Overview
T
en years ago, on February 26,1989, an environmental healthcanard was made public, hyperboli-cally.The principal result was masshysteria over Alar
®
—a chemical prod-uct that was not otherwise noteworthyexcept for its usefulness to applegrowers and apple consumers. Thisunfounded yet widespread public-health fright tops the list of suchfrights in the latter half of the twenti-eth century.On the tenth anniversary of theonset of the “Great Apple Scare,” theAmerican Council on Science andHealth (ACSH) recalls the events thatled to nationwide hysteria. ACSH like-wise recalls statements from responsi-ble experts that have put the hysteriawhere it belongs: in the history book of baseless, but fearsome and well publi-cized, contentions about health and theenvironment. Regrettably, despite thescientific consensus that Alar residueon apples has never caused disease ordeath in humans, diehard, self-appoint-ed environmentalist groups continue toclaim that Alar was a bane to humanity.
Introduction
I
n 1989, costuming oneself as anapple on Halloween would havebefitted the times. That was the yearin which something of a kangaroocourt pronounced Alar, a powder usedto prevent the pre-harvest rotting of apples, “the most potent cancer-caus-ing agent in our food supply.” It wasthe year in which the Natural Re-sources Defense Council, the TVnewsmagazine
60 Minutes
, then–talk-show host Phil Donahue, and film starMeryl Streep made “Alar” an almostdirty household word.
Death from Overdose
A
lar was developed in the 1960s asa means of slowing the growth of plants. Its active ingredient wasdaminozide, a manmade, hormonelikechemical. Alar’s utility lay largely inits conduciveness to the maturation of red apples and cherries. It underwenttwo years of carcinogenicity testingon rats before the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration (FDA) approved itscommercial use in 1968. But in the1970s Dr. Bela Toth, of the EppleyInstitute for Research in Cancer,found:•that, at several times the “maxi-mum tolerated dose” (MTD) formales (i.e., in quantities thatmight render an intrinsicallyuninjurious substance harmful), abreakdown product of Alar—UDMH, or 1,1-(unsymmetrical)dimethylhydrazine—had causedtumors in the blood vessels, kid-neys, livers, and lungs of mice;and•that, at several times the MTD,Alar itself had been responsiblefor a high tumor incidence inmice.In 1978 the National CancerInstitute (NCI) published the resultsof a carcinogen bioassay
**
of daminozide and concluded that it wasa weak carcinogen. Butdaminozide’scarcinogenicitymeasurementwas so trivialthat the U.S.EnvironmentalProtectionAgency (EPA)could not use the
AMERICAN COUNCILON SCIENCE AND HEALTH
1995 BROADWAY, SECONDF L O O RN E WYORK, NEWYORK 10023-5860T E L(212) 362-7044 / FAX (212) 362-4919URL: h t t p : / / w w w. a c s h . o rgE-MAIL: a c s h @ a c s h . o rg
ACSH IS ANONPROFIT,TAX-EXEMPTCONSUMEREDUCATION ASSOCIATIONDIRECTED AND ADVISEDBYOVER 250 PROMINENTPHYSICIANS AND SCIENTISTS.
by Kenneth Smith and Jack Raso, M.S., R.D.
*
This report is based largely on: (1) the Alar section (pp. 33–35) of the third edition of
Facts Versus Fears: AReview of the Greatest Unfounded Health Scares of Recent Times
(American Council on Science and Health, 1998); (2) “‘A’Is for ‘Asinine,’: Alarand
60 Minutes
” (
Priorities
,Vol. 9, No. 3, 1997, pp. 18–20); (3) and
Alar Five Years Later: Science Triumphs Over Fear
(American Council on Science and Health, 1994).
**
Abioassay is a test of a substance’s activity in organisms (rodents, for example).
February 1999
NCI data for quantitative risk assessment.Alar’s manufacturer, Uniroyal ChemicalCompany, Inc., sponsored several othercarcinogen bioassays of daminozide,which were conducted according to EPAguidelines. No carcinogenicity was found.Scientists on an EPAScienceAdvisory Panel in 1985 found the Tothstudies faulty. Nevertheless, under pres-sure from the Natural Resources DefenseCouncil (NRDC), an extremist environ-mentalist group, the EPAasked UniroyalChemical Company to conduct carcino-genicity tests on UDMH alone, withoutdaminozide. To comply with the agency’sinstructions, the researchers gave UDMHto mice in amounts four to eight times theMTD—that is, 133,000 to 266,000 timesthe highest estimate for a preschooler’sdaily intake of UDMH. This is analogousto drinking daily, for life, 19,000 quarts of juice made from Alar-treated apples.Eleven of the 52 mice that had been givenUDMH daily at eight times the maleMTD developed cancerous or noncancer-ous tumors. Eighty percent of the malemice died prematurely—not from cancer,but rather from amounts of UDMH thathad rendered the chemical toxic. The EPAacknowledged that the use of such largequantities of UDMH made this studyquestionable; yet on February 1, 1989, theagency ordered a phaseout of Alar usethat was to conclude by July 31, 1990.
