Taking the fish fright bait

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Earlier this month, the national media, including the "newspaper of record," the New York Times, reported some startling and disturbing news: Farm-raised salmon -- eaten regularly by millions of Americans -- contains high levels of PCBs, chemicals now banned but once used by manufacturers for industrial insulation -- and legally released into rivers and streams.

PCBs were identified in all stories as a "toxin" or "probable human carcinogen" and/or "a cause of cancer and nervous system damage."

According to The Washington Post, "Farmed fish consumption may be posing a health threat to millions of Americans."

The source of this frightening allegation was the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an organization that in most stories either was not identified -- or was dubbed "a nonprofit organization that investigates environmental matters" (Reuters) or "a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy organization financed by private foundations" (New York Times).

The take-home message was: A credible, unbiased group of scientists has determined that if you eat farm-raised salmon, you are putting your health in jeopardy. Eat salmon and pay the price: an elevated risk of cancer.

That take-home message was false on all counts.

First, there is absolutely no credible evidence that environmental exposure to PCBs poses a risk of human cancer (or any other morbidity).

Even workers who are occupationally exposed to high levels of these chemicals over many years manifest no increased cancer rates. At high doses, PCBs can cause cancer in laboratory animals -- but so do myriad naturally occurring chemicals in food. There is no scientific basis for the assumption that low-level exposure to chemicals, natural or otherwise, which at high levels cause cancer in lab animals, poses a human cancer risk -- although "regulatory science" is often based on this faulty premise.

My organization -- the American Council on Science and Health -- called the National Cancer Institute, folks who, unlike EWG, are really experts on cancer causation, and asked, "Do you know of any evidence human exposure to trace levels of PCBs in fish contribute to the toll of human cancer?" Their response was a resounding "no." Couldn't members of the media have made a similar inquiry before they scared salmon lovers?

Second, none of the coverage of this non-peer-reviewed, unpublished "study" gave even a hint as to what exactly the organization behind it -- the Environmental Working Group -- is and by whom its efforts are supported. Readers instead are left with the impression EWG is a group of science-driven academics, perhaps funded by the Tooth Fairy Foundation.

A visit to EWG's Web page should have caused considerable concern among journalists: Conspicuously absent from the site is any reference to scientific credentials or any other information about those who did the study. This omission is consistent with the fact that the EWG president once conceded to the Weekly Standard that the Environmental Working Group does not have a single doctor or scientist on staff.

Further, readers were shielded from the fact that EWG is funded by agenda-driven entities, including the Joyce, Blue Moon, and Surdna foundations, which are committed to restoring the "natural world" and eliminating use of agricultural chemicals. At its news conferences over the years, EWG has expressed its desire -- and the desire of its funders -- to "cure America's addiction to pesticides," EWG repeatedly urges consumers to "buy organic." Clearly, the technical-scientific sophistication of the farmed salmon industry would be "unnatural" and thus anathema to EWG and its supporters.

Board members of EWG include communications specialist David Fenton, who frequently has bragged to the media about orchestrating the Alar/apple chemical scare of 1989. Even 10 years after the Alar debacle (which was economically devastating to thousands of apple farmers), the Florence & John Schumann Foundation supported a full-page EWG New York Times ad raising more doubts about the safety of agricultural chemicals used on apples and other produce.

In this age of "transparency," shouldn't readers have been informed of EWG's inherent bias so they could douse the salmon "data " with multiple grains of salt?

Unscientific articles that hyperbolize about health risks terrify the public unnecessarily. It is deceptive and unprofessional for the media to uncritically cite as an authority a source once described by a former Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist as "politically, not toxicologically, driven."

Let's call tripe when tripe is served. Better to serve up fresh, farmed salmon.

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