Sweetener Is Safe, Government Panel Says

By Denise Grady
Copyright 1998 New York Times
December 19, 1998


A Government advisory group has voted to give a clean bill of health to the artificial sweetener saccharin, which, despite its pink-packeted presence on restaurant tables everywhere, has been classified since 1981 as a suspected cause of cancer.

The group, the executive committee of the National Toxicology Program, voted 6 to 3 at a meeting Wednesday to recommend that saccharin be removed from the Government's list of suspected carcinogens, said a scientist who attended the meeting and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The toxicology program is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and its role is to coordinate Government programs that evaluate the safety of chemicals to which people are exposed, including substances like saccharin that are added to foods. The program is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The committee's vote is not the final word on saccharin, but it carries weight with policy makers. The vote will be considered by the toxicology agency director, Dr. Kenneth Olden, who is to make a recommendation about saccharin in a Report on Carcinogens that will be presented next summer to Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and later to Congress.

Officials at the toxicology agency declined to comment on the vote, said a spokeswoman, Sandra Lange. The reason for secrecy was not clear, and several scientists who attended the meeting said they were puzzled by it. Ms. Lange said meeting participants had been instructed not to disclose the vote because executive committee meetings are not public and it is the executive committee's policy to keep its proceedings confidential.

The committee action followed votes by three other advisory groups that had been asked to evaluate saccharin studies in people and animals. Two of the other groups, comprising Government scientists, had also recommended that saccharin be taken off the official list

of suspected carcinogens. But a panel of non-Government experts on carcinogens that met in October 1997 voted 4 to 3 to keep saccharin on the list. The toxicology agency's executive committee were asked to take all the earlier results into account when voting.

The votes were part of a review process that began in September 1996 when the Calorie Control Council, an Atlanta-based trade group for the diet-food industry, petitioned the toxicology program to have saccharin removed from the list of "anticipated," or likely, carcinogens.

In past years, the toxicology program has removed seven substances from the list, either because the evidence of danger was judged insufficient, or because people in the United States were not exposed to the chemicals, said Dr. William Jameson, head of the Report on Carcinogens Group of the toxicology program. About 200 chemicals are now on the list. Dr. Jameson said that if saccharin is taken off, it will be the first compound to be removed by means of a review process as rigorous as the one required to put a substance on the list in the first place.

Saccharin was first singled out as a possible carcinogen in 1977 by a Canadian researcher. The Food and Drug Administration sought to ban it, but consumers, who would have been left without any artificial sweeteners, protested. Cyclamates, another sweetener, had been banned as carcinogenic. Ultimately, Congress refused to ban on saccharin, but required the warning labels.

The results of the four recent votes on saccharin, none of which was unanimous, reflect the fact that, despite years of research, scientists still disagree about how to interpret the data.

Most studies in people have not found a link between saccharin and cancer, but a few did suggest a connection to an increased risk of bladder cancer. But researchers say that even those studies indicate that if saccharin is carcinogenic, it is only weakly so.

In rats, high doses of saccharin do cause bladder cancer, but Dr. Samuel Cohen, a pathologist at the University of Nebraska, says he has found that the saccharin is interacting with a component in rat urine that is not found in human urine. Therefore, Dr. Cohen says, the rat studies have no bearing on people. Other scientists have questioned that assertion, and countered that tumors might still form in people by some other mechanism.

Saccharin accounts for about one-third of the artificial sweetener sold in the United States. (Most of the rest is taken up by aspartame, sold as Nutrasweet and Equal.) The main ingredient in the popular sugar substitute Sweet 'N Low, saccharin is also added to diet pastries, candies, chewing gum, toothpaste, mouthwash, salad dressing and other products. But foods containing it must carry warning labels that state: "Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals."

Striking saccharin from the carcinogen list does not mean that the warnings would be dropped immediately: They are required by law. But taking saccharin off the list might open the door to getting rid of them.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer health group based in Washington, strongly criticized the move to remove saccharin from the list. Dr. Michael Jacobson, director of the center, said the government had been unduly influenced by the diet-food industry.

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