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I found the most curious item on OMB OIRA’s webpage today, and my paranoia about end-of-the-term mischief by the Bush Administration kicked into high gear. The item is listed as a proposed rule submitted to OIRA for review on July 7 titled:
“Requirements for DOL Agencies’ Assessment of Occupational Health Risks” (RIN: 1290-AA23) (Link here, select DOL) or (screenshot)
Whenever the term risk assessment is uttered by the Bush Admininstration, I know they are up to no good. Recall their earlier effort at a major overhaul of agency’s risk assessment procedures; this was a proposal that was long on new one-size-fits-all requirements for agencies involved in health, safety and environmental protection, but woefully lacking in details about the alleged problem it was designed to fix. More importantly, it would have added new steps to the rulemaking process, making a dysfunctional system more so, and creating administrative obstacles for health protective rules. Thankfully, a failing grade by the National Academy of Sciences forced OMB to junk it.
This mysterious draft proposal at OMB makes me wonder whether this is the White House’s plan B for so-called “reforms” to agency risk assessments. Let’s see: they couldn’t impose their requirements agency-wide, so why not target specific agencies? What better place than those pesky rules to protect workers’ from dangerous contaminants?
By Dick Clapp
There were two reviews of Devra Davis’s new book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books, 2007), published in Lancet journals last month. One was in the November 24 issue of the Lancet and the other was in the November issue of Lancet Oncology. They are so diametrically opposite that one wonders if the reviewers had read the same book. The Lancet review is by Peter Boyle, the current director of IARC (the International Agency for Research on Cancer) - an agency that is widely respected but whose recent report on attributable causes of cancer has raised some eyebrows among cancer researchers. Boyle’s review is a broadside against the book that starts with “Devotees of conspiracy theories and aficionados of gossip and innuendo will be drawn toward this book like wasps to a juicy piece of meat.” The review by Fred Pearce, a well-known environmental consultant and science writer, starts with “This is a clash of titans. Not between mankind and cancer so much as between the clinicians and chemical companies on one side, and the environmental and public health people on the other.”
Somehow, I missed Devra Davis’ powerful essay Off Target in the War on Cancer which appeared in the Washington Post last week. Davis, a well known environmental epidemiologist, is the author of the just published The Secret History of the War on Cancer. In the Post essay, she makes a very convincing case that there is much we can do to reduce cancer risk. While we don’t know all the answers, from a regulatory point-of-view its better to be safe than sorry:
Consider the icon of American cancer, the cyclist Lance Armstrong. He’s hardly alone as an inspiring younger survivor. Of the 10 million American cancer survivors who are alive five years after their diagnosis, about one in 10 is younger than 40. Could exposure to radiation and obesity-promoting chemicals help explain why, according to a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the rates of the testicular cancer that Armstrong developed nearly doubled in most industrialized countries in the past three decades? Should we wait to find out?
Read the rest of this entry »
Devra Davis’s The Secret History of the War on Cancer is getting some wonderful, well-deserved reviews. Davis is a well-known an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh. Robin Mejia, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, writes
The book is a must-read for those concerned about their own health or that of their loved ones. It’s also fascinating.
Mejia is right - the book is filled with fascinating historical material, linked with a focus on cancer prevention right now. To Davis, this means more than just promoting healthier lifestyles, but addressing the effects of the many chemicals we’re exposed to every day. Read the rest of this entry »
By Dick Clapp
Researchers devote a lot of effort to determining what causes cancer, and their findings can help us treat and prevent the disease. Industries that use and manufacture suspected carcinogens have something to fear, though, if research shows their products or processes to be contributing to cancer in workers or nearby communities. As a result, there has been a three-decade debate about the magnitude of the cancer burden contributed by these sources.
This issue is getting renewed attention because the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently released a report on “Attributable causes of cancer in France in year 2000.” This was a collaborative effort with the French Academy of Sciences, several other cancer-related agencies, and a distinguished international group of reviewers. It was begun in 2005 with the intention of updating the frequently-cited estimate of the attributable causes of cancer done by Doll and Peto in 1981, specifically as these estimates applied to France. The report reviews a large literature, goes through a long series of calculations and sensitivity analyses, and comes up with a set of conclusions remarkably similar to those of Doll and Peto’s estimates 26 years earlier. They attribute even smaller percentages of cancer due to occupation and “pollution” than did Doll and Peto.
