FOOD
CHEMICAL NEWS: ACSH Considers Legal Action Against Attempts
to Reclassify Fluoride
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Food Chemical News
April 30, 1990
ACSH Considers Legal Action Against Attempts to Reclassify
Fluoride
The American Council on Science and Health said last week that
it will seek to restrain any federal agency from banning or seeking
to reclassify fluoride from a non-carcinogen to a probable carcinogen.
"If the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) tries to undermine
the public confidence in fluoride, we will take steps to stop them,"
said Dr. Edward G. Remmers, vice-president of the group. Remmers
said the ACSH is working with the New York-based Atlantic Legal
Foundation.
He said the action would be based on a Washington, D.C., appellate
court ruling of March 9, written by Judge Abner Mikva. The case,
Ealy v. Richardson-Merrell, involved bendectin, a drug taken to
counter the effects of morning sickness. A three-judge panel chose
to favor existing epidemiological data on the drug's effects on
offspring rather than animal and lab studies.
At an April 24 news conference in Washington, ACSH officials were
particularly critical of extrapolations made from a National
Toxicology Program draft study, to be peer reviewed last week.
Herman R. Kraybill, consultant to the ACSH and formerly Scientific
Coordinator for Environmental Cancer at the National Cancer Institute,
said:
"Recent publicity about the NTP study
reopened questions regarding cancer potential risk. The study
was begun in 1985 using rats and mice (50-80 animals per sex per
group) at variant levels of fluoride in drinking water over a
two-year period. Dose levels of zero (control), 11, 45, and 79
p.p.m. would approximate 11, 45, and 79 times the fluoride exposure
in drinking water. For a human to receive such a high exposure
or 79 p.p.m., one would have to drink 79 liters of water per day
for a lifetime."
He added, "It is to be noted that extensive epidemiological studies
have not revealed any evidence that fluoride levels in drinking
water have shown any pattern of human cancer development."
Dr. Frederick J. Stare, professor of nutrition, emeritus, at Harvard
School of Public Health, said, "Fluoridation is not dangerous and
not expensive. It is absolutely safe for anyone of any age, either
sex, and in any state of health."
Stare said, "It is one of the greatest advances of public health
of all times. Those lucky enough to have access to fluoridated water
from infancy through life will have 60 to 70 percent less tooth
decay."
He also cited studies of other apparent benefits derived from fluoride
use as a factor in preventing osteoporosis and as a possible deterrent
to arteriosclerosis.
"For 32 years, laws at the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental
Protection Agency and other regulatory bodies have been dominated
by the scientifically unsubstantiated premise that high-dose rodent
experiments predict cancer in man," said Elizabeth M. Whelan, president
of the ACSH. Stare added, "Fluoridation begain in 1945. Since then,
there have been hundreds of cities and towns with fluoridated water.
Fluoride is not a poison, it's a nutrient."
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