Restore scientific focus to EPA policy - problems with Delaney Clause that prevents use of pesticides which cause cancer in laboratory rats - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 8, 1993 | by Elizabeth Whelan

In one of her first official acts as the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner acted decisively to bring our antiquated food safety laws up to speed with 1993 science.

Specifically, she told the press in February that trace levels of pesticide residues in food pose no health hazard; that the Delaney Clause, which absolutely prohibits in the food supply the presence of any dose of synthetic chemicals that cause cancer in laboratory rodents, is a scientific anachronism; and that if we continue to ban pesticides under the 1958 science of the Delaney Clause, the current abundance of our food supply will be in jeopardy

While scientists cheered this refreshing, common-sense approach, environmentalists fumed. "Say it ain't so," cried Albert H. Meyerhoff, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (the group that brought us the now-debunked Alar apple scare of 1989), suggesting that Browner's move was somehow inconsistent with the Clinton-Gore administration's commitment to enhanced protection of the environment and public health.

Within hours of her announcement, Browner may have flinched from the pellets of wrath fired at her by the vocal environmental groups. Her office sent out a faxed press statement that appears to back away from her courageous stand: "Contrary to the impression left by published reports, Administrator Browner has at no time said she wants to relax the Delaney Clause." But indeed that was the precise thrust of what she originally had said - and what she still should work actively to accomplish.

In mindlessly defending the scientifically obsolete Delaney Clause, self-appointed protectors of the environment base their concept of "dangerous" on the premises that (a) exposure to trace levels of chemicals play a role in causing human cancer; (b) a mouse is a little man; (c) if a huge amount of something causes cancer in a rodent then we must assume that minuscule levels (which we could not even detect with the technology of five years ago) must pose a cancer hazard to humans; and (d) these "carcinogens," defined as chemicals that cause cancer, occur exclusively in man-made products.

These premises may have squared with the science of 1958, when Congress wrote the Delaney Clause - but all of them are obsolete today. The National Cancer Institute confirms that pesticide residues play no known role in causing human cancer. The scientific community agrees that animal experiments, while useful in research, do not automatically predict cancer risk in humans; that risk is related to dose - only the dose makes the poison - and thus huge, almost-lethal doses of chemicals in animals have no relevance to human risk; and that chemicals which cause cancer in animals abound in nature.

If we were to apply the Delaney Clause to nature, we would have to ban coffee, table pepper, peanut butter, mushrooms and more.

The question of the fate of the Delaney Clause has reached a crisis level because environmental groups last year sued to make the EPA follow the letter of the law - no trace levels, no further discussion - instead of accept what scientists call the concept of "negligible risk."

A federal court in San Francisco this past spring sided with the environmentalists - not because it was agreeing that trace-level chemicals cause a health hazard but because it was interpreting the intent of Congress in passing the Delaney Clause. It is now on to the Supreme Court - a decision is expected this spring - and again, because the court will be looking at congressional intent, not scientific merit, the nation's highest court may well uphold the Delaney principle.

If this happens, the EPA could have to ban a full spectrum of agricultural chemicals - and that will translate to substantially fewer vegetables and fruits available for consumption in the United States.

It is that food crisis that Browner was attempting to avert by setting the stage for new congressional action to repeal the Delaney Clause ff indeed the Supreme Court throws the ball back to Congress.

Browner and the EPA now need support and encouragement. It takes a strong determination and commitment to do what is scientifically correct, not politically correct, and to stand up to the environmentalists who feel that in a Democratic administration they should call the shots. The new EPA chief has shown her potential for putting environmental policy back on scientific track, but it ain't over until the Delaney Clause is repealed or revised.

As we watch the final face-off between Browner, Congress and the environmentalists, keep in mind that what is being decided is whether we will continue to have the safest, least expensive, most plentiful and enviable food supply in the world - or whether we will abandon the tools of modern agricultural technology and watch produce prices soar and food availability and quality diminish.

Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health.