The most surprising aspect of the new IARC report comes in the discussion section, though, where the authors suggest the possibility that low-dose environmental and occupational exposures might actually have decreased cancer incidence in France. In doing so, they invoke the notion of “hormesis.” Say what?
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Today’s Washington Post writes about one more instance where women’s health and children’s health were a lower priority than the interests of a powerful group. In this case, it was breastfeeding vs. the formula industry.
Marc Kaufman and Christopher Lee write:
In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
As Dick Clapp wrote earlier this month, Rachel Carson’s critics have used the 100th anniversary of her birth as an occasion to attack the influential environmental author. In the New York Times, columnist John Tierney (sub only) called Carson’s classic work Silent Spring “a hodgepodge of science and junk science.” Barry Commoner, himself an author of landmark books on ecology, wrote a response to the Times, and has given us permission to post it here. -Liz Borkowski
To the Editor:
John Tierney’s rehash (Science Times, June 5, 2007) of the long discredited arguments against the 1972 law banning the use of DDT in the U.S. is a malicious attack on Rachel Carson’s classic work, “Silent Spring,” where she concluded that cancer incidence is largely due to synthetic organic chemicals rather than to naturally occurring ones. Tierney’s evidence that natural compounds are “as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones” is directly contradicted by a comprehensive review of data from five international cancer agencies recently reported in the American Cancer Society’s journal CANCER. By checking this study’s list of chemicals that cause breast cancer in laboratory animals against the Combined Chemical Dictionary (a database distinguishing synthetic and natural organic chemicals), I find that of the total 212 organic chemicals, 203 are synthetic and only 9 are produced by living things. In calling “Silent Spring” a “hodgepodge of science and junk science,” Mr. Tierney has produced a shameful display of junk journalism.
Barry Commoner, Senior Scientist
CBNS, Queens College, CUNY
by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
If you’ve ever been to Duluth, Minnesota in the wintertime, at the top of the state on Lake Superior, you know how cold it can get. And if you go another 50 miles up the shore you’ll come to Silver Bay. Also cold. And dangerous in another way. It is a cancer hot spot for perhaps the deadliest cancer we know, mesothelioma. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ruthann Rudel and Dick Clapp
Two recent papers by Ruthann Rudel and Julia Brody published in the journal Cancer compiled a list of 216 chemicals shown to cause mammary gland tumors in animal studies and presented a comprehensive state-of-the-science review of environmental factors in breast cancer. When such important studies are published, it’s typical for the chemical industry or its surrogates to attack them. In this case, Elizabeth Whelan, president of the industry-backed American Council on Science and Health, fired off a response that questioned whether findings from animal cancer studies are relevant to human cancer risk. Like many who discount current animal cancer studies, though, Whelan didn’t call for something better; instead, she suggested that better peer review would have kept these papers out of the scientific literature.
Of course, these two papers had already been through a rigorous peer-review process involving scientists knowledgeable about cancer. Presumably these scientists were aware of something that most scientists understand: We must rely on animal cancer studies because they are the only thing standing between us and a lot more exposure to chemicals that might cause cancer in humans.
Over the past few years, millions of formlerly secret internal documents from the tobacco industry have been made public and helped public health advocates learn how Big Tobacco deceived lawmakers and the public about smoking’s health risks.
Wading through all these documents is time-consuming, so the Center for Media and Democracy has launched a TobaccoWiki that will allow people interested in the subject to share their findings online. (A Wiki is basically a tool for online collaboration; see Wikipedia’s explanation to learn more about it.) Here’s their explanation of the project:
By Dick Clapp
Rachel Carson has been in the news quite a lot recently, first as the object of a diatribe by a U.S. Senator, and also in a series of news stories commemorating what would have been her 100th birthday last week. Tim Lambert at Deltoid has addressed the false allegations about Carson and DDT, so I will focus on Dan Gardner’s rant (Ottawa Citizen, May 25, 2007) denouncing Rachel Carson and the Prevent Cancer Now coalition spokespeople, Liz Armstrong and Angela Rickman, which was startlingly wrong-headed and riddled with errors.
