The NRDC, known for its phony chemical scares, may have outdone itself. The group used every trick and half-truth in the book in making a Facebook video claiming that Dow Chemical was using Nazi nerve gas on crops because the EPA okayed it. Good drama. Terrible science. As usual.
chemical scare
Kudos to Kent Sepkowitz for his very smart piece in yesterday s Daily Beast. The title alone Today s ADHD Blame Game: Pesticides suggest critical thinking about chemical toxicity something that is very rare in these days of one phony scare after another is being applied. Indeed Sepkowitz uses just that, and does so brilliantly.
The always dead-on Trevor Butterworth once again hit the bullseye in his op-ed in Forbes.com. And in his unique way, he makes the perennial critics of BPA a component of the plastic that seals canned foods look rather foolish.
We at ACSH are sure that you have heard us comment repeatedly that nothing surprises us anymore, because we ve already heard it all.
Yet, we must once again eat crow, because we STILL can t get this right. Just when we think (or are maybe even sure) we ve seen it all, it turns out we haven t. Not even close this time.
Public health concern about polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) had, we believed, been laid to rest in 1979 when 1976 s Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) was used to ban commercial use in manufacturing.