Introduction: Knowledge Is Power
1. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010).
2. Marie-Monique Robin, Les Pirates du vivant and Blé: chronique d’une mort annoncée?, Arte, November 15, 2005.
3. Marie-Monique Robin, Argentine: le soja de la faim, Arte, October 18, 2005. Along with Les Pirates du vivant, it is available on DVD in the “Alerte verte” series.
4. The DVD is distributed by Icarus Films in the United States: www.icarusfilms.com/new2011/pois.html.
1: The Ruffec Appeal and the Battle of Paul François
1. The MDRGF was renamed Générations futures in November 2010.
2. Joël Robin, Au nom de la terre: La foi d’un paysan (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2001).
3. Marie-Monique Robin, Le Suicide des paysans, TF1 (winner of the documentary prize at the Festival International du Scoop of Angers).
4. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010).
5. François Veillerette, Pesticides, le piège se referme (2002; Mens: Terre vivante, 2007); see also Fabrice Nicolino and François Veillerette, Pesticides, révélations sur un scandale français (Paris: Fayard, 2007).
6. In July 2010, AFSSA merged with the French Agency for Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Agence française de sécruité sanitaire de l’environnement et du travail, AFSSET) to form the French Agency for Food, Environmental, and Occupational Health and Safety (Agence nationale chargée de la sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail, ANSES).
7. www.victimes-pesticides.org. See also “Un nouveau réseau pour défendre les victimes des pesticides,” Le Monde.fr, June 18, 2009.
8. The Confédération paysanne is a left-leaning minority farmers’ union which campaigns for a sustainable agricultural model that is more familial, less industrial.
9. “Malade des pesticides, je brise la loi du silence,” Ouest France, March 27, 2009.
10. Every pesticide contains an active ingredient—for Lasso, alachlor—and many additives, also known as inert substances, such as solvents, dispersants, emulsifiers, and surfactants, whose purpose is to enhance the physicochemical properties and the biological effectiveness of the active ingredients; they have no effect as pesticides themselves.
11. “Alachlor,” WHO/FAO Data Sheets on Pesticides, no. 86, www.inchem.org, July 1996.
12. The European Union decided not to include alachlor in appendix 1 of directive 91/414/CEE. Notified under the number C(2006) 6567, this decision specifies that “exposure resulting from the handling of the substance and its application at the rates, i.e., the intended doses per hectare, proposed by the notifier, would . . . lead to an unacceptable risk for the operators.”
13. “Maïs: le désherbage en prélevée est recommandé,” Le Syndicat agricole, April 19, 2007.
14. The analysis also showed that Lasso includes 6.1 percent butanol and 0.7 percent isobutanol.
15. “Un agriculteur contre le géant de l’agrochimie,” www.viva.presse.fr, April 2, 2009.
16. Jean-François Barré, “Paul, agriculteur, ‘gazé’ au désherbant!,” La Charente libre, July 17, 2008.
17. www.medichem2004.org/schedule.pdf (no longer accessible).
18. Monsanto was found liable in February 2012, and the company is considering an appeal.
2: Chemical Weapons Recycled for Agriculture
1. Geneviève Barbier and Armand Farrachi, La Société cancérigène (Paris: Seuil, 2007), 51.
2. Ibid., 58.
3. Pesticide Action Network UK, Pesticides on a Plate: A Consumer Guide to Pesticide Issues in the Food Chain (London: PAN, 2007).
4. “Safe Use of Pesticides,” Public Service Announcement, 1964 (see my film Notre poison quotidien, Arte, 2011).
5. Emphasis added.
6. In December 2010 the address was agriculture.gouv.fr. (It remains the same.) The official title of the institution was then (poetically) “Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fishing, Rural Development, and Land-Use Planning.”
7. “Its aims: to better define the acute and sub-acute effects of these products to increase individual protection taking into account actual work and improve collective prevention by the transmission of information to the authorities and manufacturers.”
8. “Pesticides et santé des agriculteurs,” references-sante-securite.msa.fr, April 26, 2010. Emphasis added.
9. Julie Marc, Effets toxiques d’herbicides à base de glyphosate sur la régulation du cycle cellulaire et le développement précoce en utilisant l’embryon d’oursin, doctoral thesis, Université de Biologie de Rennes, September 10, 2004.
10. See Marie-Monique Robin, Les Pirates du vivant, Arte, November 15, 2005.
11. The ban was the result of a study carried out by the MSA, which asked that arsenic be listed in the table of occupational diseases for agriculture because of its carcinogenic effects.
12. Paris green also served as a pigment, widely used by the Impressionist painters. Its toxicity is said to be the cause of Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness, as well as Van Gogh’s neurological disorders.
13. Guano is the excrement of marine birds; used as biological fertilizer, its nutrient and organic matter content has never been equaled, especially because, unlike chemical fertilizers, an overdose does not affect the environment or soil quality (see my report, L’Or noir du Pérou, “Thalassa,” FR3, 1992).
14. Arthur Hurst, “Gas Poisoning,” in Medical Diseases of the War (London: Edward Arnold, 1918), 311–12, quoted in Paul Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 116.
15. Hanspeter Witschi, “The Story of the Man Who Gave Us Haber’s Law,” Inhalation Toxicology 9, no. 3 (1997): 201–9.
16. Ibid., 203.
17. David Gaylor, “The Use of Haber’s Law in Standard Setting and Risk Assessment,” Toxicology 149, no. 1 (August 14, 2000): 17–19.
18. WHO/United Nations Environment Programme, Sound Management of Pesticides and Diagnosis and Treatment of Pesticide Poisoning: A Resource Tool (2006), 18.
19. Karl Winnacker and Ernst Weingaertner, Chemische Technologie: Organische Technologie II (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954), 1005–6.
20. See the specifications for Zyklon B in the list of “withdrawn phytosanitary products” on the French Ministry of Agriculture’s website, e-phy.agriculkture.gouv.fr.
21. Ibid.
22. Witschi, “Story of the Man Who Gave Us Haber’s Law.”
23. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin 2002), 8, 16.
24. Among the pesticides in the dirty dozen are a fungicide, hexachlorobenzene, and eight insecticides: aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlore, mirex, toxaphene, and DDT.
25. See the chapter “PCBs: White Collar Crime,” in Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010), 9–29.
26. In 2001 Geigy was taken over by Syngenta, a leading Swiss multinational in the pesticide market.
27. William Buckingham Jr., Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961–1971 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1982), iii.
28. Georganne Chapin and Robert Wasserstrom, “Agricultural Production and Malaria Resurgence in Central America and India,” Nature 293 (September 17, 1981): 181–85.
29. International Programme on Chemical Safety, “DDT and Its Derivatives” (Geneva: WHO, 1979), www.inchem.org.
30. Carson, Silent Spring, 21.
31. The use of DDT was finally limited to campaigns for the eradication of mosquitoes carrying malaria, although they remain highly controversial. Recent studies pointing to a link between DDT and certain cancers might lead the WHO to declare a definitive ban of the insecticide (see Agathe Duparc, “L’OMS pourrait recommander l’interdiction du DDT,” Le Monde, December 1, 2010).
32. An organophosphate is an organic compound including at least one phosphorus atom directly linked to a carbon atom.
33. The Monitoring Authority for Pesticide Residues has been administered since 2010 by the French Agency for Food, Environmental, and Occupational Health and Safety (Agence nationale chargée de la sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail, ANSES). See its website: www.observatoire-pesticides.gouv.fr.
34. Sarin gas was used in a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995, killing ten and injuring several thousand. The gas was also made in Chile in the 1970s by General Augusto Pinochet’s secret police to assassinate his opponents (see Marie-Monique Robin, Escadrons de la mort, l’école française (Paris: La Découverte, 2004).
35. This agricultural “revolution” was later called “green” because it was supposed to block the “red revolution” in “underdeveloped” countries, particularly in Asia, where Mao Zedong’s seizure of power in China in 1949 risked producing imitators (see Marie-Monique Robin, Blé: chronique d’une mort annoncée, Arte, November 15, 2005).
36. “In the beginning: the multiple discovery of the first hormone herbicides,” Weed Science 49 (2001): 290–97.
37. Chlorophenols are organic compounds made up of a phenolic nucleus in which one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by one or more chlorine atoms. There are nineteen varieties of chlorophenol, the toxic effects of which are in direct proportion to their degree of chlorination.
38. See Robin, World According to Monsanto, 30–68.
39. 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or TCDD, known as the Seveso poison, was discovered by Wilhelm Sandermann, who was working at the Wood Industry Institute.
40. Jean-Claude Pomonti, “Viêt-nam, les oubliés de la dioxine,” Le Monde, April 26, 2005.
41. The most reliable estimates were published by Jane Mager Stellman, “The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam,” Nature 422 (April 17, 2003): 681–87.
42. Chloracne is the disease that disfigured the Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, following a poisoning attributed to the country’s secret services.
43. Established in 1847, the American Medical Association claims to have 250,000 members. Its journal, JAMA, is the most widely read medical weekly in the world.
44. Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 233.
45. Ibid., 234.
46. Carson, Silent Spring, 155.
3: “Elixirs of Death”
1. Rachel Carson, Le Printemps silencieux (Paris: Plon, 1963). A normalien and chemical engineer who became a renowned mycologist and ardent defender of natural resources, Roger Heim was the author of Destruction et Protection de la nature (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952).
2. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 15.
3. Ibid., xi. See also Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
4. See Gerald Leblanc, “Are Environmental Sentinels Signaling?,” Environmental Health Perspectives 103, no. 10 (October 1995): 888–90.
5. Quotation from “Rachel Carson Dies of Cancer; ‘Silent Spring’ Author Was 56,” New York Times, April 15, 1964, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0527.html. See also the rare BBC interview “Rachel Carson Talks About Effects of Pesticides on Children and Future Generations,” www.bbcmotiongallery.com, January 1, 1963.
6. Quoted by Dorothy McLaughlin, “Silent Spring Revisited,” www.pbs.org.
7. “The Desolate Year,” Monsanto Magazine, October 1962, 5.
8. Time, September 28, 1962, 45–46.
9. “The Time 100: Rachel Carson,” Time, March 29, 1999.
10. Close to industry and a virulent anticommunist, Ezra Taft Benson, agriculture secretary from 1953 to 1961 during Eisenhower’s presidency, was a major figure in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, and its president from 1985 to 1994.
11. Lear, Rachel Carson, 429.
12. President’s Science Advisory Committee, “Use of Pesticides,” May 15, 1963.
13. David Greenberg, “Pesticides: White House Advisory Body Issues Report Recommending Steps to Reduce Hazard to Public,” Science 140, no. 3569 (May 24, 1963): 878–79.
14. EPA, “DDT Ban Takes Effect,” www.epa.gov, December 31, 1972.
15. Carson, Silent Spring, 99.
16. “Indien: die chemische Apokalypse,” Der Spiegel, December 10, 1984.
17. Ibid.
18. Marie-Monique Robin, Les Pirates du vivant, Arte, November 15, 2005. The patent was finally revoked by the European Patent Office after a legal battle lasting more than ten years.
19. WHO, Public Health Impact of Pesticides Used in Agriculture (Geneva: WHO, 1990).
20. See Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010), 291, where I recount the funeral of an Indian peasant who had committed suicide by swallowing a pesticide, because he was in debt and his transgenic cotton crop had been a fiasco. See also Ashish Goel and Praveen Aggarwal, “Pesticide Poisoning,” National Medical Journal of India 20, no. 4 (2007): 182–91.
21. Jerry Jeyaratnam et al., “Survey of Pesticide Poisoning in Sri Lanka,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 60 (1982): 615–19. All the studies cited in this section are part of the corpus of the WHO document.
22. Ania Wasilewski, “Pesticide Poisoning in Asia,” IDRC Report, January 1987. See also Jerry Jeyaratnam et al., “Survey of Acute Poisoning Among Agricultural Workers in Four Asian Countries,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 65 (1987): 521–27; Robert Levine, “Assessment of Mortality and Morbidity Due to Unintentional Pesticide Poisonings,” unpublished WHO document, WHO/VBC/86.929. See also the seminal book by Mohamed Larbi Bouguerra, Les Poisons du tiers monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1985).
23. Edward Baker et al., “Epidemic Malathion Poisoning in Pakistan Malaria Workers,” Lancet 311, no. 8054 (January 7, 1978): 31–34.
24. WHO/United Nations Environment Programme, Sound Management of Pesticides and Diagnosis and Treatment of Pesticide Poisoning: A Resource Tool (Geneva: WHO, 2006).
25. 2,4,5-T, the other Agent Orange ingredient, was banned at the end of the Vietnam War.
26. Ataxia is a neuromuscular disease causing loss of coordination.
27. Emphasis added.
28. The presence of my film crew was noted on the lycée site: www.bonne-terre.fr.
29. Pesticide Action Network Europe and MDRGF, “Message dans une bouteille”: Étude sur la presence de résidus de pesticides dans le vin, March 26, 2008.
30. AFSSET, “L’Afsset recommandé de renforcer l’évaluation des combinaisons de protection des travailleurs contre les produits chimiques liquids,” January 15, 2010.
31. Author interview with Jean-Luc Dupupet, Pézenas, February 9, 2010.
4: Ill from Pesticides
1. “Le métier d’Odalis: relier les fournisseurs aux distributeurs et agriculteurs,” www.terrena.fr.
2. The brochure was financed by “the agricultural chambers of Brittany, the regional council of Brittany, the state, Europe.”
3. “Maladie professionelle liée aux fungicides: première victoire,” www.Nouvelobs.com, May 26, 2005; see also Santé et Travail 30 (January 2000): 52.
4. Brigitte Bègue, “Les pesticides sur la selette,” Viva, August 14, 2003.
5. Author’s interview of Jean-Luc Dupupet, Pézenas, February 9, 2010.
6. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin 2002), 188.
7. Michel Gérin, Pierre Gosselin, Sylvaine Cordier, Claude Viau, Philippe Quénel, and Éric Dewailly, Environnement et santé publique: Fondements et pratiques (Montreal: Edisem, 2003), 74.
8. Fabrice Nicolino and François Veillerette, Pesticides, révélations sur un scandale français (Paris: Fayard, 2007), 289.
9. According to the National Institute of Agronomic Research (Institut national de la recherche agronomique, INRA), the average annual number of treatments is 6.6 for wheat, 3.7 for corn, and 6.7 for rapeseed (Pesticides et Environnement: Réduire l’utilisation des pesticides et en limiter les impacts environnementaux, joint expert report prepared by the INRA and the National Centre of Agricultural Machinery, Agricultural Engineering, and Water and Forests (Centre d’etude du machinisme agricole du génie rural des eaux et forêts, CEMAGREF) at the request of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, December 2005).
10. INRS, Tableaux de maladies professionnelles: Guide d’accès et commentaires, www.inrs-mp.fr/mp/cgi-bin/mppage.pl?, 216–18.
11. Alice Hamilton, “Lead Poisoning in Illinois,” in American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), First National Conference on Industrial Diseases: Chicago, June 10, 1910 (New York: AALL, 1910).
12. Article L.461-6 of the Social Security Code requires every doctor to declare the diseases which seem to him or her to be likely of occupational origin. The number of individuals recognized as victims of occupational disease in France rose from 4,032 in 1989 to 45,000 in 2008.
13. INRS, Tableaux de maladies professionnelles, 299.
14. “A New Domestic Poison,” The Lancet 1 (1862): 105.
15. “Chronic Exposure to Benzene,” Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology 21 (1939): 321–77.
16. Estelle Saget, “Le cancer des pesticides,” L’Express, January 5, 2007; see also Estelle Saget, “Ces agriculteurs malades des pesticides,” L’Express, October 25, 2004.
17. This letter is in Dominique Marchal’s file, which I was able to consult.
18. The Medical Insurance Association for Farmers (Groupement des assureurs maladie des exploitants agricoles, GAMEX) paid the costs of the analysis.
19. On January 15, 2011, almost a year to the day after the Ruffec meeting, Yannick Chenet died.
20. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 64.
21. Geneviève Barbier and Armand Farrachi, La Société cancérigène (Paris: Seuil, 2007), 164.
22. Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), xii.
23. Gérin et al., Environnement et santé publique, 90.
24. To be precise, it should be added that the OR is followed by two numbers in parentheses which, as in all statistics, indicate the confidence interval within which the results are located.
25. Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 163–64.
5: Pesticides and Cancer: Consistent Studies
1. Recall that the herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, the two components of Agent Orange, are in this category (chlorophenols). 2,4-D is still one of the pesticides in most widespread use around the world.
2. M. Alavanja, J.A. Hoppin, and F. Kamel, “Health Effects of Chronic Pesticide Exposure: Cancer and Neurotoxicity,” Annual Review of Public Health 25 (2004): 155–97.
