A July 25, 2005 article by David Hogberg in the American Spectator noted the views of ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross on the recent effort by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Reuters' Maggie Fox to spread fear about chemicals in umbilical cord blood:
Dr. Gilbert Ross of the American Council on Science and Health states, "EWG has taken substances known to be a toxin or carcinogen in high-dose animal experiments, disregarded the actual concentration, and used it for a scare campaign. They've ignored one of the sound principles of toxicology: the dose makes the poison. Any substance can be toxic at a high enough dose."
The actual data in the report makes this clear. For example, EWG claims methyl mercury at 58 parts per billion (ppb) in the mother's blood during pregnancy "causes measurable declines in brain function in children." Yet the tests EWG ran on umbilical cord blood found no level of methyl mercury higher than 2.3 ppb.
EWG also notes increases in various health problems, including asthma, autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, childhood brain cancer, and acute lymphatic leukemia. "Scientists cannot fully explain these increases, but early life exposure to environmental pollutants is a leading suspect," the report warns ominously. Dr. Ross responds, "To imagine that such tiny concentrations of the chemicals cause childhood diseases boggles the mind. It doesn't make physiological sense." A likelier explanation is that diagnostic techniques are increasingly sophisticated, enabling medicine to more quickly identify illnesses. As Dr. Ross puts it, "We saw a spike in breast cancer in the 1970s. Was that due to some pollutant? No. It was due to the introduction of mammograms, which enabled doctors to identify tumors long before they spread."
Yet Reuters didn't bother to interview skeptics like Dr. Ross.