By David Michaels
Many people first heard about hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, from the movie Erin Brockovich, which is based on the true story of a lawsuit over chromium-contaminated groundwater in the town of Hinkley, California.
Less well-known is the campaign waged by companies that manufacture or use chromium 6 to convince regulatory agencies that the chemical, which has recognized as a lung carcinogen for more than 50 years, just isn’t so dangerous. There’s a lot of chromium-contaminated water out there, and if chromium 6 in drinking water were acknowledged to be a cause of cancer, it would cost industry a lot of money in clean-up costs.
It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog – or anyone who’s seen our case study on industry efforts to delay OSHA’s chromium 6 standard – to hear that these companies have turned to product defense firms, and that the firms have produced studies that differ markedly from those completed by non-industry-funded scientists. Read the rest of this entry »
By Dick Clapp
Opponents in the debate over conflict of interest in cancer research are duking it out, and the current forum for their fight is the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The article that touched off this particular scuffle was “Secret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests in Cancer Research,” by Hardell L, et al. (Am J Ind Med 2007;50:227-233), which details a number of examples of researchers working for industries and not disclosing their ties. The most widely publicized revelations (see this Guardian story) were about Sir Richard Doll, one of the icons of 20th century epidemiology, and his consulting arrangement with Monsanto, Turner and Newall (a British asbestos manufacturer), the Chemical Manufacturers Association, ICI (a British producer of vinyl chloride), Dow Chemicals and others. Other sections of the Hardell, et al. paper discuss testimony and articles by Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Hans-Olov Adami, Dennis Paustenbach and Jack Mandel regarding dioxin, Joseph McLaughlin and John Boice regarding cell phones and other examples of apparently undisclosed conflicts of interest.
The original article is well worth a read, but the letters in response – published in AJIM’s March 2007 issue—are just as revealing in their own way.
Al Gore’s appearance on Capitol Hill prompted several blog posts. David Roberts at Gristmill liveblogged Gore’s testimony in both the House and the Senate; he and Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority both devoted blog posts to a memorable encounter between Gore and Senator Inhofe, too. Kevin Vranes at Prometheus weighed in on Gore’s specific proposals and summarized exchanges between Gore and various Senators.
When the sad news about Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer was reported, Orac at Respectful Insolence and Craig Hildreth at The Cheerful Oncologist were quick to provide additional medical context.
In addition:
One of the great things about the blogosphere is that even when several bloggers are writing about the same story, they’re covering different angles. Here are a couple of examples of posts that complement our posts from the past week:
As a complement to Revere’s post on the FDA’s cefquinome decision, check out The Olive Ridley Crawl for a list of five reasons the approval is unnecessary and Mike the Mad Biologist to learn why cefepime-resistant salmonella is only the tip of an infection iceberg.
As a complement to David Michaels’s post on antioxidants and cancer, learn how antioxidants might be increasing cancer (if the findings of the recent article are true) from Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata.
On a less TPH-centric note, here are other blog highlights from the past week:
By David Michaels
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” - Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1914)
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Lisa B. Jackson, Commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has just issued a tough new standard for removing chromium 6 (a powerful lung carcinogen) from soil.
Three years ago, the same newspaper’s Alexander Lane wrote a series of articles (reprinted here and here) reporting how chromium companies Maxus Energy (formerly Diamond Shamrock), Honeywell (which took over Allied Chemical) and PPG Industries left massive soil contamination in Jersey City and Bayonne and then hired product defense consultants to convince the state government that chromium 6 was simply not so dangerous.
By Dick Clapp
Late last month, there was a series of news stories about the drop in cancer deaths reported in 2004 as compared to 2003. The Washington Post story ran under the headline “Cancer Deaths Decline for Second Straight Year,” and the New York Times headline read “Second Drop in Cancer Deaths Could Point to a Trend, Researchers Say.” President George W. Bush was quoted as saying “This drop was the steepest ever recorded. . . Progress is being made.” What he did not say was that a drop in cancer deaths has been recorded in only two years since the data have been collected – and this drop was greater than the one the previous year, 2003 compared to 2002. Both stories noted that the decline was small in absolute numbers (3,014 fewer deaths due to cancer in 2004 compared to 2003), but neither pointed out that cancer incidence has been either slightly increasing (females) or flat (males) in the past decade.