3. Coated seeds have been treated with pesticides by the manufacturer before delivery.
4. Emphasis added.
5. The Avignon TASS transferred Bony’s case to the regional occupational disease committee in Montpellier, which was supposed to render an opinion in February 2011.
6. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 61.
7. I suggest that readers consult this invaluable tool which in late 2010 had more than 20 million references.
8. Alavanja et al., “Health Effects of Chronic Pesticide Exposure.”
9. Margaret Sanborn, Donald Cole, Kathleen Kerr, Cathy Vakil, Luz Helena Sanin, and Kate Bassil, Systematic Review of Pesticide Human Health Effects (Toronto: Ontario College of Family Physicians, 2004).
10. Lennart Hardell and Mikael Eriksson, “A Case-Control Study of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Exposure to Pesticides,” Cancer 85, no. 6 (March 15, 1999): 1353–60.
11. Shelia Hoar Zahm et al., “A Case-Control Study of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and the Herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid (2,4-D) in Eastern Nebraska,” Epidemiology 1, no. 5 (September 1990): 349–56. For this study, 201 disease sufferers were compared to 725 healthy subjects.
12. E. Hansen, H. Hasle, and F.A. Lander, “A Cohort Study on Cancer Incidence Among Danish Gardeners,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 21, no. 5 (1992): 651–60.
13. Julie Agopian et al., “Agricultural Pesticide Exposure and the Molecular Connection to Lymphomagenesis,” Journal of Experimental Medicine 206, no. 7 (July 6, 2009): 1473–83.
14. Aaron Blair, Shelia Hoar Zahm, Neil E. Pearce, Ellen F. Heineman, Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr., “Clues to Cancer Etiology from Studies of Farmers,” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 18, no. 4 (1992): 209–15; Aaron Blair and Hoar Zahm, “Agricultural Exposures and Cancer,” Environmental Health Perspectives 103, suppl. 8 (November 1995): 205–8; Aaron Blair and Laura Freeman, “Epidemiologic Studies in Agricultural Populations: Observations and Future Directions,” Journal of Agromedicine 14, no. 2 (2009): 125–31.
15. John Acquavella et al., “Cancer Among Farmers: A Meta-Analysis,” Annals of Epidemiology 8, no. 1 (January 1998): 64–74.
16. Samuel Milham, “Letter,” Annals of Epidemiology 9, no. 1 (January 1999): 71–72; Milham is the author of “Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma in Farmers,” American Journal of Epidemiology 94, no. 4 (1971): 307–10.
17. Linda Brown, Aaron Blair, Robert Gibson, George D. Everett, and Kenneth P. Cantor, “Pesticide Exposures and Other Agricultural Risk Factors for Leukemia Among Men in Iowa and Minnesota,” Cancer Research 50, no. 20 (October 15, 1990): 6585–91.
18. Alavanja et al., “Health Effects of Chronic Pesticide Exposure”; Sadik Khuder, “Meta-Analyses of Multiple Myeloma and Farming,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 32, no. 5 (November 1997): 510–16.
19. Isabelle Baldi and Pierre Lebailly, “Cancers et pesticides,” La Revue du praticien 57, suppl. (June 15, 2007): 50–54.
20. Dorothée Provost et al., “Brain Tumors and Exposure to Pesticides: A Case Control Study in Southwestern France,” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 64, no. 8 (2007): 509–14.
21. Vines cover only 10 percent of cultivated land in France but use 80 percent of the fungicides and 46 percent of the insecticides used nationally (Bernard Delemotte et al., “Le risqué pesticide en agriculture,” Archives des maladies professionnelles 48, no. 6 [1987]: 467–75).
22. Jean-François Viel et al., “Brain Cancer Mortality Among French Farmers: The Vineyard Pesticide Hypothesis,” Archives of Environmental Health 53, no. 1 (1998): 65–70; Jean-François Viel, “Étude des associations géographiques entre mortalité par cancers en milieu agricole et exposition aux pesticides,” doctoral thesis, Faculté de médecine Paris-Sud, 1992.
23. André Fougeroux, “Les produits phytosanitaires: Évaluation des surfaces et des tonnages par type de traitement in 1988,” Défense des végétaux 259 (1989): 3–8. Fougeroux is now manager of biodiversity at Syngenta, a Swiss multinational specializing in pesticides and transgenic seeds.
24. In order of area under cultivation: straw cereals, corn, vines, sunflowers, rapeseed, protein peas, beets, potatoes, apple trees, flax, and pear trees.
25. P. Kristensen, A. Andersen, L.M. Irgens, A.S. Bye, and L. Sundheim, “Cancer in Offspring of Parents Engaged in Agricultural Activities in Norway: Incidence and Risk Factors in the Farm Environment,” International Journal of Cancer 65, no. 1 (1996): 39–50.
26. Professional pesticide applicators are employees who work for firms specializing in crop spraying or the treatment of storage sites such as grain silos.
27. Michael Alavanja et al., “Use of Agricultural Pesticides and Prostate Cancer in the Agricultural Health Study Cohort,” American Journal of Epidemiology 157, no. 9 (2003): 800–814.
28. Agricultural Health Study, aghealth.nci.nih.gov.
29. Michael Alavanja et al., “Cancer Incidence in the Agricultural Health Study,” Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health 31, suppl. 1 (2005): 39–45.
30. Prohibited by the 1987 Montreal protocol because of its effect on the stratospheric ozone layer, methyl bromide was until 2005 one of the most widely used insecticides in the world. It was used to disinfect agricultural soils (especially in the cultivation of hothouse tomatoes), grain fumigation, the protection of stored crops, and the cleaning of silos and mills. In 2005, France obtained the right to use 194 tons on the grounds that, for certain uses, there was no alternative.
31. Geneviève Van Maele-Fabry and Jean-Louis Willems, “Prostate Cancer Among Pesticide Applicators: A Meta-Analysis,” International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health 77, no. 8 (2004): 559–70. It should be noted that the ORs found in the twenty-two studies selected ranged from 0.63 to 2.77.
32. Bas-Rhin, Calvados, Côte-d’Or, Doubs, Gironde, Haut-Rhin, Isère, Loire-Atlantique, Manche, Somme, Tarn, et Vendée.
33. Emphasis in original.
34. Baldi and Lebailly, “Cancers et pesticides,” 50–54.
6: The Unstoppable Rise of Pesticides and Neurodegenerative Diseases
1. Fabrice Nicolino and François Veillerette, Pesticides, révélations sur un scandale français (Paris: Fayard, 2007), 56.
2. “Le Gaucho retenu tueur official des abeilles. 450 000 ruches ont disparu depuis 1996,” Libération, October 9, 2000.
3. It should be noted that political tendencies had no effect on the case: the inaction of the two ministers of agriculture concerned—the socialist Jean Glavany (October 1998–February 2002) and the RPR (Gaullist political party) Hervé Gaymard (May 2002–November 2004)—was strictly identical.
4. For more details on Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle’s career, see Nicolino and Veillerette, Pesticides, révélations sur un scandale français, 60.
5. It is estimated that between 1995 and 2003, French honey production fell from 32,000 to 16,500 tons. Simultaneously, another insecticide, just as toxic, BASF’s Regent, was also decimating bees. It was prohibited in turn in 2005.
6. M.C. Alavanja, J.A. Hoppin, and F. Kamel, “Health Effects of Chronic Pesticide Exposure: Cancer and Neurotoxicity,” Annual Review of Public Health 25 (2004): 155–97. See Chapter 5.
7. Freya Kamel et al., “Pesticide Exposure and Self-Reported Parkinson’s Disease in the Agricultural Health Study,” American Journal of Epidemiology 165, no. 4 (2006): 364–74.
8. It was the French physician Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) who would name the disease.
9. Cited in Paul Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 243.
10. Ibid.
11. Louis Casamajor, “An Unusual Form of Mineral Poisoning Affecting the Nervous System: Manganese,” Journal of the American Medical Association 60 (1913): 646–49 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 250).
12. Hugo Mella, “The Experimental Production of Basal Ganglion Symptomatology in Macacus Rhesus,” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 11 (1924): 405–17 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 251).
13. H.B. Ferraz, P.H. Bertolucci, J.S. Pereira, J.G.C, Lima, and L.A. Andrade, “Chronic Exposure to the Fungicide Maneb May Produce Symptoms and Signs of CSN Manganese Intoxication,” Neurology 38 (1988): 550–52.
14. G. Meco, V. Bonifati, N. Vanacore, and E. Fabrizio, “Parkinsonism After Chronic Exposure to the Fungicide Maneb (Manganese-ethylene-bis-dithiocarbamate),” Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment and Health 20 (1994): 301–5.
15. William Langston, “The Aetiology of Parkinson’s Disease with Emphasis on the MPTP Story,” Neurology 47 (1996): 153–60.
16. It was precisely due to the use of rotenone and paraquat that a Parisian gardener, who worked for a large horticultural company for thirty-four years, was granted occupational disease status in 2009. The gardener had developed Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-eight. Maria Gonzales from the University Hospital Center of Strasbourg, who took part in the expert committee called upon by the CRRMP of Paris, explained this in an interview with Hygiène, Sécurité, Environnement (Hygiene, Safety, Environment) on June 19, 2009.
17. A report published in January 2011 by Future Generations and Pesticides Action Network Europe revealed that in Europe, submissions for dispensations to use prohibited pesticides had increased by 500 percent between 2007 and 2010. The European directive on pesticides (91/414) contains an article, 8.4, that permits obtaining a “dispensation of twenty days” that gives a member state the possibility of using prohibited pesticides “in the case of unforeseeable danger.” In Europe, we thus went from 59 dispensations in 2007 to 321 in 2010, 74 of which were for France (Future Generations and Pesticides Action Network Europe, “La question des derogations accordéesdans le cadre de la legislation européennesur les pesticides [The issue of dispensations given in the context of European legislation on pesticides],” January 26, 2011).
18. “Maïs: le désherbage en prélevéeestrecommandé,” Le Syndicat agricole, April 19, 2007.
19. WHO/United Nations Environment Programme, Sound Management of Pesticides and Diagnosis and Treatment of Pesticides Poisoning: A Resource Tool (2006), 92.
20. Isabelle Baldi et al., “Neuropsychologic Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Pesticides: Results from the French Phytoner Study,” Environmental Health Perspective 109, no. 8 (August 2001): 839–44.
21. Isabelle Baldi et al., “Neurodegenerative Diseases and Exposure to Pesticides in the Elderly,” American Journal of Epidemiology 1, no. 5 (March 2003): 409–14.
22. Caroline Tanner et al., “Occupation and Risk of Parkinsonism. A Multicenter Case-Control Study,” Archives of Neurology 66, no. 9 (2009): 1106–13. The study was carried out on five hundred patients compared to an equivalent control group.
23. In 2008, sixteen illnesses were on this list, including various cancers (respiratory tract, prostate, soft tissue sarcoma, leukemia, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma), but also type-2 diabetes and peripheral neuropathy.
24. William Langston, whom I cited for his study on MPTP (see note 15), the contaminant in synthetic heroin, works for the Parkinson’s Institute in Sunnyvale.
25. Alexis Elbaz et al., “CYP2D6 Polymorphism, Pesticide Exposure and Parkinson’s Disease,” Annals of Neurology 55 (March 2004): 430–34. The Prix Épidaure was created by Le Quotidien du médecin to encourage research in medicine and ecology.
26. Martine Perez, “Parkinson: le role des pesticides reconnu [Parkinson’s: Pesticides’ role recognized],” Le Figaro, September 27, 2006.
27. Alexis Elbaz and Frédéric Moisan, “Professional Exposure to Pesticides and Parkinson’s Disease,” Annals of Neurology 66 (October 2009): 494–504.
28. Sadie Costello, Myles Cockburn, Jeff Bronstein, Xinbo Zhang, and Beate Ritz, “Parkinson’s Disease and Residential Exposure to Maneb and Paraquat from Agricultural Applications in the Central Valley of California,” American Journal of Epidemiology 169, no. 8 (April 15, 2009): 919–26.
29. David Pimentel, “Amounts of Pesticides Reaching Target Pests: Environmental Impacts and Ethics,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 8 (1995): 17–29.
30. Hayo van der Werf, “Assessing the Impact of Pesticides on the Environment,” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, no. 60 (1996): 81–96.
31. Ibid. For more information, see Dwight E. Glotfelty, Alan W. Taylor, Benjamin C. Turner, and William H. Zoller, “Volatization of Surface-Applied Pesticides from Fallow Soil,” Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry 32 (1984): 638–43; and Dennis Gregor and William Gummer, “Evidence of Atmospheric Transport and Deposition of Organochlorine Pesticides and Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Canadian Arctic Snow,” Environmental Science and Technology 23 (1989): 561–65.
32. David Pimentel, “Amounts of Pesticides Reaching Target Pests: Environmental Impacts and Ethics,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 8 (1995).
33. Beate Ritz, “Pesticide Exposure Raises Risk of Parkinson’s Disease,” www.niehs.nih.gov
34. Robert Repetto and Sanjay S. Baliga, Pesticides and the Immune System: The Public Health Risks (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1996).
35. Telephone interview with Robert Repetto, June 11, 2009.
36. Repetto and Baliga, Pesticides and the Immune System, 22–35.
37. Michael Fournier et al., “Limited Immunotoxic Potential of Technical Formulation of the Herbicide Atrazine (AAtrex) in Mice,” Toxicology Letters 60 (1992): 263–74.
38. J.G. Vos, E.I. Krajnc, P.K. Beekhof, and M.J. van Logten, “Methods for Testing Immune Effects of Toxic Chemicals: Evaluation of the Immunotoxicity of Various Pesticides in the Rat,” in Pesticide Chemistry, Human Welfare and the Environment: Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry, ed. Junshi Miyamoto (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983), 497–504.
39. A. Walsh and William E. Ribelin, “The Pathology of Pesticide Poisoning,” in The Pathology of Fishes, ed. William E. Ribelin and George Migaki (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 515–57.
40. S. De Guise, D. Martineau, P. Béland, and M. Fournier, “Possible Mechanisms of Action of Environmental Contaminants on St. Lawrence Beluga Whales (Delphinapterusleucas),” Environmental Health Perspectives 103, suppl. 4 (May 1995): 73–77.
41. Marlise Simons, “Dead Mediterranean Dolphins Give Nations Pause,” New York Times, February 2, 1992.
42. Alex Aguilar, “The Striped Dolphin Epizootic in the Mediterranean Sea,” Ambio 22 (December 1993): 524–28.
43. Rik de Swart, “Impaired Immunity in Harbor Seals (Phocavitulina) Exposed to Bioaccumulated Environmental Contaminants: Review of a Long-Term Feeding Study,” Environmental Health Perspectives 104, no. 4 (August 1996): 823–28.
44. Arthur I. Holleb, Diane J. Fink, and Gerald Patrick Murphy, “Principles of Tumor Immunology,” in The America Cancer Society Textbook of Clinical Oncology (Atlanta, GA: The Society, 1991), 71–79.
45. K. Abrams, D.J. Hogan, and H.I. Maibach, “Pesticide-Related Dermatoses in Agricultural Workers,” Occupational Medicine. State of the Art Reviews 6, no. 3 (July–September 1991): 463–92.
46. “Unknown two centuries ago, atopic syndrome, the predisposition to develop an allergy, affects more than 15% of the population worldwide today and, in all likelihood, 20–30% in industrialized countries,” notes Mohamed Laaidi (“Synergie entre pollens et polluantschimiques de l’air: les risquescroisés [Synergy Between Pollen and Chemical Pollutants in the Air: Intertwined Risks],” Environnement, Risques& Santé 1, no. 1 (March–April 2002): 42–49.
47. WHO/UNEP, Sound Management of Pesticides, 94.
48. John Acquavella et al., “A Critique of the World Resources Institutes Report ‘Pesticides and the Immune System: The Public Health Risks,’” Environmental Health Perspectives 106 (February 1998): 51–54.
7: The Sinister Side of Progress
1. Author interview with Peter Infante, Washington, DC, October 16, 2009. Among his studies, see Peter Infante and Gwen K. Pohl, “Living in a Chemical World: Actions and Reactions to Industrial Carcinogens,” Teratogenesis, Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis 8, no. 4 (1988): 225–49. The authors write: “The synthesis of chemical substances has resulted in technological benefits for society and has also caused increased chemical exposures and risks of related cancers.”
2. Peter Infante directed, at OSHA, the Office of Carcinogen Identification and Classification from 1978 to 1983, then the Office of Standards Review from 1983 to 2002.
