=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #398
—July 14, 1994—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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BRUCE AMES
The NEW YORK TIMES ran a long article July 5th explaining the
theories of Bruce N. Ames, the controversial biochemist from
Berkeley. [1] Ames’s basic idea is that most of the poisons we
ingest are natural toxins appearing in our food; from this, he
concludes that money spent controlling industrial chemicals is
largely wasted. The TIMES’S story occupied 87 column-inches and
contained only one sentence that challenged Ames, thus suggesting
that Ames’s ideas are almost beyond question. [2] That is not the
case. Here is an incomplete list of problems with the Ames
hypothesis:
1) Production and use of synthetic pesticides (and other
synthetic organic chemicals) emits large quantities of hazardous
materials into the environment. Workers and neighbors at
manufacturing and waste disposal facilities are exposed to
toxins. THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE’S CANCER MAPS REVEAL
CANCER CLUSTERS NEAR INDUSTRIAL FACILITIES. IT IS VERY UNLIKELY
THAT SUCH CLUSTERS OCCUR BY RANDOM CHANCE. In the TIMES, Ames
acknowledged this problem when he said, “Environmental pollutants
are not an important cause of cancer. They account for a tiny
percent of cancers in Americans but might be a problem in people
like farm workers who apply pesticides if they are heavily
exposed.” Or in anyone else heavily exposed, he might have added.
2) Natural toxins and pesticides that occur in vegetation do not
build up in the environment; nature has ways of reassimilating
(decomposing) them. On the other hand, the concentration of
synthetic (human-created) pesticides and other synthetic organic
chemicals is increasing in the environment. Synthetic pesticides
are now measurable in groundwater in many states, and the
concentrations are growing as time passes. Many pesticides, and
industrial poisons such as PCBs, are measurable in all the
world’s oceans, and even in the polar ice caps. There is
compelling evidence that wildlife is being harmed (in some
instances, driven to extinction) by this buildup of exotic
chemicals throughout the global ecosystem. [3]
3) Ames presents himself as an expert on cancer, yet he makes
sweeping generalizations that go far beyond his studies of
cancer. In this, he has abandoned science and taken up politics.
(Ames opposes government regulation on principle.) He says, for
example, “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot with environmental
regulations that cost over 2 percent of the G.N.P., much of it to
regulate trivia.” Even if it were true that industrial chemicals
cause only a small fraction of all cancers, cancer is not the
only problem that we should consider when we examine the wisdom
of dumping billions of pounds of pesticides and other industrial
poisons into the environment each year. During the past decade,
much new information has come to light indicating that many
chemicals damage the nervous, immune and endocrine systems of
wildlife (fish, birds, and mammals) and humans. According to
these studies, one clear result is reproductive and developmental
damage in the affected species, and an increased likelihood of
succumbing to bacterial and viral infections as well as cancers.
Ames ignores the non-cancer effects.
To cite but one example, the National Academy of Sciences
acknowledged in a 1992 study, “In the general population,
increasing numbers of people suffer from disorders of the immune
system, such as allergies, asthma, and AIDS. The incidence of
asthma has increased 58% since 1970, and it is well known that
nitrogen dioxide and ozone, common air pollutants, interact with
allergens to increase the frequency and severity of asthma
attacks.” [4] Ames ignores the evidence that pollution weakens
the human immune system; he insists that we are wasting money
curbing industrial discharges because industrial poisons do not
cause many cancers, he says –as if cancer were the only problem
created by industrial poisons. This is neither good science nor
good public policy.
4) Chemical toxicity and exposures are poorly understood because
current knowledge is based on:
(a) chemical tests that do not take into consideration children
and the elderly, people who are already sick from something else,
and populations that eat unusual quantities of one or more food
items (e.g., native people who eat a lot of fish);
(b) chemical tests that omit the combined effects of multiple
exposures because science has no affordable way of assessing
combined and cumulative effects.
This is a point worth emphasizing because Ames makes sweeping
generalizations based on data derived from testing one chemical
at a time, as if combinations of chemicals don’t occur in the
real world.
A recent study focused on this problem. In June, three
scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati, Ohio announced an “inherent
problem with the way workplace risks are characterized.” [5] The
“inherent problem” is that workers are usually exposed to many
contaminants simultaneously, while “health standards are almost
always designed to protect workers from a single exposure.” In
25 percent of cases studied, the NIOSH researchers reported what
they called an “alarming finding.” They reported that, “when
animals were exposed to several [chemical] agents at once, the
animals (or their offspring) experienced a dramatically increased
number of adverse health effects.” “In fact,” the NIOSH
researchers said, “the reported health effects were many times
greater than expected by simply adding the effects of each
substance.” (They also found, in 25% of cases, that combinations
of chemicals produced FEWER effects than they would have
expected.)
