Posted: Monday, October 22, 2007

ACSH IN THE NEWS
Publication Date: October 22, 2007

An October 22, 2007 piece by Jordana Miller pushes the idea of an epidemic of chemical-caused childhood disease but quotes Dr. Whelan on a skeptical note:

Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a public health advocacy group, disagrees.

"My concern about this trend about measuring chemicals in the blood is it's leading people to believe that the mere ability to detect chemicals is the same as proving a hazard, that if you have this chemical, you are at risk of a disease, and that is false," she said. Whelan contends that trace levels of industrial chemicals in our bodies do not necessarily pose health risks.

(Bizarrely vituperative reactions to Whelan's brief comment in the article have included, of all things, the accusation by a blog called CommonSenseTwo that ACSH is a tool of Altria -- the company better known as Philip Morris -- which would be very, very awkward both for the anti-smoking staff of ACSH and the manufacturers of America's leading preventable cause of death, cigarettes.)

 

See also: ACSH's full report on Biomonitoring: Measuring Levels of Chemicals in People -- and What the Results Mean.