3. In 1992, Albert Arnold Gore, a Democrat, was elected vice president of the United States, under William “Bill” Clinton (1992–2000). An unlucky presidential candidate who ran against George W. Bush in November 2000, he became the spokesperson for the fight against global warming, thanks to his film An Inconvenient Truth (2006).
4. Letter from Albert Gore Jr. to Thorne G. Auchter, July 1, 1981. The letter is accessible on the NIH website: www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov.
5. Geneviève Barbier and Armand Farrachi, La Société cancérigène (Paris: Seuil, 2007).
6. Ibid., 16.
7. Neoplasia is the formation of tumors, either benign or malignant (cancerous).
8. Jean Guilaine, ed., La Préhistoire française. Civilisations néolithiques et protohistoriques, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976).
9. John Newby and Vyvyan Howard, “Environmental Influences in Cancer Aetiology,” Journal of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine (2006): 1–59.
10. For Hippocrates, the body was composed of four “humors”: blood, phlegm (in the brain), yellow bile (in the gallbladder) and black bile (in the spleen).
11. Ibid., 9.
12. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Cancer: Disease of Civilization? An Anthropological and Historical Study (New York: Hill & Wang, 1960); see also Zac Goldsmith, “Cancer: A Disease of Industrialization,” The Ecologist, no. 28 (March–April 1998): 93–99.
13. John Lyman Bulkley, “Cancer Among Primitive Tribes,” Cancer 4 (1927): 289–95 (cited by Stefansson, Cancer).
14. Goldsmith, “Cancer,” 95.
15. Weston A. Price, “Report of an Interview with Dr. Joseph Herman Romig: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,” 1939 (cited by Stefansson, Cancer).
16. Alexander Berglas, “Cancer: Nature, Cause and Cure,” Institut Pasteur, Paris, 1957 (cited by Stefansson, Cancer).
17. Frederick Hoffman, “Cancer and Civilization,” speech to Belgian National Cancer Congress at Brussels, 1923 (cited by Stefansson, Cancer).
18. Albert Schweitzer, À l’orée de la forêt vierge (Lausanne: La Concorde, 1923) (cited by Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 18; English translation by Ch. Th. Campion, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest [London: Whitefriars Press, 1924]).
19. R. de Bovis, “L’augmentation de la fréquence des cancers. Sa predominance dans les villes et sa predilection pour le sexe feminine sont-elles réelles ou apparentes?” La Semaine médicale, September 1902 (cited by Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 19).
20. Giuseppe Tallarico, La Vie des aliments (Paris: Denoël, 1947), 249.
21. Pierre Darmon, “Le mythe de la civilisation cancérogène (1890–1970),” Communications, no. 57 (1993): 73.
22. Ibid., 71.
23. In 1906, in France, infectious pathologies made up 19 percent of the causes of mortality, with tuberculosis and diphtheria at the top of the list; today they make up 1.8 percent of mortality causes, and cancer, 27 percent.
24. Roger Williams, “The Continued Increase of Cancer with Remarks as to Its Causations,” British Medical Journal (1896): 244 (cited by Darmon, “Le mythe de la civilisation cancérogène,” 71).
25. Situated in southern Sweden, Follingsbro was known for its foundries, and then its steel industry, both of which started in the eighteenth century.
26. Darmon, “Le mythe de la civilisation cancérogène.”
27. Ibid., p. 73.
28. This work was translated into English in 1912 by an engineer working in American mines, Herbert Hoover (with his wife, Lou), who would become the thirty-first president of the United States (1929–33).
29. Bernardo Ramazzini, Diseases of Workers (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1964), 248. Emphasis mine.
30. Paul Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 31.
31. Karl Marx, Das Kapital: Book One, trans. Samuel Moor and Edward Aveling (Marx/Engels Internet Archive [marxists.org], 1999).
32. Kerrie Schoffer and John O’Sullivan, “Charles Dickens: The Man, Medicine and Movement Disorders,” Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 13, no. 9 (2006): 898–901.
33. Alex Wilde, “Charles Dickens Could Spot the Shakes,” ABC Science, www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/10/19/1763460.htm, October 19, 2006.
34. Percivall Pott, The Chirurgical Works of Percivall Pott, vol. 5 (London: Hawes Clark and Collins, 1775), 50–54 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 228).
35. Henry Butlin, “On Cancer of the Scrotum in Chimney-Sweeps and Others: Three Lectures Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England,” British Medical Association, 1892 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 228).
36. Creosote is an oil extracted from wood or coal tar. In light of its carcinogenic properties, the European Union banned the sale of wood treated with creosote in 2001.
37. Hugh Campbell Ross and John Westray Cropper, “The Problem of the Gasworks Pitch Industry and Cancer,” in The John Howard McFadden Researches (London: John Murray, 1912).
38. Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 229.
39. Ibid., 132.
40. A carbon disulfide-based pesticide, metam sodium, is still widely used today for the disinfection of soil (before strawberry cultivation), as a germination inhibitor, or for treating grain.
41. Auguste Delpech, “Accidents que développe chez les ouvriers en caoutchouc l’inhalation du sulfure de carbone en vapeur,” L’Union médicale 10, no. 60 (May 31, 1856) (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 142).
42. Auguste Delpech, “Accidents produits par l’inhalation du sulfure de carbone en vapeur: expériences sur les animaux,” Gazette hebdomadaire de médecine et de chirurgie, May 30, 1856, 384–85 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick).
43. Auguste Delpech, “Industrie du caoutchouc soufflé: recherches sur l’intoxication spéciale que détermine le sulfure de carbone,” Annales d’hygie‘ne publique et de médecine légale 19 (1863): 65–183 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 143).
44. “Unhealthy Trades,” London Times, September 26, 1863.
45. Jean-Martin Charcot, “Leçon de mardi a‘ La Salpêtrie‘re: Policlinique 1888–1889, notes de cours de MM. Blin, Charcot, Henri Colin,” Le Progre‘s médical, 1889, 43–53 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 146).
46. The term “gassed” was invented by the British rubber industry, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains, which cites an article from the Liverpool Daily in 1889.
47. Thomas Oliver, “Indiarubber: Dangers Incidental to the Use of Bisulphide of Carbon and Naphtha,” in Dangerous Trades (London: J. Murray, 1902), 470–74 (cited by Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 151).
48. Paul Blanc reports that in the 1930s, women working in “rayon” workshops in Belgium were transported by a special train to avoid contact with the other personnel, due to their “licentious behavior” (Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, 159).
49. Ibid., 168.
50. Isaac Berenblum, “Cancer Research in Historical Perspective: An Autobiographical Essay,” Cancer Research, January 1977, 1–7.
51. Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 18.
52. “International Cancer Congress,” Nature 137 (March 14, 1936): 426.
53. Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 19–21.
54. William Cramer, “The Importance of Statistical Investigations in the Campaign Against Cancer,” Report of the Second International Congress of Scientific and Social Campaign Against Cancer, Brussels, 1936 (cited by Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 21).
55. Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 23.
56. In 1925, Switzerland and Germany included bladder cancer in their tables of occupational diseases linked to benzidine and BNA. In France, table 15 ter (15 c) concerning “proliferative lesions of the bladder brought on by aromatic amines and their salts” only dates from 1995.
57. International Labour Office, “Cancer of the Bladder Among Workers in Aniline Factories,” Studies and Reports Series F, no. 1, Geneva, 1921.
58. David Michaels, “When Science Isn’t Enough: Wilhelm Hueper, Robert A. M. Case and the Limits of Scientific Evidence in Preventing Occupational Bladder Cancer,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 1 (1995): 278–88.
59. Edgar E. Evans, “Causative Agents and Protective Measures in the Anilin Tumor of the Bladder,” Journal of Urology 38 (1936): 212–15.
60. Wilhelm Hueper, unpublished autobiography, National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC (cited by David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health [New York: Oxford University Press, 2008], 21).
61. W.C. Hueper, F.H. Wiley, and H.D. Wolfe, “Experimental Production of Bladder Tumours in Dogs by Administration of Beta-naphtylamine,” Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology 20 (1938): 46–84.
62. In 1982, DuPont removed “through chemistry” from its slogan, to eventually end up with “Better living through the miracles of science.”
63. Hueper, unpublished autobiography (cited by Michaels, “When Science Isn’t Enough,” 283).
64. Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 24.
65. Ibid., 19–20. This letter can be consulted on David Michaels’s website: www.defendingscience.org/upload/Evans_1947.pdf.
66. E. Ward, A. Carpenter, S. Markowitz, D. Roberts, and W. Halperin, “Excess Number of Bladder Cancers in Workers Exposed to Ortho-toluidine and Aniline,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 3 (1991): 501–6.
67. Michaels, “When Science Isn’t Enough,” 286.
8: Industry Lays Down the Law
1. Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 78.
2. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 15.
3. Ibid., 137.
4. William Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline: How a Classic Occupational Disease Became an International Public Health Disaster,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (October–December 2005), 384–439.
5. Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial. Chapter 2 is devoted to the “house of butterflies,” 12–25.
6. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “A Gift of God? The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline in the 1920s,” American Journal of Public Health 75 (1985): 344–51.
7. Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline,” 384.
8. “Bar Ethyl Gasoline as 5th Victim Dies,” New York Times, October 31, 1924.
9. Leaded gasoline was not definitively banned in the United States until 1986, and in Europe not until 2000.
10. “Chicago Issues Ban on Leaded Gasoline,” New York Times, September 8, 1984.
11. “Bar Ethyl Gasoline as 5th Victim Dies.”
12. “Use of Ethylated Gasoline Barred Pending Inquiry,” The World, October 31, 1924.
13. “No Reason for Abandonment,” New York Times, November 28, 1924.
14. Kehoe Papers, University of Cincinnati (cited by Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 81).
15. Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 81.
16. Ibid., 94.
17. René Allendy, Paracelse. Le médecin maudit (Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1987).
18. Paracelsus, “Liber paragraphorum,” Sämtliche Werke (Éditions K. Sudhoff), vol. 4, 1–4.
19. Andrée Mathieu, “Le 500e anniversaire de Paracelse,” L’Agora 1, no. 4 (December 1993–January 1994).
20. An inveterate rebel, Paracelsus did not write in Latin, but in German. For German speakers, the original phrase is: “Alle Ding sind Gift, und nichts ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, das ein Ding kein Gift ist,” the literal translation of which is: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose allows something not to be poisonous.”
21. Michel Gérin et al., Environnement et santé publique: Fondements et pratiques (Montreal: Edisem, 2003), 120. It is suspected that the poisons used by the unfortunate king—who was eventually killed by a mercenary—were too old and had lost their potency.
22. Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline,” 391.
23. Statement of Robert Kehoe, June 8, 1966, Hearings before a Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution of the Committee on Public Works (Washington, DC: GPO, 1966), 222 (cited by Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline”).
24. Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, 110.
25. Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline,” 391.
26. Wilhelm Hueper, unpublished autobiography, 222–23 (cited by Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 98).
27. I attended and filmed this conference.
28. The book has since been published: Devra Davis, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family (New York; Dutton Adult, 2010).
29. This experience nourished her first book, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
30. Author interview with Devra Davis, Pittsburgh, October 15, 2009.
31. See in particular Gérard Dubois, Le Rideau de fumée: Les méthodes secrètes de l’industrie du tabac (Paris: Seuil, 2003).
32. John Hill, Cautions Against the Immoderate Use of Snuff (London, 1761), 27–38.
33. Étienne Frédéric Bouisson, Tribut à la chirurgie (Paris: Baillière, 1858–61), vol. 1, 259–303.
34. Angel Honorio Roffo, “Der Tabak als Krebserzeugendes Agens,” Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 63 (1937): 1267–71.
35. The Buenos Aires researcher published his work in journals coming out of Germany, the only country interested in tobacco at the time, because the prevalence of cancer there was the highest in the world (59 percent for stomach cancer and 23 percent for lung cancer).
36. Franz Hermann Müller, “Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom,” Zeitschrift für Krebsforschung 49 (1939): 57–85. By “very heavy smoker,” Franz Müller meant someone who smokes “ten to fifteen cigars, plus thirty five cigarettes or fifty grams of pipe tobacco” daily.
37. Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 174; see also Robert N. Proctor, “The Nazi War on Tobacco: Ideology, Evidence and Possible Cancer Consequences,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 71, no. 3 (1997): 435–88.
38. Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schöniger, “Lungenkrebs und Tabakverbrauch,” Zeitschrift für Krebsforschung 54 (1943): 261–69. The results of this study were reevaluated in 1995 with more modern statistical tools; the conclusion was that the probability they were due to chance was one in 10 million (George Davey et al., “Smoking and Death,” British Medical Journal 310 [1995]: 396).
39. Anecdote told by Richard Doll to Robert Proctor in 1997 (Proctor, Nazi War on Cancer, 46).
40. Richard Doll and Bradford Hill, “Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung,” British Medical Journal 2 (September 30, 1950): 739–48.
41. Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 147.
42. Cuyler Hammond and Daniel Horn, “The Relationship Between Human Smoking Habits and Death Rates: A Follow-Up Study of 187,766 Men,” Journal of the American Medical Association, August 7, 1954, 1316–28. The other studies are Ernest Wynder and Evarts Graham, “Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma,” Journal of the American Medical Association 143 (1950): 329–36; Robert Schrek, Lyle A. Baker, George P. Ballard, and Sidney Dolgoff, “Tobacco Smoking as an Etiologic Factor in Disease. I. Cancer,” Cancer Research 10 (1950): 49–58; Morton L. Levin, Hyman Goldstein, and Paul R. Gerhardt, “Cancer and Tobacco Smoking: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the American Medical Association 143 (1950): 336–38; Ernest L. Wynder, Evarts A. Graham, and Adele B. Croninger, “Experimental Production of Carcinoma with Cigarette Tar,” Cancer Research 13 (1953): 855–64.
43. Time magazine, March 22, 1937.
44. US News and World Report, July 2, 1954.
45. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., “Smoking and Health Proposal,” Brown & Williamson document no. 68056, 1969, 1778–86, legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/nvs/40f00 (emphasis in original).
46. “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,” sent to over fifty major newspapers by the TIRC, January 4, 1954. The statement’s text can be consulted at www.tobacco.org.
47. Robert N. Proctor, “Tobacco and Health. Expert Witness Report Filed on Behalf of Plaintiffs in the United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Philip Morris, Inc., et al., Defendants,” Civil Action no. 99-CV-02496 (GK) (federal case), Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law 4 (March 2004).
48. “Project Truth: The Smoking/Health Controversy: A View from the Other Side (Prepared for the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times),” February 8, 1971 (Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. document, cited by David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health [New York: Oxford University Press, 2008], 3).
49. Le Nouvel Observateur, February 24, 1975 (cited by Gérard Dubois, Le Rideau de fumée: Les méthodes secrètes de l’industrie du tabac [Paris: Seuil, 2003], 290).
50. See in particular Nadia Collot’s film Tabac: la conspiration (2006).
51. Evarts Graham, “Remarks on the Aetiology of Bronchogenic Carcinoma,” The Lancet 263, no. 6826 (June 26, 1954): 1305–8.
52. Christie Todd Whitman, “Effective Policy Making: The Role of Good Science,” remarks at the National Academy of Science’s symposium on nutrient overenrichment of coastal waters, October 13, 2000 (cited by Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, x).
53. Cited by Elisa Ong and Stanton Glantz, “Constructing ‘Sound Science’ and ‘Good Epidemiology’: Tobacco, Lawyers and Public Relations Firms,” American Journal of Public Health 91, no. 11 (November 2011): 1749–57 (emphasis added). This document, as well as all those I cite in this section, are accessible on a website launched by Philip Morris following the guilty verdict handed down by the court: www.pmdocs.com/Disclaimer.aspx.
54. Imperial Chemical Industries was bought by AzkoNobel in 2008.
55. Ong and Glantz, “Constructing ‘Sound Science.’”
56. André Cicolella and Dorothée Benoît Browaeys, Alertes santé: Experts et citoyens face aux intérêts privés (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 301.
57. Ibid., 299.
58. Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 57.
9: Mercenaries of Science
1. Author interview with Peter Infante, Washington, DC, October 16, 2009.
2. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010), 46.
3. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 60.
4. Ibid., 66.
5. Ibid., 69–70. Emphasis in original.
6. Author interview with Devra Davis, Pittsburgh, October 15, 2009.
7. William Ruckelshaus, “Risk in a Free Society,” Environmental Law Reporter 14 (1984): 10190 (cited by Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 69).
8. “Chronic Exposure to Benzene,” Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, October 1939, 321–77.
9. Paul Blanc, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 62.
10. Benzol is a mix of three hydrocarbons: benzene, toluene, and xylene.
11. Ibid., 67.
12. American Petroleum Institute, “API Toxicological Review: Benzene,” New York, 1948 (cited in Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 70). I recommend reading this document, which can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org. Emphasis in original.
