinogen made famous by law clerk Erin Brockovich…”
Here is what is correct about the above sentence:
Chromium-6 is also known as hexavalent chromium, or CR(VI)
It is a known carcinogen when inhaled in high concentrations over long periods of time.
It was made famous by Erin Brockovich, a law clerk for the legal firm of Masry & Vittitoe.
Chromium, the stuff of bumper coatings, is an odorless and tasteless metallic element. It is found naturally in rocks, plants, soil and volcanic dust, and animals. The most common forms of chromium that occur in natural waters in the environment are trivalent chromium (CR(III) or chromium-3) and hexavalent chromium (also referred to as CR(VI) or chromium-6). Chromium-6 occurs naturally in the environment from the erosion of natural chromium deposits. It can also be produced by industrial processes. (Source: Chromium in Drinking Water, EPA.gov)
Chromium, the stuff of bumper coatings, is an odorless and tasteless metallic element. It is found naturally in rocks, plants, soil and volcanic dust, and animals. The most common forms of chromium that occur in natural waters in the environment are trivalent chromium (CR(III) or chromium-3) and hexavalent chromium (also referred to as CR(VI) or chromium-6). Chromium-6 occurs naturally in the environment from the erosion of natural chromium deposits. It can also be produced by industrial processes. — Source: Chromium in Drinking Water, EPA.gov
Welcome to Cheomphobifornia
Welcome to California, home of chemophobia and flawed risk assessment. Photo of a Starbucks Proposition 65 warning by the author.
To say California “errs on the side of caution” would be putting too fine a point on things. California, home of Proposition 65, is chemophobic.
As I wrote on this blog previously, “In 1986, we Californians passed Proposition 65, ‘The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act,’ and Prop 65 is the reason you see signs everywhere, including Starbucks, saying, ‘Warning! Detectable amounts of chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm may be found in or around this facility.’” As a side note, you won’t find these signs at the smaller coffee houses. It’s not that they don’t have the same chemicals warned of in the signs; they are not worth suing–not deep enough pockets.
California’s 10 parts per billion–ppb (10 µg/L) maximum contaminant level (MCL) for chromium-6 became effective on July 1, 2014. Up until that time, the school’s water supply had been considered safe (note: at 13 ppb, nearly one-tenth of the federal standard, it still is very safe). The community’s well, on which the school relies, provided water significantly below California’s pre-2014 super-cautious 50 ppb (50 µg/L) MCL for chromium-6. This is 1/10 of the very cautious federal limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency of 100 ppb (100 µg/L) for total chromium.
For added irony, the bottled water the school handed out needed to meet the federal standard only of 100 ppb. The bottled water could have have more chromium-6 than the water fountains had. You can’t make this stuff up.
Chromium-6: The Legacy of Erin Brockovich
By Alison Cassidy [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia CommonsBy now everyone know the story of the “busty” “gutsy” legal assistant Erin Brockovich, who, in 1993, gathered 600 prospective plaintiffs from the tiny tumbleweed of a desert town of Hinkley, California to sue the electrodes off the evil corporation of Pacific, Gas, and Electric (PG&E) for leaching chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) into Hinkley’s groundwater supply. In 2000, it was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts as “busty” “gutsy” Erin Brockovich.
What the movie doesn’t mention is that according to Quackwatch, “In December 1987, PG&E determined that 10 domestic wells serving 14 families contained chromium at levels only slightly above the U.S. Department of Evironmental Protection’s drinking water standard. In response, PG&E provided bottled drinking water and offered a free medical evaluation to these families.”
In the movie, “Everybody and everything from the chickens to frogs to people were purportedly keeling over with illnesses including breast cancer, chronic nosebleeds(1), Hodgkin’s disease (lymphoma), lung cancer(2), brain stem cancer, stress, chronic fatigue, miscarriages, chronic rashes, gastrointestinal cancer, Crohn’s disease, spinal deterioration, kidney tumours, ‘intestines eaten away,’ and other things unlisted because that’s as fast as I could write in a dark theatre,” according to investigative reporter Michael Fumento. Brockovich decides that chromium-6 must be the culprit because PG&E had the deepest pockets.
