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US Double Standards on Food Safety & Toxins in Consumer ProductsChina has been in the news lately for its contaminated exports, but the U.S. is also producing products that contain hazardous chemicals, reports NAM writer, Donal Brown. Brown is a former journalism teacher.
The recent flurry of news reports over the Chinese exports of contaminated consumer products raises the specter of dangerous U.S. products long marketed in the U.S. and around the world.
In light of the consternation about China, the U.S. government formed a cabinet-level Product Safety Panel.
It has also raised questions for a leading U.S. health expert. "The criticism of China is well-based, but we need to listen to the facts that there are a wide range of hazardous chemicals in U.S. products," said Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chair of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Epstein, a professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, said that our foremost concern should be contaminated U.S. beef and milk.
Producers inject dairy cows with a Monsanto genetically-recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to increase milk production. One third of U.S. herds are injected.
Epstein cited articles in 30 scientific publications that show that rBGH produces abnormally high levels of IGF-1, a natural growth factor, that increases the risk of breast cancer seven-fold and increases the risk of colon and prostate cancers.
Milk produced with rBGH has been widely banned by nations including 29 European countries: Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDÅ) has no restrictions on the milk and no plans for cancer risk waning labels.
U.S. beef is also full of natural or synthetic hormones. Pellets with hormones are implanted in beef cattle entering feed lots and implanted again during the 100-day fattening period. These hormones build weight and account for an additional $80 profit per animal. Increased levels of sex hormones are linked to higher incidences of reproductive cancers since 1975; 36 percent for post-menopausal breast cancer; 50 percent for testicular cancer; and 88 percent for prostate cancer.
Europe banned U.S. beef in 1989, Japan in 2003. The Japanese market in U.S. beef was worth $1.5 billion. The U.S. lost 90 percent of that market because it still allows the feeding of slaughter house waste to cattle and does not test every animal at slaughter.
Epstein said that U.S. cosmetic products were recently banned in the European Union for their harmful ingredients.
"These products," said Epstein, "contain a witches brew of a wide range of toxics with a host of outcomes, including hormonal and allergenic effects and cancer."
Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumer Association, said that the European Union, in response to furious protests by the U.S. government and cosmetics industry, granted extra time for the industry to reformulate their products and prove they are safe for consumers.
Cummins said, "The FDA is supposed to regulate cosmetics, but if you ask them, they say they don't regulate them for safety."
"Without the two-party system of the U.S. and the European Union," he said, "a green party has greater power." While the green constituency is proportionally as large as in Europe as In the U.S., it is unable to translate that into significant political power. It's hard to trump the political contributions and lobbying power of the likes of the cosmetics industry.
"Money still rules in the U.S.," said Cummins.
The U.S. record on the export of dangerous pesticides has also been problematic. According to Carl Smith, director of the pesticide project for the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education (FASE), pesticides that the EPA deemed unsafe for use in the U.S. are routinely shipped from U.S. ports.
"The pesticides that end up in developing countries can do even greater harm because the workers lack protective clothing and equipment. As a result, women and children are often doing the work and are highly susceptible to injury," Smith said.
Figures from FASE show that the U.S. exported tons of extremely, or highly, hazardous pesticides between 2001 and 2003, the most recent years studied. Sixty-seven percent of shipments went to developing countries. The countries importing the most dangerous pesticides were Brazil (11.5 million pounds), Costa Rica (6.5 million pounds), Guatemala (2.9 million pounds) and China (3 million pounds).
On July 19, a trial began in Los Angeles over the exposure of workers in Nicaragua to DBCP or dibromochloropropane. Dow Chemical Co. and Dole Food Co. knew the chemical was damaging but continued to market it. The workers using it were not provided with protective clothing and suffered permanent sterility.
In 2004, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Rotterdam Convention for Prior-Informed Consent were adopted by the World Health Organization to stem the use of severely hazardous chemicals world-wide. The U.S. however, did not sign either convention. Consequently, U.S. companies can continue to export or purchase any hazardous chemicals -- unless our trade partners decide to retaliate, or the FDA steps in.
Sent: 10/08/2007 18:18:08
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