13. Peter Infante, “The Past Suppression of Industry Knowledge of the Toxicity of Benzene to Humans and Potential Bias in Future Benzene Research,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 12 (2006): 268–72.
14. I will come back to Dow Chemical later; the company is one of the current leaders in the pesticide market. Along with Monsanto, Dow was one of the main producers of Agent Orange.
15. Dante Picciano, “Cytogenic Study of Workers Exposed to Benzene,” Environmental Research 19 (1979): 33–38.
16. P.F. Infante, R.A. Rinsky, J.K. Wagoner, and R.J. Young, “Leukemia in Benzene Workers,” The Lancet 2 (1977): 76–78.
17. Industrial Union Department v. American Petroleum Institute, July 2, 1980, 448 US 607 (accessible at www.publichealthlaw.net).
18. We will see at the end of this book that the European regulation REACH aims precisely to reverse the responsibility of proof, which is clearly a positive goal.
19. Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 385.
20. Robert Rinsky et al., “Benzene and Leukemia: An Epidemiologic Risk Assessment,” New England Journal of Medicine 316, no. 17 (1987): 1044–50. Peter Infante’s team determined four exposure levels (per day of work): less than 1 ppm, from 1 to 5 ppm, from 5 to 10 ppm, and more than 10 ppm. There were sixty times more leukemia cases in the last level than in the first.
21. OSHA, “Occupational Exposure to Benzene: Final Rule,” Federal Register 52 (1987): 34460–578.
22. Peter Infante, “Benzene: Epidemiologic Observations of Leukemia by Cell Type and Adverse Health Effects Associated with Low-Level Exposure,” Environmental Health Perspectives 52 (October 1983): 75–82.
23. Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 47.
24. Exponent, 2003 Annual Report, Form 10K SEC filing, June 26, 2005.
25. Susanna Rankin Bohme, John Zorabedian, and David Egilman, “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health: Corporate Strategies to Avoid Litigation and Regulation,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11 (2005): 338–48.
26. Ibid.
27. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Chapter 6 is entitled “Evidence of Illegal Conspiracy by Industry,” 168–94.
28. Bohme et al., “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health.”
29. See Robin, World According to Monsanto, 30–35, where I tell the story of Times Beach, a little town in Missouri that was evacuated and then razed in 1983, due to contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxin, produced by Monsanto. As for Love Canal, located not far from Niagara Falls in the state of New York, it was evacuated in 1978 after the discovery of 21,000 tons of toxic products buried near the Hooker Chemicals factory.
30. Hexavalent chromium or “chromium VI” is produced by the oxidization of chromium. Exposure to this highly toxic substance can cause stomach, lung, liver, and kidney cancer.
31. J.D. Zhang and X.L. Li, “Chromium Pollution of Soil and Water in Jinzhou,” Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine 2, no. 5 (1987): 262–64.
32. J.D. Zhang and X.L. Li, “Cancer Mortality in a Chinese Population Exposed to Hexavalent Chromium,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 39, no. 4 (1997): 315–19.
33. “Study Tied Pollutant to Cancer; Then Consultants Got Hold of It,” Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2005.
34. Paul Brandt-Rauf, “Editorial Retraction,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 48, no. 7 (2006): 749.
35. Richard Hayes et al., “Benzene and the Dose-Related Incidence of Hematologic Neoplasm in China,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 89, no. 14 (1997): 1065–71.
36. Pamela Williams and Dennis Paustenbach, “Reconstruction of Benzene Exposure for the Pliofilm Cohort (1936–1976) Using Monte Carlo Techniques,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health 66, no. 8 (2003): 677–81.
37. Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 46.
38. Bohme et al., “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health.”
39. Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial.
40. Qinq Lan et al., “Hematotoxicity in Workers Exposed to Low Levels of Benzene,” Science 306 (December 3, 2004): 1774–76.
41. Benzene Health Research Consortium, “The Shanghai Health Study,” PowerPoint presentation, February 1, 2003 (cited by Lorraine Twerdok and Patrick Beatty, “Proposed Studies on the Risk of Benzene-Induced Diseases in China: Costs and Funding”; document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
42. Craig Parker, “Memorandum to Manager of Toxicology and Product Safety (Marathon Oil). Subject: International Leveraged Research Proposal,” 2000 (document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
43. Bohme et al., “Maximizing Profit and Endangering Health.”
44. Arnold Relman, “Dealing with Conflicts of Interest,” New England Journal of Medicine 310 (1984): 1182–83.
45. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. Ethical Considerations in the Conduct and Reporting of Research: Conflicts of Interest,” 2001 (see Frank Davidoff et al., “Sponsorship, Authorship and Accountability,” The Lancet 358 [September 15, 2001]: 854–56).
46. Created in 1971, the CSPI is an American nongovernmental organization specialized in consumer defense and assistance, which conducts independent scientific studies in the field of health and nutrition.
47. Scientific articles often include several author names that comprise the team that conducted the study. The convention is that the two main authors are the first and last cited. “Omissions” concerned six articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (out of fifty-three), three in Environmental Health Perspectives (out of thirty-five), two in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology (out of thirty-three), and two in the New England Journal of Medicine (out of forty-two).
48. Merrill Goozner, Unrevealed: Non-Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest in Four Leading Medical and Scientific Journals, Integrity in Science: Project of the Center of Science in the Public Interest, July 12, 2004.
49. Ibid.
50. “Tough Talking Journal Editor Faces Accusations of Leniency,” New York Times, August 1, 2006.
51. Catherine D. DeAngelis, Phil B. Fontanarosa, and Annette Flanagin, “Reporting Financial Conflicts of Interest and Relationships Between Investigators and Research Sponsors,” Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (2001): 89–91.
52. Catherine DeAngelis, “The Influence of Money on Medical Science,” Journal of the American Medical Association 296 (2006): 996–98.
53. Phil Fontanarosa, Annette Flanagin, and Catherine DeAngelis, “Reporting Conflicts of Interest, Financial Aspects of Research and the Role of Sponsors in Funded Studies,” Journal of the American Medical Association 294, no. 1 (2005): 110–11.
54. DeAngelis, “Influence of Money on Medical Science.”
55. David Michaels, “Science and Government: Disclosure in Regulatory Science,” Science 302, no. 5653 (December 19, 2003): 2073.
56. Justin Bekelman, Yan Li, and Cary Gross, “Scope and Impact of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research: A Systematic Review,” Journal of the American Medical Association 289 (2003): 454–65.
57. Astrid James, “The Lancet’s Policy on Conflicts of Interest,” The Lancet 363 (2004): 2–3.
58. Wendy Wagner and Thomas McGarity, “Regulatory Reinforcement of Journal Conflict of Interest Disclosures: How Could Disclosure of Interests Work Better in Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health?,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 6 (2009): 606–7.
59. Michaels, “Science and Government.”
60. Robin, World According to Monsanto, 324–25.
61. Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product, 256–57.
10: Institutional Lies
1. President’s Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now. 2008–2009 Annual Report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, April 2010.
2. Les Causes du cancer en France, report published by the Académie national de médecine (National Academy of Medicine), the Académie nationale des sciences (the National Academy of Sciences)/Institut de France, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO-Lyon), the Fédération nationale des centres de lutte contre le cancer (National Federation of Centers for the Fight Against Cancer), with the cooperation of the Institut national du cancer (National Cancer Institute) and the Institut national de veille sanitaire (National Institute of Health Monitoring), 2007. The abridged French version is 48 pages long and the unabridged version in English is 275 pages long. The excerpts I use come from the French version.
3. Ibid., p. 4. Emphasis added.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. On the UIPP website, click on “Infos pesticides” (pesticides info), then “santé et pesticides” (health and pesticides) and “produits pharmaceutiques et cancers” (pharmaceutical products and cancer).
6. Les Causes du cancer en France, 42. Emphasis added.
7. Author interview with Richard Clapp, Boston, October 29, 2009.
8. André Cicolella and Dorothée Benoît Browaeys, Alertes santé: Experts et citoyens face aux intérêts privés (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 155.
9. Académie national des sciences/Comité des applications de l’académie des sciences, Dioxin and Its Analogues (London: Technique & Documentation, 1994).
10. Author’s interview with André Picot, Paris, June 2, 2009.
11. “Circulaire du 30 mai 1997 relative aux dioxines et furanes” (Memorandum of May 30, 1997, relating to dioxins and furans) addressed by the Ministry of the Environment to departmental prefects.
12. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Polychlorinated Dibenzopara-Dioxins and Polychlorinated Dibenzoflurans, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, vol. 69, July 1997.
13. See notably Roger Lenglet, L’Affaire de l’amiante (Paris: La Découverte, 1996).
14. Frédéric Denhez, Les Pollutions invisibles: Quelles sont les vraies catastrophes écologiques? (Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 2006), 220.
15. Activities at Danmarie-les-Lys stopped in 1993, and at Descartes in 1996. Soon after, former workers of these two factories suffering from mesothelioma filed a lawsuit against Saint-Gobain, supported by the National Association of Defense of Asbestos Victims (Association nationale de défense des victimes de l’amiante, ANDEVA).
16. Gérard Dériot and Jean-Pierre Godefroy, Le Drame de l’amiante en France: comprendre, mieux réparer, en tirer des leçons pour l’avenir, Informational report no. 37, Senate, Paris, October 26, 2005.
17. Étienne Fournier, who directed the Fernand-Widal Anti-Poison Center in Paris, was one of those who sponsored the creation of the CPA.
18. Étienne Fournier, “Amiante et protection de la population exposée à l’inhalation de fibres d’amiante dans les bâtiments publics et privés,” Bulletin de l’Académie nationale de médecine, 180, no. 4–16 (April 30, 1996).
19. At the time, this report was strongly criticized by a scholar named Claude Allègre, who declared: “It is worthless. This report is not scientifically sound” (Le Point, October 16, 1997).
20. INSERM, Effets sur la santé des principaux types d’exposition à l’amiante, La Documentation française, Paris, January 1997.
21. Joseph LaDou, “The Asbestos Cancer Epidemic,” Environmental Health Perspectives 112, no. 3 (March 2004): 285–90. It is estimated that 30 million tons of asbestos were used over the course of the twentieth century.
22. Les Causes du cancer en France, 24.
23. All of this information comes from a document that can be consulted on IARC’s website: “Sécurité et prévention. Risques liés à la prévention des produits cancérogènes. Liste réactualisée des produits génotoxiques classes par le CIRC” (last updated in August 2010).
24. Author interview with Vincent Cogliano, Lyon, February 10, 2010.
25. Ibid. In December 2010 I learned that Vincent Cogliano had returned to his original job at the Environmental Protection Agency.
26. Paolo Bofetta directed the environmental cancer epidemiology section from 1995 to 2003, and then the genetics and epidemiology group.
27. Paolo Bofetta et al., “The Causes of Cancer in France,” Annals of Oncology 20, no. 3 (March 2009): 550–55.
28. Author interview with Christopher Wild, Lyon, February 10, 2010.
29. Les Causes du cancer en France, 47.
30. “Time to Strengthen Public Confidence at IARC,” The Lancet 371, no. 9623 (May 3, 2008): 1478.
31. “Transparency at IARC,” The Lancet 361, no. 9353 (January 18, 2003): 189.
32. Lorenzo Tomatis, “The IARC Monographs Program: Changing Attitudes Towards Public Health,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 8, no. 2 (April–June 2002): 144–52. Lorenzo Tomatis passed away in 2007.
33. “Letter to Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director General WHO,” February 25, 2002, published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 8, no. 3 (July–September 2002): 271–73.
34. James Huff et al., “Multiple-Site Carcinogenicity of Benzene in Fischer 344 Rats and B6C3F1 Mice,” Environmental Health Perspectives 82 (1989): 125–63; James Huff, “National Toxicology Program. NTP Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies of Benzene (Case No. 71-43-2) in F344/N Rats and B6C3F1 Mice (Gavage Studies),” National Toxicology Program, Technical Report Series 289 (1986): 1–277.
35. Author interview with James Huff, Research Triangle Park, October 27, 2009.
36. Dan Ferber, “NIEHS Toxicologist Receives a ‘Gag Order,’” Science 297 (August 9, 2002): 215.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. In 2002, the American Public Health Association, which is made up of 55,000 members, gave James Huff the David P. Rall Award for Advocacy in Public Health, which recognizes those who have “made an outstanding contribution to public health through science-based advocacy.”
41. Author interview with James Huff, Research Triangle Park, October 27, 2009.
42. James Huff, “IARC Monographs, Industry Influence, and Upgrading, Downgrading, and Under-Grading Chemicals: A Personal Point of View,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 8, no. 3 (July–September 2002): 249–70.
43. Author interview with Vincent Cogliano, Lyon, February 10, 2010.
44. Cicolella and Browaeys, Alertes santé, 203.
45. Sawdust is also suspected of causing cancer in the nasal cavity and sinus, which is recognized in France as an occupational disease (table 47).
46. James Huff, “IARC and the DEHP Quagmire,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 9, no. 4 (October–December 2003): 402–4; National Toxicology Program, “Carcinogenesis Bioassay of Di (2-ethylhexyl) Phthalate (Case No. 117-81-7) in F344 Rats and B6C3F1 Mice (Feed Studies),” NTP TR 217, Research Triangle Park, 1982; W.M. Kluwe, J.K. Haseman, J.F. Douglas, and J.E. Huff, “The Carcinogenicity of Dietary Di-2-ethylhexyl Phthalate (DEHP) in Fischer 344 Rats and B6C3F1 Mice,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health 10 (1983): 797–815.
47. Raymond M. David, Michael R. Moore, Dean C. Finney, and Derek Guest, “Chronic Toxicity of Di (2-ethylhexyl) Phthalate in Rats,” Toxicological Sciences 55 (2000): 433–43.
48. Ronald Melnick, “Suppression of Crucial Information in the IARC Evaluation of DEHP,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 9 (October–December 2003): 84–85.
49. Cited in Ronald Melnick, James Huff, Charlotte Brody, and Joseph Digangi, “The IARC Evaluation of DEHP Excludes Key Papers Demonstrating Carcinogenic Effects,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 9 (October–December 2003): 400–401.
50. Author interview with Devra Davis, Pittsburgh, October 15, 2009.
51. Author interview with Peter Infante, October 16, 2009.
52. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 60–61.
53. Author interview with Vincent Cogliano, Lyon, February 10, 2010. For more information on this critical subject, see Ronald Melnick, Kristina Thayer, and John Bucher, “Conflicting Views on Chemical Carcinogenesis Arising from the Design and Evaluation of Rodent Carcinogenicity Studies,” Environmental Health Perspectives 116, no. 1 (January 2008): 130–35.
11: An Epidemic of Chronic Diseases
1. Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 262.
2. Ibid., 147.
3. Ibid., 255.
4. Richard Doll and Richard Peto, “The Causes of Cancer: Quantitative Estimates of Avoidable Risks of Cancer in the United States Today,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 66, no. 6 (June 1981): 1191–308.
5. Geneviève Barbier and Armand Farrachi, La Société cancérigène (Paris: Seuil, 2007), 49.
6. Lucien Abenhaim, Rapport de la Commission d’orientation sur le cancer (Paris: La Documentation française, 2003).
7. Les Causes du cancer en France, report published by the Académie national de médecine (National Academy of Medicine), the Académie nationale des sciences (the National Academy of Sciences)/Institut de France, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO-Lyon), and the Fédération nationale des centres de lutte contre le cancer (National Federation of Centers for the Fight Against Cancer), with the cooperation of the Institut national du cancer (National Cancer Institute) and the Institut national de veille sanitaire (National Institute of Health Monitoring), 7.
8. Rory O’Neill, Simon Pickvance, and Andrew Watterson, “Burying the Evidence: How Great Britain Is Prolonging the Occupational Cancer Epidemic,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 13 (2007): 432–40.
9. André Cicolella, Le Défi des épidémies modernes: Comment sauver la Sécu en changeant le système de santé (Paris: La Découverte, 2007), 48.
10. Eva Steliarova-Foucher et al., “Geographical Patterns and Time Trends of Cancer Incidence and Survival Among Children and Adolescents in Europe Since the 1970s (The ACCIS Project): An Epidemiological Study,” The Lancet 364, no. 9451 (December 11, 2004): 2097–105.
11. This interview was filmed on January 13, 2010, and the transcription is word for word.
12. Author interview with Devra Davis, Pittsburgh, October 15, 2009.
13. Devra Davis and Joel Schwartz, “Trends in Cancer Mortality: US White Males and Females, 1968–1983,” The Lancet 331, no. 8586 (1988): 633–36.
