ABOUT
Smart discussion of the latest science and news on toxins in your food, water, and air, and what government agencies should be doing to protect public health. Written by EWG staff.
DONATE TO EWG TODAY
We need you to help protect your health and environment! Please donate $5 to EWG today.
GET EWG'S TIPS & ACTION ALERTS
Sign Up here to receive email updates and tips from EWG and stay informed on the issues that matter most to you.
Get EWG widgets & blog badges.
ENVIROBLOG TO YOU
ENVIROBLOG VIA EMAIL
You could (almost) eat this furniture
Is your sunscreen in EWG's Sunscreen Hall of Shame?
Fracking: Live chat with EWG & 'Gasland' director Josh Fox
Understanding Sunscreen: 4 Questions about SPF
SEARCH ENVIROBLOG
FEATURED
Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Cell phone radiation series - Part 2: 8 Ways to reduce your exposure
Infant formula: How to choose it & use it
EWG's Tips for Parents: The Series
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
Let's talk some serious shop about TSCA reform
EWG on TV
Cutting the Pork from U.S. Farm Bill
Sunscreen safety & DC drinking water
Perchlorate in people, kids' personal care products & plastics, and sunscreen
BPA in baby formula & safe cosmetics
What can I do about fluoride in my water?
What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
Are stainless steel water bottles safe?
Is mineral-based makeup safer?
PEOPLE TALKING TOXICS
TALK TO US
Did we miss something? Email Enviroblog.
« Toxic fragrance in the air | Main | Adios, au revoir, auf Wiedersehen. . . »
Just science?
Greetings from California detours north of the border this week to answer criticisms of EWG by a Canadian newspaper columnist. His newspaper has (so far) refused to print the response below, so we're publishing it here.
Recently, Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner took aim at “chemical paranoia.” His target was Enviromental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide, which lists supermarket fruits and vegetables highest and lowest in pesticide residues, based on 43,000 samples tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Gardner charged that EWG is promoting “chemophobia” by needlessly alarming consumers about trace amounts of pesticides on produce. To support his view, he interviewed Dr. Joe Schwarcz of McGill University in Toronto – syndicated columnist, CBC TV personality and director of the university’s Office for Science and Society, which its website says is dedicated to “demystifying science for the public [and] the media.”
Unlike activist groups that “talk a lot about what the science says, but have their own interests," Gardner wrote, Schwarcz “delivers science unfiltered. No politics or ideology. Just science." Schwarcz declared EWG’s guide meaningless, irrelevant, and said the amounts of pesticide on produce are too small to worry about: "Where is the information that the level of pesticide contamination that they're talking about has any relevance to humans?”
But when it comes to questions of pesticide safety, Schwarcz has a clear conflict of interest.
The Office for Science and Society has been funded in part by the Council for Biotechnology Information. The Council is an agricultural industry front group whose members are Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta and BASF – all companies with a vested interest in discrediting information about the health risks of pesticides. Archived web pages for the Office of Science and Society list the industry group as a supporter from 2003 until October 2007; now the website acknowledges only funding from “private parties.”
Maybe Schwarcz didn’t feel he had to disclose his ties to the pesticide industry, but Gardner could have dug it up in an hour of online research. Judging from some of his other assertions, maybe Gardner’s not that familiar with the Internet.
He blasted EWG’s produce rankings as deceptive comparisons that don’t quantify pesticide levels: “How much pesticide residue was found on onions? How much on peaches? That's what's critical.”
In fact, that information is readily available on the Shopper’s Guide website.
With two mouse clicks, you can learn that the average amount of all pesticides the FDA found on peaches is about 1.1 parts per million. The average amount found on onions is less than 0.001 parts per million, meaning peaches typically have at least 1,100 times more pesticide residue than onions. What’s more, the FDA found that almost 9 out of 10 peaches had residues of two or more pesticides, while less than 1 out of 100 onions had any at all.
Gardner made another blunder by relying on outdated science. He cited the 16th Century physician Paracelsus: “The poison is in the dose.”
Just because many things are more harmful in large doses doesn’t mean everything is safe in small doses. In recent decades, scientists have found that very small doses of some chemicals can cause greater harm, especially to growing kids, than larger doses on adults. Many prescription medicines, including the asthma inhaler Albuterol and the contraceptive Nuvaring, are active in the bloodstream at a few parts per billion or less. They carry warning labels; a pesticide-laden peach does not.
EWG’s Shopper’s Guide makes no claims that aren’t supported by independent, peer-reviewed research linking pesticides to cancer, reproductive harm and other health problems. We believe organic produce is the healthiest choice, but organic is not always available. By consistently choosing foods that are lowest in pesticide residues over those that are highest, consumers can reduce their pesticide intake by up to 90 percent.
Consumers have a right to this information. With it, they can make informed choices about what they put in their bodies. If the choice is between avoiding toxic pesticides or taking the word of a scientist funded by the pesticide industry, that’s hardly paranoia.
Leave a comment