Subject: RE: Presidential Politics and "junk science"
I'd like to provide a few more facts regarding the dioxin in ice cream story. This finding was presented in August at the "Dioxins 2000" conference in Monterrey, California under the name "CALUX and GC/MS Analysis of TEQ Contamination for Risk Assessment of Exposure to Dioxins in Ice Cream." The study was lead by Michael Gough, a former government scientist who chaired the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel on the effects of Agent Orange on U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. It was co-lead by Stephen Milloy, Fox News science correspondent and publisher of Junkscience.com.
In spite of Ben and Jerry's politically correct corporate rhetoric such as, "The only safe exposure to dioxin is no exposure at all," Gough and Milloy's simple test presents evidence that they don't live up to their own standards with their own product. Ben and Jerry's obviously finds it more reasonable to let a few parts per trillion of dioxin slip by in their ice cream than to spend millions on the ultra-purification equipment necessary to reduce the dioxin to an unmeasurable amount.
Why on earth would anyone waste their time testing ice cream for dioxin in the first place? To prove a very basic point - we are surrounded on a daily basis by a myriad of "toxic" substances that cause no harm to humans if they are consumed in trace quantities. Benzene, the chief ingredient in gasoline, is classified by the CDC as a Class A carcinogen. When you smell the characteristic odor of gasoline, you have just been exposed to benzene. But I don't see people wearing half-face respirators when they gas-up their cars. We are also exposed to naturally occurring substances like arsenic, which will kill in heavy concentrations, but actually forms a part of our body chemistry in minute amounts.
Since we are participating in an education forum here, let me reiterate that I believe a major function of the EPA, in conjunction with public information outlets like our libraries, is to provide accurate, unbiased information to the public. As a person involved with the environmental testing industry for seven years, I have seen far more harm than good done by misleading the public with isolated occurrences or unproven allegations blown into disasters of epidemic proportions. It is a lot easier to scare people than it is to educate them, and no one wants to admit when they have been wrong. Here's a perfect example: some weeks ago, the New York Times ran a front-page headline proclaiming, "Ages-Old Ice Cap at North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find." The story proclaimed that the discovery of water at the North Pole proved beyond a doubt that "global warming" would soon melt the polar ice caps.
Ten days later the Times published a full retraction - but on page F3, not the front-page above the fold positioning that the original alarmist story garnered. According to the retraction, it is normal to find liquid water at the North Pole, particularly during the summer months, and this has probably occurred for centuries. And just in case you're really frightened about global warming, consider this - 15,000 years ago, there were glaciers covering New York State and wooly mammoths roaming North America. No matter how hard you try, you can't blame Newt Gingrich or Exxon for the disappearance of those mammoths or the melting of the glaciers that once covered the continental U.S.
It has been suggested by risk analysis studies that since wealth and standard-of-living are closely related, each $10 million in resources that we waste could result in the premature death of one American. And right now, "developing nations" like Mexico and China still dump tons of heavy metals and toxic organic compounds into the environment. I don't buy into the radical environmentalist's nonsense because they simply don't seem to understand that we would make the biggest impact on pollution if we simply left the U.S. alone, spent the same money on getting other nations up to our standards.
Our political leaders are placed in a position of stewardship, not only for the ecology, but also for our wealth and how they choose to spend it. Right now, we face many truly serious environmental problems, ranging from the polluted oil fields in the former Soviet Union to the thousands of children who are exposed to lead-based paint each year in our own cities. It is in solving these impending problems that we will see the biggest measurable benefit for the dollars that we spend, not in wasting billions on "elimination" programs for substances that occur in concentrations that are insignificant in their impact on human health. And one presidential candidate is clearly an environmental alarmist who seems to think that there is no limit to how much we should sacrifice in order to promote the extreme "elimination" agenda.
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