Opinion Editorial | |
Eat Your Vegetables, Reduce Cancer RiskPete du PontFormer Governor of Delaware, is Policy Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis |
You may not be aware that you're eating and coming into contact with
hundreds of potential cancer-causing chemicals every day - not from pesticides, but from
nature! The above statement is true but misleading. Despite what you may have read
and heard, chemicals, whether manmade or natural, are not an important source of cancer
risk. That's the main message of a National Center for Policy Analysis study written
by Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr. Lois Gold, both of the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences Center. While more than half of all natural chemicals in fruits and
vegetables that have been tested cause cancer when given in large doses to laboratory rats
and mice, these tests have very little relevance for humans. The facts are, Drs. Ames and Gold say, that not eating fruits and vegetables
because of a fear of getting cancer from pesticide residues actually increases a person's
cancer risk. Further, contrary to the impression many people have, cancer rates except for
lung cancer have fallen 16 percent since 1950. The authors wrote the study because they feared that misconceptions about
the relationship between environmental pollution and pesticides and human disease are
resulting in poor research and funding decisions in regulatory policy. Among the study's other findings:
Smoking contributes 35 percent of U.S. cancer cases (no big surprise
there);
Unbalanced diets, particularly diets which are low in fruits and vegetables
and
high in fats and alcohol consumption, account for another one-third of
cancer
cases.
Reproductive hormones contribute as much as 20 percent of all cancer,
with lack
of exercise, obesity and alcohol intake influencing hormone levels and
increasing risk.
Guess what's not a significant factor in cancer rates? Research indicates that
pesticides, industrial chemicals and all other synthetic chemicals contribute to less than one
percent of all cancer cases. This implies that spending cancer research and prevention
dollars on preventing exposure to synthetic chemicals is misguided at best, and, according
to Ames and Gold, possibly counterproductive. Not only are fears about man-made pesticides normally not justified, but
reducing their use may do more harm than good. The reason: organic fruits and vegetables
are more expensive. And if higher prices cause people to buy less produce, there will be
health consequences. The study reports that the quarter of the population with the lowest
dietary intake of fruits and vegetables has roughly twice the cancer rate as the quarter with
the highest intake. Even nature may not cooperate with efforts to reduce the use of man-made
pesticides. For example, plant breeders developed a new breed of insect-repelling celery,
but this new "all natural" celery contained eight times the amount of natural
carcinogens present in common celery and caused produce handlers to develop a severe
rash. To put the cancer risk from pesticides in perspective, 99.9 percent of all
pesticides that humans eat are naturally produced by plants to defend themselves against
fungi, insects and other animal predators. Americans eat about 10,000 times more natural
pesticides per person, per day (measured by weight) than they consume in synthetic
pesticide residues. A single cup of coffee contains about a thousand chemicals, only 28 of which
have been tested, and 19 of those tested cause cancer in rodents. However, people would
have to drink the equivalent of thousands of cups of coffee a day to face the same risk as
the rats, who ingest massive amounts of the chemicals in the tests. Ames, who doesn't
hesitate to drink coffee himself, says people worry about the wrong things. Ames developed the "Ames test" for determining whether a
chemical causes cancer in laboratory animals, but now he says there is mounting evidence
that it is the high doses themselves, not the chemicals tested, that cause cancer. Or to use
a scientific truism, "It's the dose that makes the poison." Two conclusions - one regarding public policy, the other regarding public
health - can be drawn from this study. First, public health dollars should not be
squandered fighting the hypothetical cancer risks posed by synthetic chemicals. Second,
the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables far outweigh the risks. So ignore the rantings
of technophobic environmentalists about the risks of pesticides and follow your mother's
advice: "eat your vegetables."
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