The Plot Against Alar (another junk science celeb cause)

Robert James Bidinotto is a journalist and author of the investigative article, The Great Apple Scare. His story appeared in the October 1990 issue of Reader's Digest, and crumbled the underpinnings of the Alar myth.

The controversy surrounding Alar raised serious questions, and Robert Bidinotto, along with his editors, wanted serious answers. Mr. Bidinotto, however, was not a stranger to investigative journalism. His article about the Willie Horton incident put the Massachusetts Furlough Program, and eventually a Presidential candidate, under fire.

The questions surrounding Alar can be traced back to the University of Nebraska and scientist, Bela Toth. During the 1970s, Toth fed rodents massive amounts of daminozide, tradenamed Alar. The Alar doses upon which Toth predicated his work far exceeded the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) used in cancer testing. The chemical bombardment caused tumors in mice but not rats. At first, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disregarded the flawed study as sloppy science.

In 1983, however, the EPA, freshly accused of "falling asleep at the wheel" during the early Reagan years, began its crusade against Alar. Steven Schatzow, a lawyer with no scientific training, was named head of the Office of Pesticide Programs. Under the insistent urging of staff toxicologists anxious to ban something, Schatzow started the ball rolling against Alar. Within a short time, he put Alar under "special review" for health risks. At this point, says Bidinotto, "some very curious things began to happen" at the EPA.

Mr. Bidinotto's investigative efforts took six months and revealed the "real" Alar story. His research brought him face to face with high-ranking players at the EPA, Uniroyal, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), and the CBS prime-time show 60 Minutes. In his interview with Priorities, Bidinotto takes us behind the scenes of his investigation.

Priorities: Did all of the EPA's scientific evidence point to Alar as a potentially dangerous chemical?

RJB: No. In January 1985, an EPA toxicologist was presented with data on the carcinogenic effects of Alar and told to run them through her computer program. The results showed that Alar was well within the EPA's normal safety parameters. When she brought this information to Schatzow, he hit the roof. The reaction was so extreme, she asked her boss to take her off the project because she thought something fishy was going on.

RJB: Before the EPA proposes a ban, it presents the EPA staff scientist's preliminary findings to a scientific advisory panel for an independent opinion. The panel is made up of leaders in their respective scientific fields. With the Alar ban, the EPA made an internal decision without consulting the scientific panel first. This is unprecedented.

RJB: At a meeting one month later, the EPA presented its case to the panel using the original Toth studies. Uniroyal, the maker of Alar, brought in highly respected toxicologists who reduced Toth's studies to rubble. The panel unanimously rejected the EPA's recommendation to ban Alar.

RJB: At the end of the conference, someone told Schatzow about the panel's conclusion. He ran into the meeting before it adjourned, his face red and his tie askew, and yelled: "What in the world do you think you're doing?" He demanded that the scientists on the advisory panel join him in his office, where he pressed them to rethink their decision. The EPA was in an embarrassing position since world-class toxicologists were telling the EPA staff toxicologists to go fly a kite.

Priorities: Why would the EPA want to ban Alar if the scientific case against it was on obviously shaky ground?

RJB: The EPA had even less of a case against other pesticide chemicals it was investigating. If it couldn't make a case against Alar, why was it in business?

RJB: The EPA formally withdrew the proposal to ban Alar in January 1986, but it didn't throw in the towel. Uniroyal was required to have independent-laboratory tests conducted on Alar's breakdown product, UMDH.

RJB: The study determined that neither Alar nor the Alar breakdown product, UMDH, were carcinogens. In January 1987, the EPA and Uniroyal agreed on a maximum tolerated dose of UMDH for a final test. However, within weeks, the EPA increased the dose to the same high levels used in the Toth studies. The EPA took junk science and recycled it.

RJB: The rodents showed clear signs of being poisoned, indicating that the maximum tolerated dose had been grossly exceeded. The EPA's own regulations say that these dose levels make test results totally unreliable. But the fix was in as early as January 1985, and the EPA finally got around to doing what it planned to do all along. In February 1989, the EPA sent out a press release announcing it would ban Alar within one year.

Priorities: When did the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) enter into the picture?

RJB: The NRDC had been looking into pesticides since the early 1980s. In 1986, the NRDC joined forces with activist Ralph Nader to get Alar banned. The only basis for their charge was the discredited Toth studies and similar trials.

RJB: Ralph Nader convinced Safeway Supermarkets to drop all Alar-treated produce, and that led to a chain reaction. Other supermarket chains dropped products that used Alar. New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts started to make plans to legally phase out Alar. Apple trade groups in Washington State and Michigan warned growers to stop using Alar. Alar sales plummeted.

Priorities: At the same time, wasn't the NRDC using a "scientific" paper to attack Alar?

RJB: The NRDC used the paper, "Intolerable Risks," to declare pesticide residues a health hazard, particularly to children. It was written by two NRDC staffers who have master's degrees in public health, when a doctoral degree is considered a minimum standard to prepare such a document, and by an NRDC lawyer.

