STATS ARTICLES 2007
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Can You Trust the Toledo Blade to Judge a Health Risk?
Maybe not.
When it comes to reporting on chemicals, toxicology, and risk, many journalists take exactly the opposite approach to covering Global Warming: they ignore the consensus and focus on anyone who claims that we’re being poisoned, no matter how tentative the data they use to make such a case, or how it conflicts with the weight of evidence, or disagrees with international regulatory findings. A statistical correlation becomes a link, and a link becomes a probable cause.
Perhaps it was just too darn hard or tedious for the editorial writers at the Toledo Blade in Ohio to even do a google search on the chemical bisphenol-A before they sounded the klaxon on the regulatory failings of the federal government.
“An independent panel of scientists was supposed to review a report on bisphenol-A being written by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction at the National Institutes of Health. But then, according to published reports, questions were raised that a private consultant employed by the center was tied too closely to the chemical industry.
As a result, the review has been postponed and the verdict on bisphenol-A has not been issued.”
Wrong! The review wasn’t finished because the panel didn’t have time to review the vast amount of research on bisphenol-a. There are hundreds of studies to be evaluated – a task which was impossible to accomplish in a couple of days, and a fact that would have been grasped if the Blade had talked to anyone who attended the meeting.
The contractor is a separate matter: The Environmental Working Group (EWG) charged that Sciences International, which was directed by the panel to compile data and conduct research was compromised by also having conducted research for chemical industry clients, and for having touted its dual role in promotional material. (See here for more.)
The EWG was not happy that the draft risk evaluation compiled by the contractor left out studies whose findings, the group believes, warrant greater regulation of the chemical.
But the CEHRH is composed of the very best scientists in the nation – and any contractor employed at its behest must follow rigorous scientific protocols. Just because there is research showing a risk doesn’t mean that the research found a risk that is applicable to humans – or that it is methodologically reliable.
However, parties who feel that crucial data had been overlooked had the chance to present their findings at the public hearing, which is what Frederick vom Saal, the most vocal advocate of low-dose risks from bisphenol-A did.
“We are not prone to reflexively side with alarmists on questions of health risks because almost any worthwhile human endeavor involves some risk. The question is how much.
Nonetheless, the Bush Administration has been so cozy with business and industry that some government reports immediately become suspect.
The question of bisphenol-A is no small matter, given its apparent health implications. The American public deserves an even-handed answer without any undue delay.”
For the record, the only delay STATS has been able to ascertain in relation to the panel reconvening is one of finding mutually agreeable openings in its members’ schedules. In the meantime, it should be noted that the European Union’s Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released a report in February which was conducted by independent experts, and which reaffirmed the safety of bisphenol-A, and also sharply criticized the methodology used in many of the low-dose exposure studies cited by environmental groups as grounds for greater regulation of the chemical.
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