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Policy

Chemicals And Cancer Risk

June 28, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 26

Realizing that the views expressed in “Chemicals and Cancer” (C&EN, May 31, page 5) are Rudy Baum’s and not necessarily those of ACS, I submit that ACS and the chemical community, including industry and academia, should take an objective position on the President’s Cancer Panel report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.” I was disappointed by Baum’s “not so fast” opinion. I hope I misread it.

Let’s face it, the chemicals that our industry uses and produces for research and commerce pose hazards to those who come in contact with them. Every sample in a chemical laboratory has a warning label affixed signifying possible hazards, and every chemical shipment is accompanied by a Material Safety Data Sheet to warn about possible hazards. Certainly, not all chemicals cause cancer. But we know that a few do. And because we do not have test data to the contrary, we cannot definitively give the others a “does not cause cancer” clearance label.

There’s more than anecdotal evidence to show that some man-made chemicals unintentionally find their way into the environment and ecosystems, even though the industry spends billions of dollars and diligently works on prevention. Admittedly we don’t know all the health risks posed by their environmental presence, but I submit that the risk is not zero. Let us, the trained and experienced scientists, chemists, and engineers, ask the tough questions ourselves.

I’d even go a step further and pose the broader question about the potential risk to human health in general, not just cancer. We hear every day about the rising and alarming incidence of childhood allergies, asthma, obesity, and autism. Are they all caused by fast-food and video game addiction and unavoidably inherited genes? I think not. And what about the reproductive system abnormalities found in aquatic life where man-made endocrine mimicks apparently made their way into aquifers. Come on, we’re the scientists, let’s be the first to ask, “What is the risk from the unintentional presence in the environment of man-made chemicals to human health?”

By the way, when does the President’s Panel on Cancer convene? Unlike climate change, which may pose a future risk, environmental man-made chemical exposure may pose a present and perhaps greater risk. It should be objectively studied, and we ought to be the ones to lead the charge.

Gus G. Orphanides
Schnecksville, Pa.

The editor-in-chief of C&EN thinks that the report by the President’s Cancer Panel is, “in a word, a mess.” Actually, this report reflects the fact that the medical community has finally learned enough chemistry to understand what the chemical industry has been doing all these years.

A good example is seen in the history of PCBs. It took over 30 years of studies and scientific fisticuffs to finally get them restricted. But industry didn’t a miss single production deadline when they were banned. They just replaced the chlorine with bromine on those same biphenyl and biphenyl ether structures. Out went the untested brominated biphenyls and brominated biphenyl ethers into every home in the U.S. Those brominated chemicals and the PCBs left over from industry’s prior experiment on our health were found in the blood of our children for the cancer panel to report.

There are hundreds of substitution stories exactly like this one, only the classes of the chemicals change.

The cancer panel also knows that only about 900 chemicals worldwide have been evaluated for their cancer effects. Yet the European Union has registered 143,000 chemicals for use in commerce. We probably use as many chemicals—maybe more. After all, C&EN covered the news that on Sept. 7, 2009, Chemical Abstracts Service registered its 50 millionth chemical.

Even more interesting was the fact that the last 10 million of these chemicals were registered by CAS in the nine months prior to Sept. 7 at a rate of 25 per minute. The primary sources for these chemicals were not scientific abstracts as in the past. Instead, most were found in patents and chemical catalogs. In other words, some of these chemicals are already available.

At this rate of generation, there is no time for testing the new chemicals. Consumers and the medical community used to assume manufacturers made sure their products were safe before they sold them to us. Now they know that most of the chemicals in their products have never been tested for cancer or other chronic hazards, and they are disillusioned.

The American Chemical Society needs to address these ethical and scientific issues in the President’s Cancer Panel report. I suggest not emphasizing the lack of toxicity data available to quantify the effect of the pollutants on the cancer rates. Everyone already knows whose fault that is.

Monona Rossol
New York City

I find it odd that Baum has found plenty of fault recently with government reports on cancer and bisphenol A (BPA), yet he buys without question the government-funded research on climate change (or is it global warming?). Has anyone pointed out this contradiction to Baum? In fact, I would go so far as to say that the type and tenor of criticism that he has displayed in recent editorials are similar to those of global-warming skeptics that he routinely disparages in the pages of C&EN. Where is this type of criticism when he reports on hypothesized catastrophic man-made global warming?

Christopher Nelli
The Woodlands, Texas

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