14. Devra Davis and David Hoel, “Trends in Cancer in Industrial Countries,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 609 (1990).
15. Davis, Secret History of the War on Cancer, 257.
16. Devra Davis, Abraham Lilienfeld, and Allen Gittelsohn, “Increasing Trends in Some Cancers in Older Americans: Fact or Artifact?” Toxicology and Industrial Health 2, no. 1 (1986): 127–44.
17. President’s Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk. What We Can Do Now. 2008–2009 Annual Report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, April 2010, 4.
18. Philippe Irigaray et al., “Lifestyle-Related Factors and Environmental Agents Causing Cancer: An Overview,” Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 61 (2007): 640–58.
19. See J.L. Botha, F. Bray, R. Sankila, and D.M. Parkin, “Breast Cancer Incidence and Mortality Trends in 16 European Countries,” European Journal of Cancer 39 (2003): 1718–29.
20. In France, the first cancer registry was created in 1975. In 2010, there were thirteen registries measuring the incidence of all cancers in eleven regions (out of ninety-six), which covers only 13 percent of the population.
21. Dominique Belpomme et al., “The Growing Incidence of Cancer: Role of Lifestyle and Screening Detection (Review),” International Journal of Oncology 30, no. 5 (May 2007): 1037–49.
22. J.A. Newby, C.C. Busby, C.V. Howard, and M.J. Platt, “The Cancer Incidence Temporality Index: An Index to Show Temporal Changes in the Age of Onset of Overall and Specific Cancer (England and Wales, 1971–1999),” Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 61 (2007): 623–30.
23. Cicolella, Le Défi des épidémies modernes, 21–22. The risk of stomach cancer was reduced by a factor of five for women and 2.5 for men. This decrease is attributed to the use of the refrigerator, which led to lower consumption of salted and smoked products, which can cause stomach cancer.
24. Belpomme et al., “Growing Incidence of Cancer.”
25. Catherine Hill and Agnès Laplanche, “Tabagisme et mortalité: aspects épidémiologiques,” Bulletin épidémiologique hebdomadaire, no. 22–23 (May 27, 2003).
26. Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 38.
27. Abenhaim, Rapport de la Commission d’orientation sur le cancer.
28. Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 35.
29. Lennart Hardell and Anita Sandstrom, “Case-Control Study: Soft Tissue Sarcomas and Exposure to Phenoxyacetic Acids or Chlorophenols,” British Journal of Cancer 39 (1979): 711–17; M. Eriksson, L. Hardell, N.O. Berg, T. Möller, and O. Axelson, “Soft Tissue Sarcoma and Exposure to Chemical Substances: A Case Referent Study,” British Journal of Industrial Medicine 38 (1981): 27–33; L. Hardell, M. Eriksson, P. Lenner, and E. Lundgren, “Malignant Lymphoma and Exposure to Chemicals, Especially Organic Solvents, Chlorophenols and Phenoxy Acids,” British Journal of Cancer 43 (1981): 169–76; Lennart Hardell and Mikael Eriksson, “The Association Between Soft-Tissue Sarcomas and Exposure to Phenoxyacetic Acids: A New Case Referent Study,” Cancer 62 (1988): 652–56.
30. Royal Commission on the Use and Effects of Chemical Agents on Australian Personnel in Vietnam, Final Report, vols. 1–9 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1985).
31. “Agent Orange: The New Controversy. Brian Martin Looks at the Royal Commission That Acquitted Agent Orange,” Australian Society 5, no. 11 (November 1986): 25–26.
32. Monsanto Australia Ltd., “Axelson and Hardell. The Odd Men Out. Submission to the Royal Commission on the Use and Effects on Chemical Agents on Australian Personnel in Vietnam,” 1985.
33. Cited in Lennart Hardell, Mikael Eriksson, and Olav Axelson, “On the Misinterpretation of Epidemiological Evidence, Relating to Dioxin-Containing Phenoxyacetic Acids, Chlorophenols and Cancer Effects,” New Solutions, Spring 1994.
34. Chris Beckett, “Illustrations from the Wellcome Library. An Epidemiologist at Work: The Personal Papers of Sir Richard Doll,” Medical History 46 (2002): 403–21.
35. Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply, trans. George Holoch (New York: The New Press, 2010), 63.
36. Sarah Boseley, “Renowned Cancer Scientist Was Paid by Chemical Firm for 20 Years,” The Guardian, December 8, 2006.
37. Cristina Odone, “Richard Doll Was a Hero, Not a Villain,” The Observer, December 10, 2006.
38. Geoffrey Tweedale, “Hero or Villain?—Sir Richard Doll and Occupational Cancer,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 13, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 233–35.
39. Richard Peto, The Times, December 9, 2006.
40. Richard Stott, “Cloud Over Sir Richard,” Sunday Mirror, December 10, 2006.
41. Julian Peto and Richard Doll, “Passive Smoking,” British Journal of Cancer 54 (1986): 381–83. Julian Peto is Richard Peto’s brother.
42. Elizabeth Fontham et al. on behalf of ACS Cancer and the Environment Subcommittee, “American Cancer Society Perspectives on Environmental Factors and Cancer,” Cancer Journal for Clinicians 59 (2009): 343–51.
43. Author interview with Michael Thun, Atlanta, October 25, 2009.
44. Hans-Olav Adami was recruited by the famous Dennis Paustenbach at Exponent (see Chapter 9) to minimize the toxicity of dioxin, just when the Environmental Protection Agency was reviewing its regulation (see L. Hardell, M.J. Walker, B. Walhjalt, L.S. Friedman, and E.D. Richter, “Secret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests in Cancer Research,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, November 13, 2006).
45. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 168.
46. Cited in Robin, World According to Monsanto, 9.
47. The identification code for PVC is a triangle with “03” written on the inside.
48. Henry Smyth to T.W. Nale, November 24, 1959 (cited in Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, 172).
49. Cited in Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, 173.
50. Letter from Robert Kehoe to R. Emmet Kelly, February 2, 1965, Manufacturing Chemists’ Association (MCA) archives (cited in ibid., 174).
51. Letter from R. Emmet Kelly to A.G. Erdman, Pringfield, “PVC Exposure,” January 7, 1966, MCA archives (cited in ibid., 174).
52. Letter from Rex Wilson to Dr. J. Newman, “Confidential,” January 6, 1966, MCA archives (cited in ibid., 174).
53. Rex H. Wilson, William E. McCormick, Caroll F. Tatum, and John L. Creech, “Occupational Acroosteolysis: Report of 31 Cases,” Journal of the American Medical Association 201 (1967): 577–81.
54. Letter from Verald Rowe, Biochemical Research Laboratory, to William McCormick, Director, Department of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, the B.F. Goodrich Company, May 12, 1959. This document can be consulted online at www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/docs.
55. Pierluigi Viola, “Cancerogenic effect of vinyl chloride,” paper presented at the Tenth International Cancer Congress, May 22–29, 1970, Houston, TX; P. Viola, A. Bigotti, and A. Caputo, “Oncogenic Response of Rats, Skin, Lungs and Bones to Vinyl Chloride,” Cancer Research 31 (May 1971): 516–22.
56. Memorandum from L.B. Crider to William McCormick, Goodrich, “Some New Information on the Relative Toxicity of Vinyl Chloride Monomer,” March 24, 1969, MCA archives (cited by Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, 184). Maltoni’s study was published in 1975, despite his sponsors’ prohibition on doing so: C. Maltoni and G. Lefemine, “Carcinogenicity Bioassays of Vinyl Chloride: Current Results,” Annals of New York Academy of Sciences 246 (1975): 195–218.
57. Memorandum from A.C. Siegel (Tenneco Chemicals, Inc.) to G.I. Rozland (Tenneco Chemicals, Inc), “Subject: Vinyl Chloride Technical Task Group Meeting,” November 16, 1972 (this document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
58. Letter from D.M. Elliott (General Manager, Production, Solvents and Monomers Group, Imperial Chemical Industries Limited, Mond Division) to G.E. Best (MCA), October 30, 1972; “Meeting Minutes: Manufacturing Chemists Association, Vinyl Chloride Research Coordinators,” January 30, 1973 (these documents can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
59. The meetings were led by Theodore Torkelson from Dow Chemical. Represented were Union Carbide, Uniroyal, Ethyl Corporation, Goodrich, Shell Oil Company, Exxon Corporation, Tenneco Chemicals, Diamond Shyrock Corporation, Allied Chemical Corporation, Firestone Plastics Company, Continental Oil Company, and Air Products & Chemicals, Inc.
60. “Meeting Minutes: Manufacturing Chemists’ Association, Vinyl Chloride Research Coordinators,” May 21, 1973, MCA archives (this document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
61. H.L. Kusnetz (Manager of Industrial Hygiene, Head Office, Shell Oil Co.), “Notes on the Meeting of the VC Committee,” July 17, 1973, MCA archives (ibid.).
62. R.N. Wheeler (Union Carbide), “Memorandum to Carvajal JL, Dernehl CU, Hanks GJ, Lane KS, Steele AB, Zutty NL. Subject: Vinyl Chloride Research: MCA Report to NIOSH,” July 19, 1973, MCA archives (ibid.).
63. John Creech et al., “Angiosarcoma of the Liver Among Polyvinyl Chloride Workers,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 23, no. 6 (1974): 49–50.
64. OSHA, “News: OSHA Investigating Goodrich Cancer Fatalities,” press release, January 24, 1974 (this document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
65. Markus Key, Deposition in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, in the Matter of Holly M. Smith v. the Dow Chemical Company; PPG Industries, Inc., and Shell Oil Company v. the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. CA no. 94-CV-0393, September 19, 1995 (ibid.).
66. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 36.
67. I invite the reader to consult Hill and Knowlton’s website, www.hillandknowlton.com.
68. Hill and Knowlton, “Recommendations for Public Affairs Program for SPI’s Vinyl Chloride Committee. Phase 1: Preparation for OSHA Hearings,” June 1974 (this document can be consulted on David Michaels’s website, www.defendingscience.org).
69. Paul H. Weaver, “On the Horns of Vinyl Chloride Dilemma,” Fortune, no. 150, October 1974.
70. “PVC Rolls Out of Jeopardy, into Jubilation,” Chemical Week, September 5, 1977.
71. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) [9002-86-2] (vol. 19, suppl. 7, 1987).
72. Richard Doll, “Effects of Exposure to Vinyl Chloride: An Assessment of the Evidence,” Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health 14 (1988): 61–78. In 1981, Peter Infante had also conducted a meta-analysis on vinyl chloride in which he came to opposite conclusions as Richard Doll’s: Peter Infante, “Observations of the Site-Specific Carcinogenicity of Vinyl Chloride to Humans,” Environmental Health Perspectives 41 (October 1981): 89–94.
73. Jennifer Beth Sass, Barry Castleman, and David Wallinga, “Vinyl Chloride: A Case Study of Data Suppression and Misrepresentation,” Environmental Health Perspectives 113, no. 7 (July 2005): 809–12.
74. Richard Doll, “Deposition of William Richard Shaboe Doll, Ross v. Conoco, Inc.,” Case no. 90-4837, LA 14th Judicial District Court, London, January 27, 2000.
75. “The Paris Appeal,” accessed on the ARTAC website, www.artac.info/fr, on May 4, 2013.
76. ARTAC was created in 1984 by cancer specialist Dominique Belpomme “with a group of researchers, patients, and their families.” His work is geared “towards the determination of the causes of cancer origins and prevention” (see Dominique Belpomme, Avant qu’il ne soit trop tard [Paris: Fayard, 2007], 21–25).
77. Dominique Belpomme, Ces maladies créées par l’homme: Comment la dégradation de l’environnement met en péril notre santé (Paris: Albin Michel, 2004).
78. Barbier and Farrachi, La Société cancérigène, 114.
79. Jacques Ferlay, Philippe Autier, Mathieu Boniol, Michael Heanue, and M. Colombet, “Estimates of the Cancer Incidence and Mortality in Europe in 2006,” Annals of Oncology 3 (March 2007): 581–92.
80. Eva Stelliarova-Foucer et al., “Geographical Patterns and Time Trends of Cancer Incidence and Survival Among Children and Adolescents in Europe Since the 1970s (The ACCIS Project): An Epidemiological Study,” The Lancet 364, no. 9451 (December 11, 2004): 2097–105.
81. WHO Regional Office for Europe, “Largely Preventable Chronic Diseases Cause 86% of Deaths in Europe,” press release EURO/05/06, Copenhagen, September 11, 2006. Emphasis added.
82. AFSSET/INSERM, Cancers et Environnement: Expertise collective, October 2008.
83. The incidence rate of prostate cancer rose, every year, 6.3 percent between 1980 and 2005, and the increase was even more significant between 2000 and 2005 (+8.5 percent). For breast cancer, the average annual increase from 1980 to 2005 was 2.4 percent; +6 percent for thyroid cancer, +2.5 percent for testicular cancer, and +1 percent for brain cancer.
84. Suketami Tominaga, “Cancer Incidence in Japanese in Japan, Hawaii, and Western United States,” National Cancer Institute Monograph 69 (December 1985): 83–92; see also Gertraud Maskarinec, “The Effect of Migration on Cancer Incidence Among Japanese in Hawaii,” Ethnicity & Disease 14, no. 3 (2004): 431–39.
85. André Cicolella and Dorothée Benoît Browaeys, Alertes santé: Experts et citoyens face aux intérêts privés (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 25.
86. Ibid., 23.
87. Paul Lichtenstein et al., “Environmental and Heritable Factors in the Causation of Cancer Analyses of Cohorts of Twins from Sweden, Denmark and Finland,” New English Journal of Medicine 343, no. 2 (July 13, 2000): 78–85.
88. “Action Against Cancer,” European Parliament resolution on the European Commission communication on Action Against Cancer: European Partnership, May 6, 2010.
12: The Colossal Scientific Masquerade Behind Poisons’ “Acceptable Daily Intakes”
1. Author interview with Erik Millstone, Brighton, January 12, 2010.
2. Author interview with Herman Fontier, Parma, January 19, 2010. Emphasis added.
3. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). The citations that follow are from 21, 49, 43, and 23.
4. Léopold Molle, “Éloge du professeur René Truhaut,” Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 72, no. 262 (1984): 340–48.
5. Toxicokinetics studies what becomes of medications and chemical substances in the body by analyzing the mechanisms of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.
6. Jean Lallier, Le Pain et le Vin de l’an 2000, documentary aired on the French national public television and radio agency L’Office de Radiodiffusion de Télévision Française (ORTF) on December 17, 1964. This film is part of the bonus materials on the DVD of my film Notre poison quotidian.
7. René Truhaut, “The Concept of the Acceptable Daily Intake: An Historical Review,” Food Additives and Contaminants 8, no. 2 (March–April 1991): 151–62.
8. René Truhaut, “25 Years of JECFA Achievements,” report presented at the 25th session of the JECFA, March 23–April 1, 1981, Geneva (WHO archives).
9. “Joint FAO/WHO Conference on Food Additives,” World Health Organization Technical Report Series, no. 107, Geneva, September 19–22, 1955.
10. Truhaut, “Concept of the Acceptable Daily Intake.”
11. Ibid.
12. Interview broadcast on the ORTF televised news show on June 3, 1974.
13. Truhaut, “Concept of the Acceptable Daily Intake.” Emphasis added.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid. Emphasis added.
16. Truhaut, “25 years of JECFA Achievements.”
17. Ibid.
18. Parathion was banned in Europe in 2003 because of its high toxicity. It is one of the insecticides that joined the list of the “dirty dozen” persistent pollutants to be banished at any cost. Until its prohibition, it had an ADI of 0.004 mg per kg of body weight.
19. Truhaut, “Concept of the Acceptable Daily Intake.”
20. Ibid.
21. “The ADI Concept: A Tool for Ensuring Food Safety,” ILSI Workshop, Limelette, Belgium, October 18–19, 1990.
22. The complete list of the sixty-eight financing members of the European branch of the ILSI, created in 1986, can be consulted on ILSI Europe’s website, www.ilsi.org/Europe. Based in Washington, DC, the ILSI has branches on every continent.
24. “WHO Shuts Life Sciences Industry Group Out of Setting Health Standards,” Environmental News Service, February 2, 2006.
25. WHO/FAO, “Carbohydrates in Human Nutrition,” FAO Food and Nutrition Paper, no. 66, Rome, 1998.
26. Tobacco Free Initiative, “The Tobacco Industry and Scientific Groups. ILSI: A Case Study,” www.who.int, February 2001.
27. Derek Yach and Stella Bialous, “Junking Science to Promote Tobacco,” American Journal of Public Health 91 (2001): 1745–48.