RJB: Scientists that were hand-picked by the NRDC. It was not peer-reviewed by independent, outside scientists, nor was it published in a scientific journal.

RJB: On the February 26, 1989 broadcast of 60 Minutes, of course, not long after the EPA proposed its second Alar ban. 60 Minutes actually tried to convince the EPA to withhold its announcement, and make it on the program instead.

RJB: David Gelber (60 Minutes segment producer) talked to EPA staff scientists and one or two people recommended by the NAS. This was just the beginning of a media blitz engineered months in advance. NRDC people were on all the talk shows, interviews were lined up with all the women's magazines. The day after the 60 Minutes broadcast, the Phil Donahue Show was taped, which actually caused more commotion than 60 Minutes.

RJB: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications started raising some serious questions. Toxicologists and food scientists issued reports saying that the Alar scare was grossly exaggerated nonsense. 60 Minutes was feeling the heat and decided to do some damage control.

Priorities: Is that when 60 Minutes reporter Ed Bradley interviewed Elizabeth Whelan and Bruce Ames?

RJB: Yes. How he (Ed Bradley) introduces them tells the whole story. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan was introduced as executive director of the American Council on Science and Health, and then Bradley said: "Let's get to the heart of the matter — your funding." From then on, the whole interview as based on the contention that scientists affiliated with ACSH aren't credible since some of the organization's funding comes from industry groups that manufacture pesticides. There was no journalistic symmetry, no questioning about the NRDC's or EPA's motives. Dr. Bruce Ames (a well known and highly respected biochemist) was misrepresented in a similar fashion. It was lousy journalism.

RJB: Uniroyal still wanted to fight after 60 Minutes, but the die had already been cast. Several U.S. senators introduced legislation for an immediate ban against Alar. At that point, all Uniroyal could do was cut its losses. In the summer of 1989, Uniroyal issued a statement stating it would voluntarily take Alar off the market.

RJB: Alar is not dangerous, and I think the American public has a right to be angry with people who cause an unnecessary panic because of political and ideological axes to grind.

The Streep Connection NRDC Executive Director John Adams was shocked and delighted when he received a phone call from actress Meryl Streep in the fall of 1988, according to journalist Bob Bidinotto. "It turns out she had been talking to Robert Redford, whom she'd met while filming 'Out of Africa,' and told him she wanted to get involved in an environmental cause." Redford steered Streep to the NRDC.

At the time, the NRDC was lobbying to toughen up existing federal pesticide regulations, but the bill was getting nowhere. "Then they dragged Meryl down to Washington, and the very next day the bill got put on the table and voted through," says Bidinotto. The NRDC used Streep as a door opener, and the strategy worked. Now Streep wanted to do more.

"She came up with the idea of setting up a group called 'Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits,' which was an NRDC front operation from the word go," says Bidinotto. Before and after the 60 Minutes segments, Streep also played a prominent role speaking out against Alar in the media — which jumped right on the anti-Alar bandwagon.

The media's "love affair" with Streep and their one-sided coverage of Alar suppressed the real issue, which Bidinotto defines as a case of "bad science masquerading as sound science."

With puffington and lear screaming for us to give up our SUV's here is another junk science cause their ilk got involved in. I got a FReep mail about it supporting puffington ideas, the sender reminded me of the streep/alar issue. So I decided to look into it having remembered seeing something about it being a junk science cause.

Secondary article skepticisim

The media and even Congress are as much to blame. Who is presented as a world expert on environmental issues at hearings and in the media?--some Hollywood celeb without so much as a college degree or in some cases a high school diploma. Why should anyone hold these people up as being expert in anything?

Journalism is a genre of nonfiction. Hypertopical nonfiction. Nonfiction which depends primarily on novelty and alarmism rather than completeness or accuracy. When events prove the alarms unjustified, journalism has moved on to another alarm and makes no serious effort to correct or prevent such fads.

It is true that the First Amendment protects "the press," but it is not true that journalism IS "the press" under the Constitution. The Reader's Digest isn't journalism, but it certainly IS "the press." 60 Minutes IS journalism but is NOT "the press" (let whoso thinks otherwise undertake to broadcast a similar program without a license from the FCC; under the First Amendment "the press" operates without any government regulation and therefore without any licensing requirement).

Is the date right on that? I just read a piece on alar and it had come up more recently...

Just finished a ripping session on another listserver over the EPA in general and the issue with Asbestos in Vermiculite utilized in insulation. EPA was going to "release a report on the dangers" and the "White House supressed it" was how the initially posted article went and boy howdy did it have envirals fired up.

I pointed out that OMB calling for a halt to the report was hardly a major administration conspiracy theory, the EPA has been shown to cherry pick data in order to grow the beauracracy, and Vermiculite is used in a LOT of products and settings and is RARELY found unassociated with asbestos.

That formula was ripe to set the lawyers (larval stage of politicians) on a renewed fedding frenzy. The Surgeon General even opined that, while a risk if disturbed, as long as it wasn't it was not a problem...

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