Jewish World Review / Nov. 25, 1998 /6 Kislev, 5759
Dr. Ruth Kava
EACH YEAR, AS WE PREPARE for the holidays and their attendant feasting,
we find ourselves awash in warnings about our food supply. From all sides
we hear the voices of the pantry patrol --- panicky pundits who urge the
parents of infants and small children to feed their kiddies exclusively on
organically grown foods to prevent their ingesting deadly, cancer-causing
pesticide residues.
What most of us don’t realize, however, is that pretty
much all our food --- organically grown or not --- contains traces of
naturally occurring animal carcinogens.
Naturally occurring carcinogens?
Even in "organic" foods?
Yes, indeed.
Each year the American Council on Science and Health publishes a Holiday
Dinner Menu --- a carte du jour for a sumptuous feast that shows that many, if
not all, of the traditional foods on our holiday tables contain traces of
100-percent nonsynthetic, all-natural, all-organic, carcinogenic
chemicals—substances with formidable, tongue-twisting names guaranteed to
terrify the timid. Here are some examples:
But don’t worry: You won’t have to ask your family to fast at
Thanksgiving. Toxicologists recognize that it requires a leap of faith to
conclude that a cancer risk to rodents means a cancer risk to humans.
Mouse carcinogens are not always rat carcinogens. Rat carcinogens are not
always mouse carcinogens. And neither are necessarily human carcinogens.
For a moment, though, let’s assume that furfural --- another rodent carcinogen
that you’ll find in the bread in your holiday stuffing --- can cause cancer in
humans. You don’t have to skip the stuffing --- or, for that matter, give up
your daily bread. Trace exposures to furfural in human diets are hardly
analogous to the high-dose exposures that occur in rodent experiments. A
155-pound person would have to eat 82,600 slices of bread every day to
consume the amount of furfural that increases the risk of cancer in
rodents.
And what about the benzo(a)pyrene in your stuffing? Benzo(a)pyrene causes
cancer in rodents and is also found in cigarette smoke. The benzo(a)pyrene
in cigarette smoke does, indeed, contribute to many smoking-related
cancers; but the minute amount you’ll find in your turkey stuffing is
quite unlikely to pose a significant health threat.
The same is true for the aflatoxins in your nuts: Aflatoxins are very
potent animal carcinogens, but they are found in only minuscule amounts in
our foods. Nuts on the market may contain traces of aflatoxins, but the
FDA requires that the amounts not exceed safe allowable levels. This is
both reasonable and achievable. In the cases of food additives and
pesticide residues, however, our food regulations in the past have not
been reasonable.
The irrationally restrictive Delaney clause -- part of a 1958 amendment to
the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act -- required that no substance shown
to cause cancer in any animal be allowed as an additive in human foods. In
essence, this meant adhering to a zero-risk standard for any pesticide
residue that might be found in foods as well as for any food additive --- no
matter how small the amount of the pesticide residue or the additive.
In the 40 years since Delaney was enacted, science has progressed so that
we now can measure trace amounts of chemicals that are so small that their
biological significance is trivial. And human exposure to these synthetic
chemicals is often much less than exposure to the naturally occurring
animal carcinogens in our foods --- carcinogens like the ones described above.
Fortunately, the grip of Delaney on America’s food supply has loosened a
little of late. In 1996, after decades of irrational cancer scares,
Congress and President Clinton finally moved to extend the same sort of
commonsensical regulation we have to deal with aflatoxins to some of the
other chemicals -- the pesticide residues -- that we sometimes find in our
foods.
That year, President Clinton signed the Food Quality Protection Act
(FQPA) of 1996 into law, thereby reducing the scope of Delaney by removing
pesticides from the clause’s purview.
Now, instead of holding growers and food suppliers to an unrealistic,
counterproductive standard of zero risk, the law allows a more realistic
standard of "reasonable certainty of no harm" a standard already applied
to such naturally occurring (and very potent) animal carcinogens as the
aflatoxins found in our holiday nuts.
So, this holiday season be grateful to your elected officials --- grateful
that Congress and the President have taken steps to improve your chances
of having an affordable feast today and many more in the years ahead.
But remember, too, that another challenge still lies ahead for our
legislator --- the challenge to extend the standard of "reasonable certainty
of no harm" to food additives.
Now, that would give us something new to be
thankful for in
Be thankful?That golden turkey may
give you cancer!
Dr. Ruth Kava is the Director of Nutrition at
American Council on Science and Health. For a copy of the menu, please click
here.