28. “WHO Shuts Life Sciences Industry Group Out of Setting Health Standards.”
29. Environmental Working Group, “EPA Fines Teflon Maker DuPont for Chemical Cover-up,” www.ewg.org, Washington, DC, December 14, 2005. See also Amy Cortese, “DuPont, Now in the Frying Pan,” New York Times, August 8, 2004.
30. Michael Jacobson, “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy from Industry Funding of Nonprofit Health Organizations,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11 (2005): 349–55.
31. Diane Benford, The Acceptable Daily Intake, a Tool for Ensuring Food Safety, ILSI Europe Concise Monographs Series, International Life Sciences Institute, 2000.
32. Ibid. Emphasis added.
33. René Truhaut, “Principles of Toxicological Evaluation of Food Additives,” Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, WHO, Geneva, July 4, 1973. Emphasis added.
34. Author interview with Diane Benford, London, January 11, 2010.
35. House of Representatives, Problems Plague the EPA Pesticide Registration Activities, U.S. Congress, House Report 98-1147, 1984.
36. Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances, Summary of the IBT Review Program, EPA, Washington, July 1983.
37. “Data Validation. Memo from K. Locke, Toxicology Branch, to R. Taylor, Registration Branch,” EPA, Washington, DC, August 9, 1978.
38. Communications and Public Affairs, “Note to Correspondents,” EPA, Washington, DC, March 1, 1991.
39. New York Times, March 2, 1991.
40. Benford, Acceptable Daily Intake.
41. Truhaut, “Principles of Toxicological Evaluation of Food Additives.”
42. Author interview with Ned Groth, Washington, October 17, 2009.
43. Truhaut, “Principles of Toxicological Evaluation of Food Additives.” Emphasis is mine.
44. Benford, Acceptable Daily Intake.
45. Author interview with Erik Millstone, Brighton, January 12, 2010.
46. Author interview with James Turner, Washington, DC, October 17, 2009.
47. Author interview with Angelika Tritscher, Geneva, September 21, 2009.
48. Author interview with Herman Fontier, Parma, January 19, 2010.
49. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin 2002), 242.
50. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 19. Emphasis in original.
51. Ibid., 49. Emphasis in original.
52. Ibid., 40. Emphasis in original.
53. Ibid., 19.
54. Benford, Acceptable Daily Intake. Emphasis is mine.
55. Truhaut, “Principles of Toxicological Evaluation of Food Additives.”
56. Council Directive 91/414/EEC, July 15, 1991, concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market, Official Journal, no. l 230 (August 19, 1991): 0001–32. Emphasis added.
57. Éliane Patriarca, “Le texte des rapporteurs UMP est révélateur du rétropédalage de la droite sur les objectifs du Grenelle,” Libération, May 4, 2010.
58. Claude Gatignol and Jean-Claude Étienne, Pesticides et Santé, Office parlementaire des choix scientifiques et technologiques, Paris, April 27, 2010.
59. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 2 (bb).
60. Michel Gérin et al., Environment et santé publique: Fondements et pratiques (Montreal: Edisem, 2003), 371.
13: The Unsolvable Conundrum of “Maximum Residue Limits”
1. From 1963 to 2010, the JMPR evaluated some 230 pesticides.
2. According to the fact sheet, chlorpyrifos-methyl is considered less toxic than chlorpyrifos, sold under the name Lorsban or Durban.
3. Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection, Review Report for the Active Substance Chlorpyrifos-Methyl, European Commission, SANCO/3061/99, June 3, 2005. This document is sixty-six pages long!
4. Its NOAEL (no-observed-adverse-effect level) at that time was 1 mg/kg/day.
5. See the European Union’s website, which shows the standards for all pesticides used in Europe: EU Pesticides Database, ec.europa.eu/sanco_pesticides/public/index.cfm#. A list of all agricultural products containing chlorpyrifos-methyl can be found there.
6. Author interview with Bernadette Ossendorp, Geneva, September 22, 2009.
7. Author interview with James Huff, Research Triangle Park, October 27, 2009.
8. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 59.
9. Ibid., 64, 68. Emphasis in original.
10. Ibid., 65, 68.
11. Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection, Review Report for the Active Substance Chlorpyrifos-Methyl.
12. R. Tresdale, “Residues of Chlorpyrifos-methyl in Tomatoes at Harvest and Processed Fractions (Canned Tomatoes, Juice and Puree) Following Multiple Applications of RELDAN 22 (EF-1066), Italy 1999,” R99-106/GHE-P-8661, 2000, Dow GLP (unpublished).
13. A. Doran and A.B. Clements, “Residues of Chlorpyrifos-methyl in Wine Grapes at Harvest Following Two Applications of EF-1066 (RELDAN 22) or GF-71, Southern Europe 2000,” (N137) 19952/GHE-P-9441, 2002, Dow GLP (unpublished).
14. Author interview with Angelo Moretto, Geneva, September 21, 2009.
15. Author interview with Erik Millstone, Brighton, January 12, 2010.
16. Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues 2009, “List of Substances Scheduled for Evaluation and Request for Data. Meeting Geneva, 16–25 September 2009,” October 2008.
17. See Thomas Zeltner, David A. Kessler, Anke Martiny, and Fazel Randera, Tobacco Companies’ Strategies to Undermine Tobacco Control Activities at the World Health Organization, Report of the Committee of Experts on Tobacco Industry Documents, WHO, July 2000. See also Sheldon Krimsky, “The Funding Effect in Science and Its Implications for the Judiciary,” Journal of Law and Policy, December 16, 2005.
18. Author interview with Angelika Tritscher, Geneva, September 21, 2009.
19. All of the citations in this section come from e-mails I very carefully saved.
20. BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC, Monsanto, Sumitomo, Syngenta.
21. Author telephone interview with Jean-Charles Bocquet, February 11, 2010.
22. E-mail sent by Sue Breach on February 24, 2010, without specifying the author of the “written response.”
23. For more details, see Deborah Cohen and Philip Carter, “WHO and the Pandemic Flu ‘Conspiracies,’” British Medical Journal, June 3, 2010.
24. Author interview with Ned Groth, Washington, DC, October 17, 2009.
25. Erik Millstone, Eric Brunner, and Ian White, “Plagiarism or Protecting Public Health?,” Nature 371 (October 20, 1994): 647–48.
26. Erik Millstone, “Science in Trade Disputes Related to Potential Risks: Comparative Case Studies,” European Commission, Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Eur21301/EN, August 2004; Erik Millstone et al., “Risk-Assessment Policies: Differences Across Jurisdictions,” European Commission, Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, January 2008.
27. FAO/WHO, “Principles and Methods for the Risk Assessment of Chemicals in Food,” Environmental Health Criteria, no. 240 (2009). Emphasis is mine.
28. René Truhaut, “Principles of Toxicological Evaluation of Food Additives,” Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, WHO, Geneva, July 4, 1973.
29. “Reasoned Opinion of EFSA Prepared by the Pesticides Unit (PRAPeR) on MRLs of Concern for the Active Substance Procymidone (Revised Risk Assessment),” EFSA Scientific Report, no. 227 (January 21, 2009): 1–26. Emphasis added.
30. Hypospadias is a congenital malformation in boys, which manifests as an opening of the urethra on the underside of the penis.
31. The epididymis is a small tube attached to the testicle that conserves and transports sperm.
32. Author interview with Angelo Moretto, Geneva, September 21, 2009.
33. Beck, Risk Society, xxx. Emphasis in original.
34. Author interview with Herman Fontier, Parma, January 19, 2010.
35. Emphasis added.
36. Eurobarometer, “Risk Issues. Executive Summary on Food Safety,” February 2006.
37. Official Journal of the European Communities, no. L 225/263 (August 21, 2001).
38. An active substance can produce many formulations of different pesticides.
39. Author interview with Manfred Krautter, Hamburg, October 5, 2009.
40. Lars Neumeister, “Die unsicheren Pestizidhöchstmengen in der EU. Überprüfung der harmonisierten EU-Höchstmengen hinsichtlich ihres potenziellen akuten und chronischen Gesundheitsrisikos,” Greenpeace and GLOBAL 2000, Friends of the Earth/Austria, March 2008.
41. Author interview with Herman Fontier, Parma, January 19, 2010.
42. “2007 Annual Report on Pesticide Residues,” EFSA Scientific Report (2009), no. 305 (June 10, 2009).
43. For example, the percentage of baby food jars that exceeded MRLs varied from 0 percent to 9.09 percent according to country.
44. Author interview with Eberhard Schüle, Stuttgard, October 6, 2009.
45. Author interview with Herman Fontier, Parma, January 19, 2010.
14: Aspartame and Regulation: How Industry Is Pulling the Strings
1. Edgar Monsanto Queeny, The Spirit of Enterprise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943).
2. D.R. Lucas and J.P. Newhouse, “The Toxic Effect of Sodium L-glutamate on the Inner Layers of the Retina,” AMA Archives of Ophthalmology 58, no. 2 (August 1957): 193–201.
3. Dale Purves et al., Neuroscience (Brussels: De Boeck, 2005), 145.
4. John Olney, “Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice Treated with Monosodium Glutamate,” Science 164, no. 880 (May 1969): 719–21; J.W. Olney, L.G. Sharpe, and R.D. Feigin, “Glutamate-Induced Brain Damage in Infant Primates,” Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology 31, no. 3 (July 1972): 464–88; John Olney, “Excitotoxins in Foods,” Neurotoxicology 15, no. 3 (1994): 535–44.
5. Author interview with John Olney, New Orleans, October 20, 2009.
6. MSG is the sodium salt of glutamic acid and is responsible for “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” which can trigger headaches, nausea, aches and rashes in the minutes or hours after ingestion. MSG is used by the food processing industry to amplify salty flavors and stimulate the appetence of preparations while reducing their spice contents.
7. “Council Directive of 21 December 1988 on the Approximation of the Laws of the Member States Concerning Food Additives Authorized for Use in Foodstuffs Intended for Human Consumption (89/107/EEC),” Official Journal, no. L 040 (February 11, 1989): 0027–33. Emphasis added.
8. For example, flavoring one ton of ice cream with natural vanilla costs $1,020, versus only $5 with ethylvanillin, an artificial chemical flavoring (see Charles Wart, L’Envers des etiquettes: Choisir son alimentation [Brussels: Éditions Amyris, 2005]).
9. “Council Directive No 95/2/EC of 20 February 1995 on Food Additives Other Than Colours and Sweeteners,” February 20, 1995, Official Journal of the European Union, no. L 61 (March 18, 1995).
10. “The Early Show, Artificial Sweeteners, New Sugar Substitute,” BBC, September 28, 1982.
11. Saccharin was banned in Canada in 1977 because it was suspected of causing cancer (notably of the bladder). The International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassified it in 1987 as group 2B, “possible carcinogenic to humans,” then in 1999 as group 3, “not classifiable.” It remains legal in the rest of the world, with an ADI of 5 mg/kg.
12. Pat Thomas, “Bestselling Sweetener,” The Ecologist, September 2005, 35–51.
13. John Henkel, “Sugar Substitutes: Americans Opt for Sweetness and Lite,” FDA Consumer Magazine, November–December 1999.
14. See the website of “Mission Possible,” the association created by Betty Martini: www.dorway.com.
15. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 55.
16. R.E. Ranney, J.A. Oppermann, E. Muldoon, and F.G. McMahon, “Comparative Metabolism of Aspartame in Experimental Animals and Humans,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health 2 (1976): 441–51.
17. Methanol is a highly toxic substance that can cause blindness or even death if accidentally ingested. In case of poisoning, the best antidote is ethanol.
18. Herbert Helling, “Food and Drug Sweetener Strategy. Memorandum Confidential-Trade Secret Information to Dr. Buzard, Dr. Onien, Dr. Jenkins, Dr. Moe, and Mr. O’Bleness,” December 28, 1970.
19. John Olney, “Brain Damage in Infant Mice Following Oral Intake of Glutamate, Aspartate or Cysteine,” Nature 227, no. 5258 (August 8, 1970): 609–11; Bruce Schainker and John Olney, “Glutamate-Type Hypothalamic-Pituitary Syndrome in Mice Treated with Aspartate or Cysteate in Infancy,” Journal of Neural Transmission 35 (1974): 207–15; J.W. Olney, J. Labruyere, and T. de Gubareff, “Brain Damage in Mice from Voluntary Ingestion of Glutamate and Aspartate,” Neurobehavioral Toxicology and Teratology 2 (1980): 125–29.
20. James Turner and Ralph Nader, The Chemical Feast: The Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Food Protection and the Food and Drug Administration (London: Penguin, 1970). Ralph Nader is an attorney renowned for defending consumer rights, and who has also run for president on four occasions, twice as the Green Party nominee.
21. Note that studies on this product did not have the same effects on both sides of the Atlantic: cyclamate (E 952) is still authorized in Europe in nonalcoholic beverages, desserts, and candies, with an ADI of 7 mg/kg, whereas the ADI set by JECFA is 11 mg/kg.
22. Author interview with James Turner, Washington, October 17, 2009.
23. Letters from Adrian Gross to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, October 30 and November 3, 1987 (available at www.dorway.com).
24. Committee on Labor and Public Health, “Record of Hearings of April 8–9 and July 10, 1976, Held by Sen. Edward Kennedy, Chairman, Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, Committee on the Judiciary, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Health,” 3–4.
25. Food and Drug Administration, Bressler Report, August 1, 1977.
26. Author interview with John Olney, New Orleans, October 20, 2009.
27. Andy Pasztor and Joe Davidson, “Two Ex-U.S. Prosecutors’ Roles in Case Against Searle Are Questioned in Probe,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 1986.
28. Phenylketonuria is a genetic disorder that prevents the metabolism of phenylalanine. Screening for the disease is obligatory in many countries, like France, because when untreated, it causes brain disorders and mental retardation.
29. John Olney, “Aspartame Board of Inquiry. Prepared Statement,” University School of Medicine St. Louis, Missouri, September 30, 1980.
30. Ibid.
31. Department of Health and Human Services, “Aspartame: Decision of the Public Board of Inquiry,” Food and Drug Administration, docket no 75F-0355, September 30, 1980.
32. “Medical Professor at Pennsylvania State Is Nominated to Head Food and Drug Agency,” New York Times, April 3, 1981.
33. Florence Graves, “How Safe Is Your Diet Soft Drink?,” Common Cause Magazine, July–August 1984.
34. Letter from Adrian Gross to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, November 3, 1987. Emphasis added.
35. World Health Organization (WHO), Evaluation of Certain Food Additives: Some Food Colours, Thickening Agents, Smoke Condensates, and Certain Other Substances (Nineteenth Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives),” WHO Technical Report Series, no. 576 (1975).
36. WHO, Evaluation of Certain Food Additives (Twentieth Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), WHO Technical Report Series, no. 599 (1976).
37. WHO, Evaluation of Certain Food Additives (Twenty-First Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), WHO Technical Report Series, no. 617 (1978).
38. WHO, Evaluation of Certain Food Additives (Twenty-Fourth Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), WHO Technical Report Series, no. 653 (1980).
39. H. Ishii, T. Koshimizu, S. Usami, and T. Fujimoto, “Toxicity of Aspartame and Its Diketopiperazine for Wistar Rats by Dietary Administration for 104 Weeks,” Toxicology 21, no. 2 (1981): 91–94.
40. WHO, Evaluation of Certain Food Additives (Twenty-Fifth Report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), WHO Technical Report Series, no. 669 (1981).
41. Author interview with Hugues Kenigswald, Parma, January 19, 2010.
15: The Dangers of Aspartame and the Silence of Public Authorities
1. Emphasis added.
2. According to the Chicago Tribune, Monsanto bought Searle for $2.7 billion. The sale earned the Searle family $1 billion and Donald Rumsfeld $12 million (“Winter Comes for a Beltway Lion; Rumsfeld Rose and Fell with His Conviction Intact,” Chicago Tribune, November 12, 2006).
3. “Proceedings and Debates of the 99th Congress, First Session,” Congressional Record 131 (May 7, 1985).
4. Hearing Before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress. Examining the Health and Safety Concerns of NutraSweet (Aspartame), November 3, 1987.
5. For more information about the “revolving doors” of the aspartame industry, see Gregory Gordon, “NutraSweet: Questions Swirl,” United Press International Investigative Report, October 12, 1987.
6. “FDA Handling of Research on NutraSweet Is Defended,” New York Times, July 18, 1987.
7. In the U.S. Air Force newsletter Flying Safety (May 1992), Colonel Roy Poole warns pilots against the dangers of aspartame: “Vertigo, epilepsy, sudden memory loss and progressive vision loss.”
