As the year comes to an end, the scares keep coming, today as often before in the form of pesticides and cosmetics. These alarmist stories are simply baseless and raise needless consumer concerns based only on the precautionary principle.
In another of his typical columns, Mark Bittman rants on the dangers of pesticides, which while devoid of facts, teeters on exaggeration and distortion, not to say invention. Bittman argues that the use of pesticides in agriculture has continued to grow and now we are using more pesticides than ever before and all because of the use of genetically engineered crops. The statistics he links to in his article actually clearly state just the opposite. In fact, according to the very EPA release he cites, the total pounds of U.S. pesticide use decreased by approximately 8 percent from 1.2 to 1.1 billion pounds from 2000 to 2007. Use of conventional pesticides decreased 11 percent from 1997 to 2007 (those are the latest figures available). This doesn t sound like an increase to us.
Bittman then goes on to claim that pesticide exposure in pregnant women may cause their children to become obese. However the study he links to was actually done in genetically obese mice. How convincing is that? And he goes on to make the claim that it is imperative for everyone to buy organic food to avoid the dangers of pesticides. We question whose interests he is really trying to promote.
Next, we have yet another story about the safety of cosmetics. Alarmist group, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, is at it again, this time (giving up, we hope, on haranguing the public) targeting retailers, encouraging them to expand their inventory of safe cosmetics. This group has caused such an uproar that some in the cosmetics industry have begun to cave. As Margie Kelly, spokesperson for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics observes, There s been a tremendous increase in consumer awareness around these products in the last six or seven years and we re starting to see retailers respond to that pressure not only by giving more shelf space to alternatives, but also by reformulating their own products.
But ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says, Safer cosmetics, really? There is zero evidence showing that cosmetics are unsafe. This is just another example of an alarmist group reverting to the precautionary principle, raising concern about cosmetic products about which there is no evidence that they have harmed anyone. We have been using these products since the time of Cleopatra.
You can read more about cosmetic safety in our previous publication.