The NIOSH researchers reported that exposure of rats to the
common plasticizer, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), produced
prenatal death in 16 percent of the fetuses and congenital
defects (birth defects) in 21 percent of the surviving fetuses.
Exposure of rats to caffeine produced prenatal death in about 9
percent of fetuses and defects in 3 percent of the surviving
fetuses. However, exposure to DEHP and caffeine simultaneously
produced prenatal death in 80 percent of the fetuses and defects
in 73 percent of the surviving fetuses.
The researchers point out that risk assessments should consider
not only job-related chemical exposures but also prescription and
non-prescription drugs. In addition, they say physical agents
such as vibration, heat and noise must be considered as well.
(And, if Ames is correct in his estimate of the potency of
natural toxins in our food, natural toxins must be factored in
too.)
The NIOSH team points out that, in nearly every work environment,
there is a pervasive physical agent: non-ionizing electromagnetic
radiation. One type of non-ionizing radiation, radio-frequency
(RF) radiation, is used in a number of industries, including
communications, electronics, medical and manufacturing. Many
workers in these industries are exposed to RF energy at the same
time they are exposed to exotic chemicals.
For years, RF exposures were assumed to be benevolent because
they do not ionize (knock electrons off of) molecules or cells
the way higher-energy radiation (ionizing radiation, such as
x-ray energy) does. To test the hypothesis that RF might enhance
the effects of chemicals, the NIOSH researchers exposed rats to a
combination of 2-methoxyethanol (2ME) and RF energy. 2ME is a
common glycol ether used in some degreasing solvents, and in some
paints and varnishes. Alone, 2ME causes developmental toxicity
in every species of animal tested to date, including non-human
primates (monkeys). To test the interaction of RF energy and
2ME, rats were exposed to these substances on the 13th day of
gestation, alone and in combination. RF radiation caused
malformations in 30 percent of the rat fetuses, and 2ME produced
malformations in 14 percent. Yet, combined exposure to 2ME and
RF induced external malformations in 76 percent of the fetuses,
“and these malformations were more severe than after single-agent
exposure,” the NIOSH researchers reported. Subsequent studies of
different doses during various gestation times confirmed these
findings, they said.
Another study reported by the NIOSH researchers indicates that
noise and solvents combine to induce hearing loss in workers to a
greater degree than either solvents or noise alone. They studied
200 workers (50 controls, 50 exposed to noise, 39 exposed to
organic solvents alone, and 51 exposed to noise and toluene, a
common organic solvent). The authors concluded that simultaneous
occupational exposure to excessive levels of toluene and noise
increased the probability of developing hearing loss. The NIOSH
workers summarized, “The effect of combined exposure also
suggested a synergistic [multiplier] interaction between noise
and toluene on hearing loss. The level of hearing loss was much
greater in workers exposed to both hazards than would be
predicted by adding the effect of each agent.”
Thus we can see that Bruce Ames –and others like him who
belittle effects of chemicals on human and environmental health
based on incomplete data and erroneous assumptions –may be
underestimating the true hazards because they test only one
substance at a time. Humans almost never encounter substances
one at a time. Toxins in food, drugs (both pharmaceutical and
“recreational”), air pollution, water pollution, noise,
vibration, heat, electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation
usually impact us simultaneously. They not only cause cancer but
they affect the nervous, endocrine and immune systems in ways
that are poorly understood. Risk assessment has no way to take
into account such complex and cumulative interactions. The only
approach that can consider all these effects together is
prevention, the principle of precautionary action. (See RHWN
#284, #319, and #378.) Bruce Ames represents solid 19th-century
toxicological thinking, but a complex technological world
requires that we adopt more modern and more prudent views, based
on real-world exposures to combinations of natural and industrial
hazards. For developing such a modern approach, many of Bruce
Ames’s sweeping generalizations are not only wrong and
wrong-headed; they are also largely irrelevant.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] Jane E. Brody, “Strong Views on Origins of Cancer,” NEW YORK
TIMES July 5, 1994, pgs. C1, C10.
Descriptor terms: bruce ames; cancer; carcinogens; policy;
immunotoxicity; immune system; nervous system; endocrine system;
niosh; occupational safety and health; standards; regulations;
studies; teratogens; di(2-ethylhexyl phthalate); dehp; caffeine;
electromagnet radiation; emf; rf; radio frequency radiation;
non-ionizing radiation; 2-methuxyethanol; glycol ether; 2me;
toluene; solvents; hearing loss; noise; synergism; multiplier
effect; precautionary principle; principle of precautionary
action; prevention;