8. Richard Wurtman and Timothy Maher, “Possible Neurologic Effects of Aspartame, a Widely Used Food Additive,” Environmental Health Perspectives 75 (November 1987): 53–57; Richard Wurtman, “Neurological Changes Following High Dose Aspartame with Dietary Carbohydrates,” New England Journal of Medicine 309, no. 7 (1983): 429–30.
9. Richard Wurtman, “Aspartame: Possible Effects on Seizures Susceptibility,” The Lancet 2, no. 8463 (1985): 1060.
10. The letter was published in Gordon’s “NutraSweet.”
11. The blood–brain barrier, also called the “hematoencephalic barrier,” protects the brain from pathogenic agents circulating in the blood.
12. Ibid.
13. Jacqueline Verrett and Jean Carper, Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), 19–21.
14. Citrus Red 2 (E 121) has been banned in Europe since 1977. It is classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (group 2B) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It is still authorized in the United States, uniquely to color orange skins. If you buy oranges from Florida, it is recommended that you wash your hands after peeling them.
15. Phocomelia presents as atrophy of the limbs. It is characteristic of children who were exposed in the womb to thalidomide, a drug prescribed to pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s to combat nausea.
16. Verrett and Carper, Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health, 42, 48.
17. Author interview with David Hattan, Washington, DC, October 19, 2009.
18. The document showed that 38.3 percent of complaints were linked to the consumption of caffeinated beverages, 21.7 percent to that of sweeteners, and 4 percent to that of chewing gum.
19. Hyman J. Roberts, Aspartame (NutraSweet), Is it Safe? (Philadelphia: Charles Press, 1990), 4.
20. Hyman J. Roberts, “Reactions Attributed to Aspartame-Containing Products: 551 Cases,” Journal of Applied Nutrition 40, no. 2 (1988): 85–94.
21. Hyman J. Roberts, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic (West Palm Beach, FL: Sunshine Sentinel Press, 2001).
22. Letter from John Olney to Howard Metzenbaum, December 8, 1987.
23. Richard Wurtman, Dietary Phenylalanine and Brain Function (Boston: Birkhauser, 1988).
24. Ralph Walton, Robert Hudak, and Ruth Green-Waite, “Adverse Reactions to Aspartame: Double-Blind Challenge in Patients from Vulnerable Population,” Biological Psychiatry 34, no. 1 (July 1993): 13–17.
25. Author interview with Ralph Walton, New York, October 30, 2009.
26. J.W. Olney, N.B. Farber, E. Spitznagel, and L.N. Robins, “Increasing Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame?” Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology 55, no. 11 (1996): 1115–23.
27. David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 143.
28. Paula Rochon et al., “A Study of Manufacturer-Supported Trials of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs in the Treatment of Arthritis,” Archives of Internal Medicine 154, no. 2 (1994): 157–63. See also Sheldon Krimsky, “The Funding Effect in Science and Its Implications for the Judiciary,” Journal of Law Policy 13, no. 1 (2005): 46–68.
29. Henry Thomas Stelfox, Grace Chua, Keith O’Rourke, and Allan S. Detsky, “Conflict of Interest in the Debate Over Calcium-Channel Antagonists,” New England Journal of Medicine 338, no. 2 (1998): 101–6.
30. J.E. Bekelman, Y. Li, and C.P. Gross, “Scope and Impact of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research,” Journal of the American Medical Association 289 (2003): 454–65; Valerio Gennaro and Lorenzo Tomatis, “Business Bias: How Epidemiologic Studies May Underestimate or Fail to Detect Increased Risks of Cancer and Other Diseases,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11 (2005): 356–59.
31. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 38.
32. Harriett Butchko and Frank Kotsonis, “Acceptable Daily Intake vs Actual Intake: The Aspartame Example,” Journal of the American College of Nutrition 10, no. 3 (1991): 258–66.
33. Lewis Stegink and Jack Filer, “Repeated Ingestion of Aspartame-Sweetened Beverage: Effect on Plasma Amino Acid Concentrations in Normal Adults,” Metabolism 37, no. 3 (March 1988): 246–51.
34. Richard Smith, “Peer Review: Reform or Revolution?,” British Medical Journal 315, no. 7111 (1997): 759–60. See also Richard Smith, “Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies,” PLoS Medicine 2, no. 5 (2005): 138.
35. The NTP is under the management of the NIEHS, but an executive committee, which includes representatives from every American regulatory agency, including OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the FDA, determines its research subjects.
36. Author interview with James Huff, Research Triangle Park, October 27, 2009.
37. Cited by Greg Gordon, “FDA Resisted Proposals to Test Aspartame for Years,” Star Tribune, November 22, 1996.
38. NTP, Toxicology Studies of Aspartame (Case No. 22839-47-0) in Genetically Modified (FVB Tg.AC Hemizygous) and B6.129-Cdkn2atm1Rdp (N2) Deficient Mice and Carcinogenicity Studies of Aspartame in Genetically Modified [B6.129-Trp53tm1Brd (N5) Haploinsufficient] Mice (Feed Studies), October 2005.
39. There are two types of carcinogenic agents: genotoxic ones, which act directly on genes by initiating the first stage of the carcinogenesis process via genetic mutations; and nongenotoxic agents, which do not act directly on genes, but participate in the carcinogenesis process (promotion or progression stage) while favoring the proliferation of mutated or “initiated” cells (see the “Occupational Cancers” section at www.cancer-environnement.fr).
40. The following comment was appended to the NTP study: “Because this is a new model, there is uncertainty whether the study possessed sufficient sensitivity to detect a carcinogenic effect.”
41. Cesare Maltoni, “The Collegium Ramazzini and the Primacy of Scientific Truth,” European Journal of Oncology 5, suppl. 2 (2000): 151–52.
42. M. Soffritti, F. Belpoggi, F. Minardi, L. Bua, and C. Maltoni, “Mega-Experiments to Identify and Assess Diffuse Carcinogenic Risks,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 895 (December 1999): 34–55.
43. See M. Soffritti, F. Belpoggi, F. Minardi, and C. Maltoni, “History and Major Projects, Life-Span Carcinogenicity Bioassay Design, Chemicals Studied, and Results,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 982 (2002): 26–45; Cesare Maltoni and Morando Soffritti, “The Scientific and Methodological Bases of Experimental Studies for Detecting and Quantifying Carcinogenic Risks,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 895 (1999): 10–26.
44. Morando Soffritti et al., “First Experimental Demonstration of the Multipotential Carcinogenic Effects of Aspartame Administered in the Feed to Sprague-Dawley Rats,” Environmental Health Perspectives 114, no. 3 (March 2006): 379–85; Fiorella Belpoggi et al., “Results of Long-Term Carcinogenicity Bioassay on Sprague-Dawley Rats Exposed to Aspartame Administered in Feed,” Annals New York Academy of Sciences 1076 (2006): 559–77.
45. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, “FDA Statement on European Aspartame Study,” April 20, 2007.
46. “Opinion of the Scientific Panel on Food Additives, Flavorings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with Food (AFC) Related to a New Long-Term Carcinogenicity Study on Aspartame,” EFSA- Q-2005-122, May 3, 2006.
47. M. Soffritti, F. Belpoggi, E. Tibaldi, D.D. Esposti, and M. Lauriola, “Life-Span Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning During Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats,” Environmental Health Perspectives 115 (2007): 1293–97.
48. “Updated Opinion on a Request from the European Commission Related to the 2nd ERF Carcinogenicity Study on Aspartame, Taking into Consideration Study Data Submitted by the Ramazzini Foundation in February 2009,” EFSA- Q-2009-00474, March 19, 2009. Emphasis added.
49. “EFSA Re-Confirms the Safety of Aspartame and Dismisses Claims Made by the Ramazzini Institute,” April 23, 2009. At the time of writing, I have learned that the Ramazzini Institute has published a new study conducted on gravid mice, which shows that aspartame induces liver and lung cancers among the males (Morando Soffritti et al., “Aspartame Administered in Feed, Beginning Prenatally Through Life-Span, Induces Cancers of the Liver and Lung in Male Swiss Mice,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 53, no. 12 [December 2010]: 1197–206).
50. See William Reymond, “Coca-Cola serait-il bon pour la santé?,” Bakchich, April 19–20, 2008.
51. “Les boissons light? C’est le sucré . . . sans sucres,” La Dépêche, September 29, 2009; “Souvent accusé, le faux sucre est blanchi,” www.Libération.fr, September 14, 2009.
52. Author interview with Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, Parma, January 19, 2010.
16: “Men in Peril”: Is the Human Species in Danger?
1. I borrowed this title from the excellent documentary by Sylvie Gilman and Thierry de Lestrade, which was broadcast on the European television channel Arte on November 25, 2008; its creators were the first in France to reveal some of the astonishing observations mentioned in this chapter.
2. Gérard Bapt (Parti socialiste, PS) is president of the environmental health group in the French National Assembly; Bérengère Poletti (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, UMP) is president of a group that monitors the national environmental health plan.
3. Author interview with Ana Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein, Tufts University, Boston, October 28, 2009.
4. Nonylphenol is part of a family of synthetic chemical products called “alkylphenols.” Its global production amounts to 600,000 tons per year.
5. A.M. Soto, H. Justicia, J.W. Wray, and C. Sonnenschein, “P-Nonylphenol: An Estrogenic Xenobiotic Released from ‘Modified’ Polystyrene,” Environmental Health Perspectives 92 (May 1991): 167–73.
6. Author interview with Ana Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein, Tufts University, Boston, October 28, 2009.
7. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; New York: Houghton Mifflin 2002), 207.
8. “Rachel Carson Talks About Effects of Pesticides on Children and Future Generations,” www.bbcmotiongallery.com, January 1, 1963.
9. Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story (New York: Plume, 1996).
10. Ibid., 145.
11. Ibid., 106.
12. Ibid., 91.
13. Eric Dewailly, Albert Nantel, Jean-P. Weber, and François Meyer, “High Levels of PCBs in Breast Milk of Inuit Women from Arctic Quebec,” Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 43, no. 5 (November 1989): 641–46.
14. Joseph L. Jacobson, Sandra W. Jacobson, Pamela M. Schwartz, Greta G. Fein, and Jeffrey K. Dowler, “Prenatal Exposure to an Environmental Toxin: A Test of the Multiple Effects Model,” Developmental Psychology 20, no. 4 (July 1984): 523–32.
15. Joseph Jacobson and Sandra Jacobson, “Intellectual Impairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero,” New England Journal of Medicine 335 (September 12, 1996): 783–89.
16. Author interview with Theo Colborn, Paonia, December 10, 2009.
17. Among the many studies published by Louis Guillette, I recommend the following: Louis Guillette et al., “Developmental Abnormalities of the Gonad and Abnormal Sex Hormone Concentrations in Juvenile Alligators from Contaminated and Control Lakes in Florida,” Environmental Health Perspectives 102, no. 8 (August 1994): 680–88.
18. Howard Bern et al. “Statement from the Work Session on Chemically-Induced Alterations in Sexual Development: The Wildlife/Human Connection,” in Chemically-Induced Alterations in Sexual and Functional Development: The Wildlife/Human Connection, ed. Theo Colborn and Coralie Clement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Scientific Publishing Co., 1992), 1–8.
19. André Cicolella and Dorothée Benoît Browaeys, Alertes Santé: Experts et citoyens face aux intérêts privés (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 231.
20. Bernard Jégou, Pierre Jouannet, and Alfred Spira, La Fertilité est-elle en danger? (Paris: La Découverte, 2009), 54.
21. Ibid., 147.
22. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 82.
23. Jégou et al., La Fertilité est-elle en danger?, 60.
24. E. Carlsen, A. Giwercman, N. Keiding, and N. Skakkebaek, “Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen During Past 50 Years,” British Medical Journal 305, no. 6854 (September 12,1992): 609–13.
25. J. Auger, J.M. Kunstmann, F. Czyglik, and P. Jouannet, “Decline in Semen Quality Among Fertile Men in Paris During the Last 20 Years,” New England Journal of Medicine 332 (1995): 281–85.
26. Jégou et al., La Fertilité est-elle en danger?, 61.
27. Shanna Swan, “The Question of Declining Sperm Density Revisited: An Analysis of 101 Studies Published 1934–1996,” Environmental Health Perspectives 108, no. 10 (October 2000): 961–66.
28. Jégou et al., La Fertilité est-elle en danger?, 71–74.
29. Richard Sharpe and Niels Skakkebaek, “Are Oestrogens Involved in Falling Sperm Counts and Disorders of the Male Reproductive Tract?,” The Lancet 29, no. 341 (May 29, 1993): 1392–95.
30. N.E. Skakkebaek, E. Rajpert-De Meyts, and K.M. Main, “Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome: An Increasingly Common Developmental Disorder with Environmental Aspects,” Human Reproduction 16, no. 5 (May 2001): 972–78.
31. Katharina Main et al., “Human Breast Milk Contamination with Phthalates and Alterations of Endogenous Reproductive Hormones in Infants Three Months of Age,” Environmental Health Perspectives 114, no. 2 (February 2006): 270–76. Numerous studies have shown this link, such as Shanna Swan et al., “Decrease in Anogenital Distance Among Male Infants with Prenatal Phthalate Exposure,” Environmental Health Perspectives 113, no. 8 (August 2005): 1056–61.
32. “Alerte aux poêles à frire,” www.Libération.fr, September 30, 2009. DuPont de Nemours, holder of the Teflon trademark since 1954, announced that it would stop using PFOA by 2015.
33. Ulla Nordström Joensen et al., “Do Perfluoroalkyl Compounds Impair Human Semen Quality?,” Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 6 (June 2009): 923–27.
34. Dawn Forsythe let me photocopy one hundred or so documents from her personal archives, including those she cites in this interview.
35. The authors of this “draft” are Dave Fischer (Bayer), Richard Balcomb (American Cyanamid), C. Holmes (BASF), T. Hall (Sandoz), K. Reinert and V. Kramer (Rohm & Haas), Ellen Mihaich (Rhône-Poulenc), R. McAllister, and J. McCarthy (ACPA).
36. This refers to the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) and to amendments made to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1996. In 2010, the Obama administration asked the EPA to accelerate the program. On its website, the EPA wrote (in 1998) that its problem was “the lack of endocrine disruptor effects-related data on the vast majority of [87,000] chemicals and their breakdown products,” which would allow for an evaluation of risks associated with the endocrine system (EDSTAC Final Report, www.epa.gov, August 1998, chap. 4).
17: Distilbene: The “Perfect Model”?
1. NIEHS News, “Women’s Health Research at NIEHS,” Environmental Health Perspectives 101, no. 2 (June 1993).
2. E.C. Dodds, L. Goldberg, W. Lawson, and R. Robinson, “Œstrogenic Activity of Certain Synthetic Compounds,” Nature 141 (February 1938): 247–48.
3. Howard Burlington and Verlus Frank Linderman, “Effect of DDT on Testes and Secondary Sex Characters of White Leghorn Cockerels,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 74, no. 1 (May 1950): 48–51.
4. As written by Kehoe in a report prepared for a U.S. and British Intelligence Committee in January 1947 (cited by Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer [New York: Basic Books, 2007], 91).
5. Ibid., 90.
6. A. Parkes, E.C. Dodds, and R.L. Noble, “Interruption of Early Pregnancy by Means of Orally Active Oestrogens,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 4053 (September 10, 1938): 557–59.
7. Sidney John Folley et al., “Induction of Abortion in the Cow by Injection with Stilboestrol Diproporniate,” The Lancet 2 (1939).
8. Antoine Lacassagne, “Apparition d’adénocarcinomes mammaires chez des souris mâles traitées par une substance œstrogène synthétique,” Comptes rendus des séances de la Société de biologie 129 (1938): 641–43.
9. R.R. Greene, M.W. Burrill, and A.C. Ivy, “Experimental Intersexuality: The Paradoxical Effects of Estrogens on the Sexual Development of the Female Rat,” Anatomical Record 74, no. 4 (August 1939): 429–38.
10. “Estrogen Therapy: A Warning,” Journal of the American Medical Association 113, no. 26 (December 23, 1939): 2323–24.
11. As cited by Jacqueline Verrett and Jean Carper, Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), 146. Use of distilbene in poultry and cattle would be banned in 1959 and 1980, respectively.
12. Olive Smith and George Smith, “Diethylstilbestrol in the Prevention and Treatment of Complications of Pregnancy,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 56, no. 5 (1948): 821–34; Olive Smith and George Smith, “The Influence of Diethylstilbestrol on the Progress and Outcome of Pregnancy as Based on a Comparison of Treated with Untreated Primigravidas,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 58, no. 5 (1949): 994–1009.
13. Susan E. Bell, DES Daughters: Embodied Knowledge and the Transformation of Women’s Health Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 16.