The law firm’s team persuaded the jury that chromium-6 leached into the groundwater by PG&E had afflicted Hinkley’s population with this plague of diseases and won a record (at the time) $333,000,000.
That PG&E had leached chromium-6 into Hinkley’s groundwater supply is true; that chromium-6 caused all those afflictions is not.
“Stupid nonsense dressed up to look like complicated science is still just stupid nonsense.” – Frank Schnell, Board Certified PhD in Toxicology
According to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), “The problem is this: there is no way that hexavalent chromium was responsible for the cluster of health problems in Hinkley. And there is ample, peer-reviewed scientific evidence backing that conclusion.”
“[The movie, Erin Brockovich] encouraged exactly the wrong way to think about data, elevating individuals’ medical histories to the level of proof and distorting the notion of risk….The first question to ask is whether residents of Hinkley really did have more sickness than people living elsewhere.”
Yet the movie plays up what looks like science. “While it is easy to see that the sex and violence in movies are fantasies,” Gina Kolata wrote in the New York Times, “it is hard for any but scientists to discern when science in movies crosses the line from verity to hyperbole and indoctrination.” That is, it’s hard for us non-science types to distinguish the pepper from the fly shit. Hollywood hides the difference by suspending our disbelief for the purpose of telling a tale. Consider the scene where Brockovich visits Hinkley and is offered tea made with well water. She leaves the cup untouched and the camera dwells on the cup leaving the audience with foreboding; it’s contaminated with chromium-6. The truth is rather more prosaic and not nearly as dramatic: the chemical makeup of the tea will change CR(VI) to the nutrient CR(III).
According to scientists, “[T]he movie encouraged exactly the wrong way to think about data, elevating individuals’ medical histories to the level of proof and distorting the notion of risk….The first question to ask is whether residents of Hinkley really did have more sickness than people living elsewhere,” Kolata wrote.
“The problem is this: there is no way that hexavalent chromium was responsible for the cluster of health problems in Hinkley. And there is ample, peer-reviewed scientific evidence backing that conclusion.”
A 2003 study by Paustenbach, Finley, Mowat, and Kerger. says, “available information clearly indicates that Cr(VI) [chromium-6] ingested in tap water at concentrations below 2 mg/L is rapidly reduced to Cr(III) [chromium-3]” and that “Cr(VI) [chromium-6] in water up to 10 mg/L (ppm) does not overwhelm the reductive capacity of the stomach and blood.” In fact, chromium-3, as ACSH notes, “is an essential dietary nutrient required for normal glucose, protein, and fat metabolism, and is found in fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, beef, grain, and yeast.”
The Paustenbach study notes: “Because Cr(VI) [chromium-6] in water appears yellow at approximately 1-2 mg/L [1-2 parts per million], the studies represent conditions beyond the worst-case scenario for voluntary human exposure.”
“Because Cr(VI) [chromium-6] in water appears yellow at approximately 1-2 mg/L [1-2 parts per million], the studies represent conditions beyond the worst-case scenario for voluntary human exposure.” — Human health risk and exposure assessment of chromium (VI) in tap water
Mything Safety Hazards
Where did California get its 10 ppb limit?
Frankly, it looks like California’s political bureaucrats in the state’s Water Resources Board just pulled the number out of their collective asses. I have heard that the water board’s staff suggested 25 ppb for chromium-6, one half the WHO’s 50 ppb.
There’s scant evidence for us to be concerned with chromium 6 as a carcinogen in our drinking water. There’s no good evidence to backstop California’s Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) of 10 ppb for chromium 6 in drinking water. As noted before, the U.S. EPA sets the limit for all types of chromium at 100 ppb, and the uber-cautious United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) sets the limit at 50 ppb for chromium-6. From what I’ve seen, it looks like the European Union uses the WHO 50 ppb limit, which is still five times higher than California’s new MCL.
“Many states compete with the USEPA, and each other, to see who can be the most conservative. ” Frank Schnell, a Board Certified PhD in Toxicology told me in a phone interview.(3) He said even though the EPA’s MCL has a built in safety factor of 100, some states strive to be more conservative than the EPA, which sounds reasonable. “In reality, however, once you’re safe, having a limit 10 times lower does not make you 10 times safer. It just means you are unnecessarily alarming your citizens and wasting their money.”
