1. The most toxic manmade chemical? That’s what some called
dioxin, a by-product of natural and industrial combustion processes and the
“contaminant of concern” in the Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent
Orange. Billions of dollars have been spent studying and regulating dioxin,
but debunking the scare only cost a few thousand dollars.
Keying off Ben & Jerry’s claim on its ice cream packages that
“there is no safe exposure to dioxin,” we tested Ben & Jerry’s ice
cream and found that a single serving contained about 200 times the dioxin
that the Environmental Protection Agency says is “safe” – and who’s
afraid of Ben & Jerry’s?
2. Dial “F” for Fear. Since the 1993 Larry King Live
broadcast featuring a man suing a cell phone maker claiming his wife died
from a cell phone-induced brain cancer, many cell phone users have worried
about phone safety. But studies failed to identify any risk.
The final blow to the scare came in 2002 when notorious trial lawyer
Peter Angelos’ $800 million lawsuit – alleging a Maryland physician’s
brain cancer was caused by cell phone use – was dismissed (like the 1993
suit) for lack of evidence.
3. Powerline scare unplugged. Fears that electric and magnetic
fields (EMFs) created by power lines and appliances caused cancer started in
1978. Parents worried about power lines over schools. Consumers worried
about electric blankets. Power companies worried about burying power lines.
The National Academy of Sciences finally unplugged the scare in October
1996, concluding that no evidence showed EMFs presented a health hazard.
4. Hormone Hysterics. Tulane University researchers
published a 1996 study claiming that combinations of manmade chemicals
(pesticides and PCBs) disrupted normal hormonal processes, causing
everything from cancer to infertility to attention deficit disorder.
Media, regulators and environmentalists hailed the study as
“astonishing.” Indeed it was as it turned out to be fraud, according to
an October 2001 report by federal investigators. Though the study was
retracted from publication, the law it spawned wasn’t and continues to be
enforced by the EPA.
5. Secret Science? EPA air pollution rules issued in
1997 governing airborne particulate matter (soot) are estimated to cost $10
billion annually. The EPA claimed soot in ambient air causes tens of
thousands of premature deaths every year.
Congress asked thr EPA to disclose the scientific data underlying the
claims. EPA refused. A subsequently enacted law requiring that
taxpayer-funded scientific data used to support regulation be made available
to the public through the Freedom of Information Act has yet to be enforced.
The EPA is preparing to make those very same rules even more stringent.
6. Obesity statistics lose weight. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention added to our bodyweight panic in 2004 by announcing that
obesity kills 400,000 people annually, a number approaching the death toll
attributed to smoking (440,000). Criticism of the estimate from CDC’s own
statisticians caused the agency in 2005 to back-off the estimate –
adjusting it downward by 93 percent to 25,814 annual deaths.
7. ‘Ear-ie’ biotech scare. “Who plays God in the 21st
century?” captioned an Oct. 11, 1999 full-page ad in the New York Times
attacking genetic engineering. Placed by a coalition including Greenpeace
and the Sierra Club, the ad featured a photo of a shaved laboratory mouse
with what looks like a human ear attached to its back.
The caption stated, “This is an actual photo of a genetically
engineered mouse with a human ear on its back.” As it turned out, it
wasn’t a real ear and it had nothing to do with genetic engineering. A
template in the shape of a human ear was seeded with human cartilage cells
and surgically implanted on the back of a mouse. The cartilage cells grew
into the ear-like structure. The technology’s purpose is to help children
who are either born without ears or who lose their ears through injury.
8. PETA: Milk drinking makes for future felons. With its web site
repeatedly alluding to acts of animal cruelty committed in childhood as
being predictors of adult criminality, People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals sponsored an in-school curricula teaching children that eating meat
and drinking milk constitutes “animal cruelty.”
PETA’s “Milk-Stealing Ming,” for example, was depicted with his
mouth attached to an unhappy cow’s udder, alongside a “wanted poster”
describing his crimes and exclaiming, “cows make milk for their babies,
not for maniacs like Ming.”
9. Choking on chips. Swedish scientists alarmed us in April 2002
that cooking high-carbohydrate foods – like potatoes and bread – formed
acrylamide, a substance linked with cancer in lab animals. But even if lab
animals were reasonable predictors of cancer risk in humans – a notion yet
to be validated – someone of average bodyweight would have to eat 35,000
potato chips (about 62.5 pounds) per day for life to get an equivalent dose
of acrylamide as the lab animals.
10. The Mother of all junk science controversies. The most
important junk science story of the last 10 years is global warming. Though
climate varies naturally and ongoing climate change is within that natural
variation, the global warming lobby seems bent on railroading us into
economy-killing regulation.
The Kyoto Protocol is being ignored by its EU signatories. Global warmers
admit that the drastic and impossible step of halting all greenhouse gas
emissions would have no impact on climate. Sky-high energy prices threaten
our economy. Yet many yearn for global warming regulation.