Electronic Food Rap
Vol. 5 No. 45
Bill Evers, PhD, RD and April Mason, PhD
Extension Foods and Nutrition Specialists
The public has a misunderstanding that "chemicals" are somehow different from food, vitamins, and other "naturally" occurring substances, when, in reality, they are all chemicals. The following could be educational information to help people realize that chemicals used by people need to be examined and regulated, but we are not in immediate danger of being overwhelmed by toxic substances.
Excerpted from FOOD CHEMICAL NEWS, August 21, 1995, Pages 10-11
Few Commercial Chemicals Viewed As Human Carcinogens
Victor Fung, a scientist in the National Toxicology Program (NTP) at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and two researchers at the Institute, J. Carl Barrett and James Huff have concluded that less than 5-10% of the 75,000 chemicals in commercial use "might be reasonably expected to be carcinogenic to humans." They pointed out that the selection process for testing chemicals is purposefully slanted toward compounds suspected of potential carcinogenicity. So it would be assumed that a higher number of the chosen chemicals might cause cancer in humans.
Results from carcinogenicity bioassays of the 400 chemicals tested suggested that slightly more than half of the chemicals tested (52%) induced cancer in at least one organ of one sex of one species of the four sex/species groups typically used by the NTP. However, based on international criteria for chemicals considered likely to be a carcinogenic hazard to humans, only 92 of the test chemicals (23%) were positive in two species. Of 267 chemicals (67%) selected as suspect carcinogens, 187 (68%) of these proved carcinogenic. The suspect chemicals accounted for 90% of the chemicals considered positive in two species. The researchers noted that the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists only five of the 400 test chemicals as carcinogenic to humans and 10 as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
The Institute scientists still expressed support for the International Agency for Research on Cancer's view that, in the absence of adequate human data, "it is biologically plausible and prudent to regard agents and mixtures for which there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals as if they presented a carcinogenic risk to humans."
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