Americans face a daily barrage of potential cancer risks ranging from cigarettes to cellular phones, pesticides to pollution. But how great of a health hazard are they?
At a hearing yesterday of the House Science Committee's energy and environment subcommittee, witnesses urged the government to create a system for assessing and comparing such risks so money can be spent solving the most serious problems.
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan Republican, who was a nuclear physicist before coming to Congress, said, "I don't believe there's any tool more important, and less understood by the public, than risk assessment."
Mr. Ehlers cited the Environmental Protection Agency, which estimates that new air quality standards could save 8,500 lives - but at costs ranging from $15 billion to $120 billion. He suggested the money might be better spent on medical research.
Republicans and Democrats alike have introduced six bills in the House and five in the Senate that involve changes in federal risk assessment strategies. Several involve hazardous-waste cleanups under the EPA's Superfund program.
One measure, the Regulatory Improvement Act, would require agencies to determine whether the benefits of a major health, safety or environmental ruling would justify the costs. It is sponsored by Sen. Fred Thompson, Tennessee Republican, and Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat.
The science of risk assessment is, by definition, imprecise. But for decades, federal agencies have issued strict guidelines for such things as drinking water, radiation exposure, and pesticide residue on foods, based on "worst case assumptions," said George L. Carlo, chairman of George Washington University's Science and Public Policy Institute.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, policy-makers had little hard scientific data on which to base their decisions. "The regulatory system was based on the fear of the unknown," Mr. Carlo told the panel.
Yet while recent advances in technology have given policy-makers unprecedented access to quality data, the regulatory process has failed to keep pace. "We continue to base our decisions on the fear of the unknown," he said.
What policy-makers - and the public - often fail to understand is, "No matter how rigorous the standard-setting process, there will always be individuals who fall through this safety net," he said.
Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn, executive vice president for Medical Affairs at the University of Michigan, chaired a presidential commission on risk management from 1994 to 1997.
"We are obsessed with precise estimation of very low level risks," he said. New technology enables scientists to detect microscopic traces of chemicals. Yet trying to reduce contamination to undetectable levels is extraordinarily costly, and offers little hazard reduction.
"We, as scientists, must devise scientifically sound ways to compare different kinds of health risks, and communicate them on some scale," he said.
George M. Gray, deputy director of the Harvard Center of Risk Analysis, suggested the use of analogies the public could readily understand.
"The benchmark 'one in a million' cancer risk would lead to one additional death in Columbus, Ohio, over 204 years," he said.
Lois Gold, director of the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California at Berkeley, argued that many of the cancer risks used to justify previous regulations were based on flawed or misleading test data.
For example, about 60 percent of all chemicals - both natural and synthetic - cause cancer in laboratory animals. "High-dose effects in rodent cancer tests . . . are not relevant to low-dose human exposures," she testified.
About 80 percent of all testing has been done on synthetic chemicals, in the belief that they are more apt to cause cancer in humans. Yet there is no evidence to support that assumption, she said.
In fact, 99.9 percent of all chemicals that humans are exposed to occur naturally, but natural chemicals are rarely tested.
"That's a terrible gap in risk assessment. We're missing the big picture here," she said.
Comments on this posting?
Click here to post a public comment on the Trash Talk Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private comment to the Junkman.
Copyright © 1998 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved on original material. Material copyrighted by others is used either with permission or under a claim of "fair use." Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.
Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of Steven J. Milloy.