He offered the analogy of standing at the Grand Canyon. “If you’re standing near the rim of the Grand Canyon admiring the view, you’re probably safe. Nevertheless, as improbable as it is, it’s not entirely impossible that a very strong gust of wind might blow you over the edge. To make sure that you were safe, even under very windy conditions, you could step back ten paces or so–that’s what regulators call a ‘safety factor.’ But, to imagine that stepping back 100 paces, or even a mile, would make you even more safe under implausible conditions (a tornado?) would be not only misguided, but counterproductive, as well, because then you couldn’t see the Grand Canyon, at all.”
“Chromium carcinogenicity via the oral route is more a matter of fiction than science,” Dr. Schnell told me in an email exchange. “Unfortunately, the non-scientists who saw the 2000 movie Erin Brokovich went away thinking they had seen a documentary rather than an entertaining fictionalization of a legal drama in which the scientific facts played no part.” There is a scene in the movie where Julia Roberts avoids the tea made for her and the camera focuses on it several times, making the point that it is contaminated with the dreaded chromium-6. “The fact is that, when consumed in contaminated water or beverages, Cr(VI) [chromium-6] is reduced to the required nutrient Cr(III) [chromium-3] which is essential for sugar & fat metabolism.”(emphasis in the original)
“Mice are not little men,” we should not ban a chemical “at the drop of a rat.” –Dr. E. Whelan, Founder, ACSH
As I noted, there is scant evidence, but there is some, suggesting that chromium-6 can be ingested in amounts so high that they overwhelm the stomach’s acids and affect the stomach and intestines. In one paper, the population of Liaoning Province, China, drank well water contaminated with chromium-6 from a ferrochromium factory in the province. The high levels of chromium-6 turned the water yellow. The “poor” data (the researchers agree the data are messy and haphazard) have been manipulated three ways from Sunday. At present, the statistical reviews conclude that the results are “consistent with” increased exposure. In another study, “F344/N rats and B6C3F1 mice were administered sodium dichromate dihydrate, a hexavalent chromium compound, in drinking water for 2 years.” (EPA Draft, 2010) The 2010 EPA draft cites the “NTP Technical Report on the Toxicity Studies of Sodium Dichromate Dihydrate (CAS No. 7789-12-0) Administered in Drinking Water to Male and Female F344/N Rats and B6C3F1 Mice and Male BALB/c and am3-C57BL/6 Mice.” Catchy, huh? Wonder why it wasn’t a New York Times bestseller? Rats and mice received concentrations of 6.25 62.5, 125, 250, 500, or 1,000 milligrams (mg) of sodium dichromate dihydrate per liter (L) of water. At the highest dosage of 1,000 mg/L the rats had “ulceration, hyperplasia, and metaplasia of the forestomach and histiocytic infiltration of the small intestine.” They conclude that “Exposure to sodium dichromate dihydrate caused hyperplasia and ulceration of the stomach in rats and an anemia and lesions of the small intestine in rats and mice.”
Which brings me back to another study, “Human health risk and exposure assessment of chromium (VI) in tap water,” Paustenbach’s 2003 study’s conclusion: “Based on a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model for chromium derived from published studies, coupled with the dose reconstruction studies presented in this article, the available information clearly indicates that (1) Cr(VI) ingested in tap water at concentrations below 2 mg/L is rapidly reduced to Cr(III), and (2) even trace amounts of Cr(VI) are not systemically circulated. This assessment indicates that exposure to Cr(VI) in tap water via all plausible routes of exposure, at concentrations well in excess of the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maximum contaminant level of 100 microg/L (ppb), and perhaps those as high as several parts per million, should not pose an acute or chronic health hazard to humans.” (Emphasis mine)
Recall that Chromium-6 in water appears yellow at approximately 1-2 mg/L. Would you drink water the color of fluorescent urine?
It’s really that simple. If chromium-6 worries you, don’t drink yellow tap water.