14. Eclampsia is a dangerous pregnancy complication characterized by seizures.
15. James Ferguson, “Effect of Stilbestrol on Pregnancy Compared to the Effect of a Placebo,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 65, no. 3 (March 1953): 592–601.
16. W.J. Dieckmann, M.E. Davis, L.M. Rynkiewicz, and R.E. Pottinger, “Does the Administration of Diethylstilbestrol During Pregnancy Have Therapeutic Value?,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 66, no. 5 (November 1953): 1062–81.
17. Y. Brackbill and H.W. Berendes, “Dangers of Diethylstilbestrol: Review of a 1953 Paper,” The Lancet 2, no. 8088 (1978): 520.
18. On November 16, 2012, French health authorities admitted that Mediator, a drug produced by Servier Laboratories and indicated for diabetic and overweight patients (but without any efficacy), largely used as an appetite suppressant, caused at least five hundred deaths and thousands of hospitalizations due to heart valve problems between 1976 and November 2009.
19. Pat Cody, DES Voices: From Anger to Action (Jupiter, FL: DES Action, 2008), 13.
20. William Gardner, “Experimental Induction of Uterine Cervical and Vaginal Cancer in Mice,” Cancer Research 19, no. 2 (February 1959): 170–76.
21. A.M. Bongiovanni, A.M. Di George, and M.M. Grumbach, “Masculinization of the Female Infant Associated with Estrogenic Therapy Alone During Gestation: Four Cases,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 19 (August 1959): 1004.
22. Norman M. Kaplan, “Male Pseudohermaphroditism: Report of a Case, with Observations on Pathogenesis,” New England Journal of Medicine 261 (1959): 641.
23. Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story (New York: Plume, 1996), 49.
24. Ibid., 50. Emphasis added.
25. Ibid.
26. “The Full Story of the Drug Thalidomide,” Life magazine, August 10, 1962.
27. “Rachel Carson Talks About Effects of Pesticides on Children and Future Generations,” www.bbcmotiongallery.com, January 1, 1963.
28. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 50.
29. Arthur Herbst, Howard Ulfelder, and David Poskanzer, “Adenocarcinoma of the Vagina: Association of Maternal Stilbestrol Therapy with Tumor Appearance in Young Women,” New England Journal of Medicine 284, no. 15 (April 22, 1971): 878–81.
30. Verrett and Carper, Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health, 142.
31. In France, distilbene was not banned for pregnant women until 1977 (see Véronique Mahé, Distilbène: Des mots sur un scandale [Paris: Albin Michel, 2010]). It is estimated that in France, DES was prescribed to approximately 200,000 pregnant women who gave birth to 160,000 children.
32. Note that in epidemiology, a cluster refers to a remarkable aggregation of a given disease in a given place or population.
33. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 53.
34. Bell, DES Daughters, 1.
35. Cody, DES Voices, 4.
36. Ibid., 43.
37. Ibid., 93.
38. Ibid., 85.
39. Ibid., 90.
40. Ibid., 97.
41. Ibid., 96.
42. Bell, DES Daughters, 23.
43. Ibid., 27.
44. Sheldon Krimsky, Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Hypothesis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 2. Emphasis added.
45. Ibid., 11.
46. Bell, DES Daughters, 27.
47. It is impossible to cite here all the studies conducted by John McLachlan on DES. I will only reference two: Retha Newbold and John McLachlan, “Vaginal Adenosis and Adenocarcinoma in Mice Exposed Prenatally or Neonatally to Diethylstilbestrol,” Cancer Research 42, no. 5 (May 1982): 2003–11; John McLachlan and Retha Newbold, “Reproductive Tract Lesions in Male Mice Exposed Prenatally to Diethylstilbestrol,” Science 190, no. 4218 (December 5, 1975): 991–92.
48. Author interview with John McLachlan, New Orleans, October 22, 2009.
49. Newbold and McLachlan, “Vaginal Adenosis and Adenocarcinoma.”
50. Retha Newbold, “Cellular and Molecular Effects of Developmental Exposure to Diethylstilbestrol: Implications for Other Environmental Estrogens,” Environmental Health Perspectives 103 (October 1995): 83–87.
51. Retha Newbold et al., “Increased Tumors but Uncompromised Fertility in the Female Descendants of Mice Exposed Developmentally to Diethylstilbestrol,” Carcinogenesis 19, no. 9 (September 1998): 655–63.
52. Retha Newbold et al., “Proliferative Lesions and Reproductive Tract Tumors in Male Descendants of Mice Exposed Developmentally to Diethylstilbestrol,” Carcinogenesis 21, no. 7 (2000): 1355–63.
53. R.R. Newbold, E. Padilla-Banks, and W.N. Jefferson, “Adverse Effects of the Model Environmental Estrogen Diethylstilbestrol Are Transmitted to Subsequent Generations,” Endocrinology 147, suppl. 6 (June 2006): 11–17; Retha Newbold, “Lessons Learned from Perinatal Exposure to Diethylstilbestrol,” Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology 199, no. 2 (September 1, 2004): 142–50.
54. Among them, a study conducted by the Netherlands Cancer Institute: Helen Klip et al., “Hypospadias in Sons of Women Exposed to Diethylstilbestrol in Utero: A Cohort Study,” The Lancet 359, no. 9312 (March 30, 2002): 1101–7.
55. Felix Grün and Bruce Blumberg, “Environmental Obesogens: Organotins and Endocrine Disruption via Nuclear Receptor Signaling,” Endocrinology 47, no. 6 (2006): 50–55.
56. R.R. Newbold, E. Padilla-Banks, W.N. Jefferson, and J.J. Heindel, “Effects of Endocrine Disruptors on Obesity,” International Journal of Andrology 31, no. 2 (April 2008): 201–8; R.R. Newbold, E. Padilla-Banks, R.J. Snyder, T.M. Phillips, and W.N. Jefferson, “Developmental Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors and the Obesity Epidemic,” Reproductive Toxicology 23, no. 3 (April–May 2007): 290–96.
18: The Case of Bisphenol A: A Pandora’s Box
2. The BPA identification code is a “7” in the middle of a triangle. But it can also be found in products labeled with a “3” or a “6.”
3. A. Krishnan, P. Stathis, S.F. Permuth, L. Tokes, and D. Feldman, “Bisphenol-A: An Estrogenic Substance Is Released from Polycarbonate Flasks During Autoclaving,” Endocrinology 132, no. 6 (June 1993): 2279–86.
4. Cited by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story (New York: Plume, 1996), 131.
5. Liza Gross, “The Toxic Origins of Disease,” PLoS Biology 5, no. 7 (June 26, 2007): 193.
6. Patricia Hunt et al., “Bisphenol A Exposure Causes Meiotic Aneuploidy in the Female Mouse,” Current Biology 13, no. 7 (April 2003): 546–53; Martha Susiarjo, Terry J. Hassold, Edward Freeman, and Patricia Hunt, “Bisphenol A Exposure in Utero Disrupts Early Oogenesis in the Mouse,” PLoS Genetics 3, no. 1 (January 12, 2007): 5.
7. Nena Baker, The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being (New York: North Point Press, 2008), 151.
8. Elizabeth Grossman, “Two Words: Bad Plastic,” Salon.com, August 2, 2007.
9. Caroline Markey, Enrique Luque, Monica Muñoz De Toro, Carlos Sonnenschein, and Ana Soto, “In Utero Exposure to Bisphenol A Alters the Development and Tissue Organization of the Mouse Mammary Gland,” Biology of Reproduction 65, no. 4 (October 1, 2001): 1215–23.
10. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 30.
11. Ibid., 31.
12. Frederick Vom Saal and Franklin Bronson, “Sexual Characteristics of Adult Female Mice Are Correlated with Their Blood Testosterone Levels During Prenatal Development,” Science 208, no. 4444 (May 9, 1980): 597–99 (cited in Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 34).
13. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 39.
14. F.S. vom Saal, M.M. Clark, B.G. Gale, L.C. Drickamer, and J.G. Vandenbergh, “The Intra-Uterine Position (IUP) Phenomenon,” in Encyclopedia of Reproduction, vol. 2, ed. Ernst Knobil and Jimmy Neill (New York: Academic Press, 1999), 893–900; “Science Watch: Prenatal Womb Position and Supermasculinity,” New York Times, March 31, 1992.
15. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, 35.
16. Ibid., 38.
17. Ibid., 39.
18. Ibid., 42.
19. Bernard Jégou, Pierre Jouannet, and Alfred Spira, La Fertilité est-elle en danger? (Paris: La Découverte, 2009), 10–12.
20. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, www.cdc.gov, Atlanta, 2009. In Chapter 19, I will return to this report, which explains the “chemical body burden” of thousands of American citizens.
21. Antonia Calafat, “Exposure of the U.S. Population to Bisphenol A and 4-Tertiary-Octylphenol: 2003–2004,” Environmental Health Perspectives 116 (2008): 39–44.
22. Antonia Calafat et al., “Exposure to Bisphenol A and Other Phenols in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Premature Infants,” Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 4 (April 2009): 639–44.
23. In 2010, the AFSSA became part of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail, ANSES).
24. Author interview with Frederick vom Saal, New Orleans, October 22, 2009.
25. Frederick Vom Saal et al., “Prostate Enlargement in Mice Due to Foetal Exposure to Low Doses of Estradiol or Diethylstilbestrol and Opposite Effects at Low Doses,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 94, no. 5 (March 1997): 2056–61.
26. Susan Nagel, Frederick Vom Saal, et al., “Relative Binding Affinity-Serum Modified Access (RBA-SMA) Assay Predicts the Relative in Vivo Bioactivity of the Xenoestrogens Bisphenol A and Octylphenol,” Environmental Health Perspectives 105, no. 1 (January 1997): 70–76.
27. Liza Gross, “The Toxic Origins of Disease,” PLoS Biology 5, no. 7 (2007): 193.
28. Frederick Vom Saal et al., “A Physiologically Based Approach to the Study of Bisphenol A and Other Estrogenic Chemicals on the Size of Reproductive Organs, Daily Sperm Production, and Behavior,” Toxicology and Industrial Health 14, no. 1–2 (January–April 1998): 239–60.
29. Gross, “Toxic Origins of Disease.”
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. The “anogenital distance” separates the anus from the genital organs. It is normally twice as long in males as in females, and any variation can indicate a congenital defect in the male reproductive organs (see Chapter 19).
33. Channda Gupta, “Reproductive Malformation of the Male Offspring Following Maternal Exposure to Estrogenic Chemicals,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 224 (1999): 61–68. Shortly after the publication of Channda Gupta’s study, the same journal published an editorial underlining that Frederick vom Saal’s initial results had been confirmed: Daniel Sheehan, “Activity of Environmentally Relevant Low Doses of Endocrine Disruptors and the Bisphenol A Controversy: Initial Results Confirmed,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 224, no. 2 (2000): 57–60.
34. Gross, “Toxic Origins of Disease.”
35. Barbara Elswick, Frederick Miller, and Frank Welsch, “Comments to the Editor Concerning the Paper Entitled ‘Reproductive Malformation of the Male Offspring Following Maternal Exposure to Estrogenic Chemicals’ by C. Gupta,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 226 (2001): 74–75.
36. Channda Gupta, “Response to the Letter by B. Elswick et alii from the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 226 (2001): 76–77.
37. See notably Derek Yach and Stella Aguinaga Bialous, “Tobacco, Lawyers and Public Health, Junking Science to Promote Tobacco,” American Journal of Public Health 91, no. 11 (November 2001): 1745–48.
38. Cited by Cindy Skrzycki, “Nominee’s Business Ties Criticized,” Washington Post, May 15, 2001.
39. “George M. Gray,” www.sourcewatch.org.
40. Lorenz Rhomberg, “Needless Fear Drives Proposed Plastics Ban,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 2006.
41. George Gray et al., “Weight of the Evidence Evaluation of Low-Dose Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Bisphenol A,” Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 10 (October 2004): 875–921.
42. Frederick vom Saal and Claude Hughes, “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment,” Environmental Health Perspectives 113 (August 2005): 926–33.
43. See John Peterson Myers and Frederick vom Saal, “Should Public Health Standards for Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds Be Based Upon 16th Century Dogma or Modern Endocrinology?,” San Francisco Medicine 81, no. 1 (2008): 30–31.
44. Evanthia Diamanti-Kandarakis et al., “Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement,” Endocrine Reviews 30, no. 4 (June 2009): 293–342.
45. “Opinion of the Scientific Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with Food on a Request from the Commission Related to 2,2-bis (4-Hydroxyphenyl) Propane (Bisphenol A),” Question no. EFSA-Q-2005-100, November 29, 2006.
46. Rochelle Tyl et al., “Three-Generation Reproductive Toxicity Study of Dietary Bisphenol A in CD Sprague-Dawley Rats,” Toxicological Sciences 68 (2002): 121–46.
47. When it conducted its evaluation, the EFSA had only a preliminary report of Rochelle Tyl’s study (“Draft Final Report”), which was published in 2008: Rochelle Tyl et al., “Two-Generation Reproductive Toxicity Evaluation of Bisphenol A in CD-1 (Swiss Mice),” Toxicological Sciences 104, no. 2 (2008): 362–84.
48. John Peterson Myers et al., “Why Public Health Agencies Cannot Depend on Good Laboratory Practices as a Criterion for Selecting Data: The Case of Bisphenol A,” Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 3 (March 2009): 309–15. Its authors include Ana Soto, Carlos Sonnenschein, Louis Guillette, Theo Colborn, and John McLachlan.
49. Meg Missinger and Susanne Rust, “Consortium Rejects FDA Claim of BPA’s Safety: Scientists Say 2 Studies Used by U.S. Agency Overlooked Dangers,” Journal Sentinel, April 11, 2009.
50. Myers et al., “Why Public Health Agencies Cannot Depend on Good Laboratory Practices.”
51. As reported by John Peterson Myers, co-author of Our Stolen Future, who attended the hearing (John Peterson Myers, “The Missed Electric Moment,” Environmental Health News, September 18, 2008).
52. Missinger and Rust, “Consortium Rejects FDA Claim of BPA’s Safety.”
53. “Opinion of the Scientific Panel.”
54. Myers et al., “Why Public Health Agencies Cannot Depend on Good Laboratory Practices.”
55. Ibid.
56. Frederick Vom Saal et al., “Chapel Hill Bisphenol A Expert Panel Consensus Statement: Integration of Mechanisms, Effects in Animals and Potential to Impact Human Health at Current Levels of Exposure,” Reproductive Toxicology 24 (2007): 131–38. The signatories included Ana Soto, Carlos Sonnenschein, Retha Newbold, John Peterson Myers, Louis Guillette, and John McLachlan.
57. National Toxicology Program, “NTP–CERHR Monograph on the Potential Human Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Bisphenol A,” September 2008. Emphasis in original.
58. Health Canada, “Draft Screening Assessment for Phenol, 4, 4’-(1-Methylethylidene) Bis- (80-05-7),” April 2008.
59. Xu-Liang Cao, “Levels of Bisphenol A in Canned Liquid Infant Formula Products in Canada and Dietary Intake Estimates,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 56, no. 17 (2008): 7919–24; Xu-Liang Cao and Jeannette Corriveau, “Migration of Bisphenol A from Polycarbonate Baby and Water Bottles into Water Under Severe Conditions,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 56, no. 15 (2008): 6378–81. A third study indicated the same migration phenomenon in carbonated beverage cans: Xu-Liang Cao et al., “Levels of Bisphenol A in Canned Soft Drink Products in Canadian Markets,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 57, no. 4 (2009): 1307–11.
60. On May 17, 2010, the French Parliament would finally adopt a law banning the sale of polycarbonate baby bottles containing BPA.
61. Once BPA penetrates the body, it decomposes into “free bisphenol” and into two main metabolites: BPA-glucuronide and BPA-sulfate.
62. “Toxicokinetics of Bisphenol A: Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with Food (AFC),” Question no. EFSA- Q-2008-382, July 9, 2008.
63. AFSSA, “Avis de l’Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments relatif au bisphénol A dans les biberons en polycarbonate susceptibles d’être chauffés au four à micro-ondes. Saisine no 2008-SA-0141,” October 24, 2008.
64. The Plastics Portal, www.plasticseurope.org.
65. In the opinion submitted in September 2010 on the neurological effects of BPA, the EFSA specified, for the first time, that “a minority opinion is expressed by a Panel member,” seeing fit to further specify: “EFSA considers it important that scientists are able to express an opinion which diverges from an adopted opinion, that is called a minority opinion.” Nonetheless, the experts “concluded that no new study could be identified, which would call for a revision of the current ADI of 0.05 mg/kg b.w./day.”