Two recent articles in The American Spectator and the Huffington Post, as well as a posting on JunkScience.com, have pulled back the veil of deception of the current Save the Frogs campaign; we d like to praise Robert James Bidinotto, Jon Entine, and Steve Milloy, respectively, for these editorial contributions.
Perhaps some of you have already heard about this particular environmental movement, which has declared today...
An editorial in today s Wall Street Journal notes, With the headlines full of oil spills and immigration, the Obama Administration's regulatory agenda is getting little attention. That's a mistake. Consider the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to revive an assault on atrazine, one of the oldest, most well-established agricultural chemicals on the market. Just this past week, the EPA held its third re-evaluation hearing on atrazine.
This editorial is right on target, says Dr. Ross. It basically points out that the plaintiffs bar and anti-chemical, anti-business activists are working hand in hand yet again...
In a brilliantly-written perspective piece on his Science 2.0 blog, Hank Campbell skewers a lot of folks who really need skewering. His scythe and rapier draw blood from his targets, and his insights accrue to the reader: the rampant chemophobia pervasive in America, where chemicals are feared when they are recognized at all; the pandering of pseudo-journalists giving a soapbox to the nonsense attacks on an important herbicide, atrazine; the researcher whose outrageous reports and even...
The FDA today began re-re-reevaluating AAtrex, Syngenta Crop Protection s brand name for the 50-year-old herbicide atrazine, which opponents allege is a potential carcinogen and endocrine disrupter. The EPA estimates that banning atrazine would cost more than $2 billion annually, while University of Chicago economist Don Coursey believes that a ban would lead to 21,000 to 48,000 jobs lost from corn production losses alone. Addressing fears over the presence of harmful chemicals in pesticide-treated foods,...
A new study published in The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health purports to link certain pesticide/herbicide classes, as well as certain specific chemicals to an increased risk of obesity among farm applicators. Entitled "Pesticide Exposures and Body Mass Index (BMI) of Pesticide Applicators From the Agricultural Health Study," the statistical and data-collection sleight-of-hand that went into generating this...
Not to toot our own horn, but ACSH's media coverage has been so prolific that we somehow missed sharing these recent mentions with you. Last week, the Financial Post’s Junk Science Week featured expert opinions by ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and identified ACSH as “the best source of useful and objective science on food and health.”
Terence Corcoran, editor and columnist for the Financial Post, criticized a radio appearance by a restauranteer who advised listeners to avoid charring meat so as not to ingest supposedly cancer-causing chemicals, and presented the opposing opinion...
ACSH’s Jeff Stier wrote an article for the Daily Caller warning about the upcoming trial in which exaggerated health claims may extract money from funds set aside for those claiming to be suffering from conditions related to the World Trade Center wreckage: “These sorts of cases, whether heard in court or by the administrators of a federal fund, should be judged by science, not some misplaced sense of good will towards 9/11 heroes. But the latter is exactly what is happening...As a result, we are about to see a huge and corrupt transfer of funds from sympathetic American taxpayers to activists, unions, lawyers, and perhaps even outright fraudsters.”
The American Cancer Society (ACS), in collaboration with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute, is targeting 19 chemicals and shift work for additional epidemiological research in the hopes of clarifying their potential to cause cancer.
When questioned about why common and thoroughly-investigated substances such as atrazine and lead wound up on the list, Elizabeth Ward, Ph.D., of the American Cancer Society and lead author of the report, cited two reasons: studies that could make a definitive link to cancer are missing and some of the...
ACSH's Jeff Stier contributed an op-ed in yesterday’s Townhall criticizing a New York City-based journalism group, The Deadline Society, for honoring Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter who received the award for his series “Toxic Waters.”
As we begin a new year, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) would first like to try and slay the demons and hobgoblins of the past year. We do this each New Year s Eve by making a list of the top unfounded health scares of the outgoing year. These bouts of hysteria are prompted by many different things. But what they have in common is that there s no scientific evidence to back up the alarms being sounded.
Here s our top ten:
l.) Bisphenol-A (BPA) has been used for more than 50 years in the manufacture of everything from life-saving medical devices to water bottles, eyeglass lensesand CD s. It more than earned the unfounded scare of the year award. Not only does BPA not threaten health it actually promotes public health when used...