U.S. regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals

U.S. regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals

By Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 2, 2010

Kellogg recalled nearly 28 million boxes of cereal in June after reports of a strange taste and odor. (Gene J. Puskar/associated Press)

Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and Honey Smacks, the company blamed elevated levels of a chemical in the packaging.

Dozens of consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea. But Kellogg said a team of experts it hired determined that there was "no harmful material" in the products.

Query: Did the dozens of consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea before or after the volutary recall of 28 million boxes?

A natural component of crude oil, 2-methylnaphthalene is structurally related to naphthalene, an ingredient in mothballs and toilet-deodorant blocks (better known as urinal cakes, the source of Frasier Crane's sister-in law Marris' vast fortune) that is considered a possible human carcinogen by the EPA. Kay Cooksey, a packaging expert at Clemson University, said 2-methylnaphthalene likely ended up in cereal because something went awry in the manufacturing of the foil-lined bags. The foil is attached to the paper bag with an adhesive that is heated, she said. If too much heat is applied or if the composition of the adhesive is incorrect, 2-methylnaphthalene could form, she said.

The chemical "is not supposed to be in food," said Mitchell Cheeseman of the FDA's office of food safety. The agency allows a minute amount of the chemical in food packaging if it is produced as a "contaminant" during the manufacturing process, but it is not supposed to transfer to the food, he said.

Because the FDA does not know anything about the toxicity of 2-methylnaphthalene, the agency set its limit based on what it knows about the toxic effects of similar chemicals, Cheeseman said.

BAD REGULATION DRIVES OUT GOOD

The nirvana fallacy was given its name by economist Harold Demsetz in 1969^[1][2], who said:^[3]

“

The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing 'imperfect' institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from acomparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.

”

A related quotation from Voltaire is:

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

often translated as

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

though literally

The best is the enemy of the good.

from "La Bégueule" (1772).

Here was my favorite for Liberal Self Righteous Delusion

Capital Letters: Light Meals

Michael W. Lynch from the March 2000 issue

Date: Thurs, December 16, 1999 1:45:15 PM
From: mlynch@reasondc.org
Subj: Ben & Jerry's Breakfast

The Competitive Enterprise Institute was serving Ben & Jerry's ice cream this morning. The occasion was a press conference announcing that CEI had filed a false advertising complaint against the makers of Cherry Garcia.

Ben & Jerry's is quite concerned about the environment and quite supportive of Greenpeace, on whose board company co-founder Ben Cohen sits. The company combines these affections by producing "dioxin free" containers (ECO-Pints) and citing the Greenpeace party line on why this is a good thing in such adver-informational pamphlets as "Our Thoughts on Dioxin." One such thought is, "The only safe level of dioxin exposure is no exposure at all."

The problem: Ben & Jerry's packaging may be OK, but the company's ice cream, according to certified lab results, contains a heap of dioxin--nearly 200 times the amount the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Such hypocrisy is more than the folks at CEI could take. According to CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman, the institute believes the federal government serves two legitimate purposes: to protect against force, which is why the military is OK, and to protect against fraud, which is why some folks at CEI consider the Federal Trade Commission legitimate. Today CEI has called on the FTC to investigate Ben & Jerry's for false advertising. Hence, I got ice cream for breakfast.

CEI is known for such creativity. In 1995, after the FDA announced it could regulate cigarettes as nicotine delivery devices, the folks at CEI embraced the model and called on the FDA to regulate colas and coffee as caffeine delivery devices. Purveyors of such products, after all, market them heavily to children even as they manipulate the levels of caffeine. And everyone knows that caffeine has pharmacological effects. This stunt cost CEI the support of Coca-Cola, according to Sam Kazman, and they weren't even serious.

This time, however, they are. To prove it, they presented retired government biologist Michael Gough, who has been studying dioxin since 1979 and served on the EPA's scientific advisory board on dioxin.

At 10:05 a.m., Sam Kazman stepped behind the podium and, with five or six empty containers of Ben & Jerry's ice cream to his right, articulated the complaint. By claiming that its packaging is dioxin free, he said, Ben & Jerry's is committing two well-established legal violations: deception by omission of material fact--in this case, that the ice cream contains dioxin--and deception by implication--in this case, the implication that the ice cream doesn't contain dioxin.

Kazman used a hypothetical kosher restaurant to illustrate the violations. Suppose a restaurant advertised it was kosher by claiming to maintain separate utensils for the handling of dairy and meat products, but didn't tell customers that the beef it served wasn't kosher. This would be false advertising.

Kazman doesn't claim a health hazard, nor did the scientist Gough. Indeed, a point of the exercise seems to be to get Ben & Jerry's to admit that ingesting a little dioxin, even if nearly 200 times what our government deems safe, has no health consequences. Said Kazman, "If Ben & Jerry's believed what they were saying, it would not be selling this product."

The harm the company is inflicting on its customers, like that of the hypothetical kosher restaurant, is spiritual, not physical. Greenies simply have the right to know that they are eating dioxin when a spoonful of New York Superfudge Chunk passes over their lips and down their gullets.

Hot on the breaking story, I walked directly to my office after eating a Dixie cup of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and called FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle's office for comment. Swindle, who bunked with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a North Vietnam prison camp, seems like a fellow who likes a bit of ice cream--a taste an aide I got on the phone would neither confirm nor deny. He chuckled when I described the complaint, this being the first he heard of it, and asked me to fax it over. I'm still waiting for comment. I then called Burlington, Vermont, for comment from Lee Holden, the Ben & Jerry's public relations specialist whose name and number appeared on its ECO-Pint press release. He never returned my call.