By David Michaels
NIOSH scientist Patricia Sullivan has just published a very important study that reminds us (as if any reminder were needed) that there really is no safe level of asbestos exposure.
The study looked at the causes of death among workers involved in mining, milling and processing asbestos-containing vermiculite in WR Grace’s plant in Libby, Montana. Dr. Sullivan found increased risk of lung cancer among workers whose lifetime asbestos exposure was only slightly higher than they would receive working a lifetime at the current OSHA standard.
by Liz Borkowski
Since November of 2006, all cigarette packages and advertising in Chile have been required to devote half of their space to hard-hitting anti-tobacco messages. In addition to a “These cigarettes are killing you” warning, this includes a haunting photo of Miguel García Martín, a 72-year-old Chilean who lost his larynx to cancer after smoking for 20 years:
by Dick Clapp
The latest issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine contains a commentary from Ken Mundt, a consultant with ENVIRON International Corporation, on “Cancer incidence among semiconductor and electronic storage device workers,” an IBM-funded study by Bender et al appearing in the same issue. Mundt says that “the study offers some reassurance that at this stage of follow-up no noteworthy increases in cancer risk are seen among employees in the semiconductor production and storage device sectors” (though he notes that additional follow-up should be considered). I believe he is being too quick here to minimize the cancer risk in the semiconductor industry.
Earlier this week, the Bush Administration released its semi-annual regulatory plan (71 Federal Register 72725, Dec 11, 2006). The 473-page document describes the President’s regulatory priorities, with the “aim of implementing an effective and results-oriented regulatory system.” The document, prepared by the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), provides plenty of fodder for the blogosphere, but I’ll focus here on just one absurd statement in the Department of Labor’s section (beginning on page 7282 
describing its 19 high-priority items. Here’s what the document says about crystalline silica:
by Dick Clapp
The publication of my article on mortality among IBM workers was the culmination of a two and a half year process. I obtained the data, which included information on the deaths of nearly 32,000 former workers who had died between 1969 and 2001, when I served as an expert witness in a lawsuit brought against IBM on behalf of employees who had developed cancer after working at the company’s San Jose facility. I found that among the workers, the death rates from several cancers—including cancers of some digestive organs, kidneys, brain and central nervous system, melanoma of the skin, and non-Hodgknin’s lymphoma —were particularly high when compared to the national averages.
IBM won the San Jose jury trial and then settled the lawsuits with the remaining plaintiffs, but I still thought that it was important to publish the study to make others aware of the occupational health risks in these manufacturing activities. IBM’s lawyers derided my work (one said it gave “junk science a bad name”) and asserted that I couldn’t publish the results because the data was confidential under a court order. I had to undergo a lengthy process in order to publish this study, but I am convinced that it was worth it now that I see that it has helped bring greater attention to the occupational health risks related to computer chip manufacturing.
by Celeste Monforton
From the Ground Zero construction site to an expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport, the tide seems to be turning for cleaner diesel engines, particulate filters and low-sulfur fuels. As Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Alex Frangos writes: “Instead of belching black smoke, the bucket loaders, cranes and other diesel-power behemoths” are being replaced with less-polluting equipment in order to win community support for massive construction projects in populated areas. Lawmakers are backing these measures, too. On November 1, Governor Pataki signed a new law which will reduce particulate pollution emitted from state-owned heavy-duty equipment, noting “we are taking another important step to protect public health and our environment by reducing the amount of harmful pollution from diesel vehicles.”
by Dick Clapp
Atul Gawande is well-known around Boston because of his skills as a surgeon, but also for his books and articles in the New Yorker, and his interviews with local media. He was a recipient of one of this year’s MacArthur grants, in recognition of his work. I got one of his books, “Complications,” as a gift and read it and liked it a lot. He’s an incredibly talented writer, and he has ahumane surgeon’s view of medical practice. My father was a surgeon too, so his book resonated with me.
I have another response to Atul Gawande, though, based on an article he wrote for the New Yorker in 1999 called “The Cancer-Cluster Myth.” (PDF here)