If chromium-6 worries you, don’t drink yellow tap water.
The Bottom Line: Chemaphobia Costs You more than money
Biased reports get dressed up in sciency jargon all the time. They are as Schnell told me, “designed to make your head hurt, so that you won’t hear that soft little voice of common sense in the back of your head whispering ‘this is all bullshit, isn’t it?.’..Stupid nonsense dressed up to look like complicated science is still just stupid nonsense.”
Studies conducted with agendas to prove a chemical is harmful, rather than determine facts, harm the science of toxicology. “More importantly,” Dr. Schnell points out, “they harm the very people they were designed to protect by diverting limited resources from the solution of real problems to the promotion of make-believe ones.”
Why does being “too safe” matter to you or me?
Two reasons:
This type of excessive caution costs you and me time–in that it takes more time at work to pay for the testing for contaminants and, if necessary, upgrading of water treatment facilities (I work in water treatment; everything costs dearly.) You pay in the form of higher taxes, utility rates, and prices. Costs get passed on down to the consumer. “Ok but…,” I hear you saying, “This doesn’t matter if it makes me safer.”
Aye, there’s the rub. This type of excessive caution does not make you safer. Not even an itty-bitty bit.
The Unbearable Lightness of Wallet
The ignorance and laziness of public officials to accept the word of activists over pragmatic scientists costs you money (which is in fact, time). And this is real money. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University, puts the amount of money lost since 1980 due to added regulation at $4 trillion; a drag of 25 percent on our gross domestic product (GDP). “If regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012….This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant amount of money for most American workers.”
Of course, economics alone should not guide us in decision making. But as Bjorn Lomborg reminds us, “[I]gnoring costs doesn’t make difficult choices disappear; it makes them less clear.”
When we spend money on the wrong priorities, that money is not available for things that could truly save lives. As Schnell told me, “In real life, excess conservatism doesn’t just waste money; it also costs lives.. i.e., the ones that could have been saved had the wasted money been spent more wisely.”
“[I]gnoring costs doesn’t make difficult choices disappear; it makes them less clear.” – Bjorn Lomborg
Footnotes
1. Dr. Schnell told me, “High concentrations of airborne Cr(VI) are sufficiently caustic to corrode the septum of the noses of unprotected workers occupationally exposed over extended periods of time. Hence, the fictional reference in one scene of the movie to PG&E workers having to wear masks to prevent nosebleeds.”
2. Chromium 6 “compounds have been found to cause lung cancer specifically in industry workers who, via inhalation over long periods of time, are exposed to levels in air up to 1,000 times higher than those found in the environment,” wrote the American Council on Science and Health. (emphasis in original)
3. August 26, 2016. Frank Schnell is a retired toxicologist for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), which is part of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in Atlanta, Georgia. and is a member of the American Council on Science and Health Scientific Advisory Panel.
References
Ames, Bruce N., M Profet, and Lois Swirsky Gold, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 87, pp. 7777-7781, October 1990, Medical Sciences, “Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural)”
Kerger, B D, R O Richter, S M Chute, D G Dodge, S K Overman, J Liang, B L Finley, and D J Paustenbach. “Refined Exposure Assessment for Ingestion of Tapwater Contaminated with Hexavalent Chromium: Consideration of Exogenous and Endogenous Reducing Agents.” Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology 6 (2): 163–79. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8792295.
Paustenbach DJ, Finley BL, Mowat FS, Kerger BD. 2003. “Human Health Risk and Exposure Assessment of Chromium (VI) in Tap Water. – PubMed – NCBI.” J Toxicol Environ Health A. . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12851114.
Smith, Allan H. 2008. “Hexavalent Chromium, Yellow Water, and Cancer A Convoluted Saga.” Journal of Epidemiology 19 (1): 24–26. doi:10.1097/EDE.0b013e31815c40dc.
As an example, take a look at how pseudo-science works, I’ll link sales of organic to autism for you. Are they really linked? Of course not. Although affluent people who are more likely to buy organic food, will have more ability to have their children diagnosed for such ailments.
![By Alison Cassidy [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Detail_Hinkley_protest_sign.jpg)
Nullius in Verba 