Exaggerated risks of chemicals.

The citizens of the United States have unreasonably great fears of chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has become one of the most powerful governmental divisions in Washington. It has been given legal authority to create and enforce thousands of regulations. The impact of these regulations on all of us is in process of being increased. Tougher federal environmental enforcement will adversely affect taxpayers, agriculture, the chemical industry and the profession of chemistry. Until recently, the effects of regulatory zeal were not visible, though hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent without provable benefits to the nation’s health. Currently there exists considerable public and special interest pressure to force reduction in the use of pesticides. There is no solid evidence that the tiny amounts remaining on fruits and vegetables are harmful. For many years the EPA has maintained regulatory levels so that an individual eating food containing the EPA top level of a pesticide for a lifetime would have less than one chance in a million of incurring cancer as a result of eating that food. Levels of pesticides in foods are monitored by the Food and Drug Administration. FDA findings indicate that only tiny concentrations of agricultural pesticides are present in foods in supermarkets and that a large fraction has no detectable amounts of pesticides at all [l]. In summary, pesticides in foods are having no more than a trivial effect if any on human health. In contrast, consuming substantial amounts of fruits and vegetables have long been suspected to have beneficial effects. Many isolated studies of the matter have been published. Professor Gladys Block and associates of the University of California at Berkeley have performed a public service by assembling results of 172 studies conducted in places around the world [2]. Their analysis compared cancer rates for a quartile of people consuming an average of O-l fruits and vegetables a day with a quartile eating &5. The contrast in relative risk of cancer in various organs of the body was impressive. For example, the beneficial effect of consuming adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables was a factor of 2.2 for lung, 2.5 for stomach, 2.8 for pancreas and 1.9 for colorectal sites. Those great benefits to health are in danger of being curtailed. EPA Administrator Carol Browner has announced a goal of decreasing use of pesticides by 70% during the next three years. If this policy is implemented, production of many fruits and vegetables would be adversely affected. In other words, were EPA to ban pesticides and cause fruits and vegetables to become expensive or unavailable, it could be responsible for causing annually tens of thousands of cancer deaths. Having been an agent in causing widespread fear of cancer, EPA must now deal with consequences of its earlier actions. The public anxiety about pesticides and other chemicals led to demands for safety from them. Earlier, Congress passed many different complex laws. In numerous instances, the wording of these laws is conflicting. The EPA must also deal with the Delaney clause, which was enacted before the