The Damning of Daminozide
E
nter the media: In early 1989 theNRDC launched its Children’sEnvironmental Health Initiative. DavidFenton of Fenton Communications, apublic relations firm engaged by theNRDC, negotiated an exclusive deal withthe producers of
60 Minutes
to break thefindings of a 1989 NRDC report, com-piled by two nondoctoral activists, thathas not been printed as a part of any peer-reviewed journal: “Intolerable Risk:Pesticides in Our Children’s Food.” Thiscollaboration spawned the
60 Minutes
segment “‘A’Is for Apple.”CBS-TVaired the program that fea-tured the misbegotten segment onFebruary 26, 1989. “‘A’Is for Apple”—symbolized by an image of an apple witha superimposed skull and crossbones—began with correspondent Ed Bradley’sassertion about daminozide (which hemistermed a pesticide): “The most potentcancer-causing agent in our food supplyis a substance sprayed on apples to keepthem on the trees longer and make themlook better.” No one challenged thisassertion on the program. The segmenteven included footage of a pediatric can-cer ward. “Go to a cancer ward at anychildren’s hospital in this country,”advised Rep. Gerry Sikorski. “See thesebald, wasting-away kids.”In the days that followed the broad-cast, the claims in the NRDC report werewidely parroted in the media. Said PhilDonahue on his daytime talk show:“Don’t look now, but we’re poisoning ourkids. I wouldn’t lie to ya.”Mass hysteria ensued. At a parent’srequest, state troopers chased a school busto confiscate a student’s apple. Schooladministrators had apples and apple prod-ucts summarily destroyed. Apple marketsrotted overnight.The NRDC, however, prospered.Fenton, its media consultant, stated in aninterview for
Propaganda Review
: “The[PR] campaign was designed so that rev-enue would flow back to NRDC from thepublic. The group sold a book about pes-ticides through a 900 number on the‘Donahue’show and to date 90,000copies have been sold.” Fenton’s strategysucceeded to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.In response to unfavorable printreportage of Fenton’s manipulations andto public criticism from food scientists,toxicologists, and ACSH, the producers of
60 Minutes
decided to have Alar revisitedin a new broadcast. The sequel aired onMay 14, 1989, and included commentsfrom distinguished experts who had criti-cized “‘A’Is for Apple.” But, addinginsult to injury, Ed Bradley pointedlyframed their comments as those of chemi-cal-industry representatives.That month the EPA’s acting assis-tant administrator of Pesticides and ToxicSubstances sent a letter to a Uniroyal vicepresident, in which he stated:
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An Unhappy Anniversary: The Alar ‘Scare’ Ten Years Later
We disagree strongly with therecent reports appearing on tele-vision and in the newspapers andmagazines concerning the analy-sis developed by the NRDCwhich created the impression thatthere is a massive and imminentpublic health problem as theresult of pesticide residues infood and particularly from Alarresidues in apples and appleproducts. This is simply untrue.We believe that the NRDC reportpresents a misleading picture of the risk of pesticides in the diet.The next month, under pressurefrom apple growers—who were los-ing money regardless of whether theyused Alar—Uniroyal ChemicalCompany ceased marketing Alar foruse on foods. At that time, incidental-ly,Alar was being used on only 15percent of the apple trees in the U.S.When the dust settled, apple-orchardproprietors had lost about $250 mil-lion; apple-product manufacturers,about $125 million; and U.S. taxpay-ers (via the U.S. Department of Agriculture), $15 million.
What Experts Have Said
M
any health authorities, includingthose quoted below, have pub-licly blasted the widespread Alarwarnings of 1989 as false alarms.•In 1989 the British governmentconcluded that there “was no risk to health” from Alar or UDMH.The chair of the advisory groupthe British Parliament hadappointed stated that its judgmentdiffered from that of the EPAbecause “we tend to be a bitmore cautious” about science.“We don’t always make theassumption that the animal dataare transferable to man,” heexplained.•In the same year a UnitedNations panel that included sevenmembers of the World HealthOrganization and seven membersof the Food and AgricultureOrganization concluded that Alarwas “not oncogenic [tumor-inducing] in mice” and that spe-cial concern over UDMH wasunwarranted.•An editorial in the November 1,1991, issue of the widely respect-ed journal
Science
stated:“Confronted with the inadequacyof the data, a spokesman for the[NRDC] recently suggested that[the panic over Alar] was excusa-ble because people are eatingmore apples than ever before.That is like an embezzler justify-ing embezzlement by saying thebanking industry continues tosurvive.”•In February 1992 the AmericanMedical Association issued astatement that read, in part: “TheAlar scare of three years agoshows what can happen whenscience is taken out of context orthe risks of a product are blownout of proportion. When used inthe approved, regulated fashion,as it was, Alar does not pose arisk to the public’s health.”•At a February 1992 ACSH pressconference, C. Everett Koop,M.D., stated: “As a pediatric sur-geon, as well as the nation’s for-mer Surgeon General, I caredeeply about the health of chil-dren, and if Alar ever posed ahealth hazard, I would have saidso then and would say so now.But the truth is that Alar neverdid pose a health hazard.”•At the same conference, environ-mental-health expert A. AlanMoghissi, Ph.D., then of theUniversity of Maryland, stated:“The Alar controversy is a classiccase of poor science applied to asocietal decision, resulting in apoor final decision.”•Also at the conference, Dr.Richard Adamson, then directorof the NCI’s Division of CancerEtiology, stated: “The risk of eat-ing an apple treated with Alar isless than the risk of eating apeanut butter sandwich or a well-done hamburger.” More recently,Adamson described the cancerrisk from eating Alar–treatedapples as “nonexistent.”•Ronald W. Estabrook, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’Committee onComparative Toxicity of Naturally Occurring Carcinogens,has stated that the cancer risk from eating either well-donehamburgers or Alar–treatedapples is “so low that I wouldn’tlose any sleep.” “And I wouldn’ttell my grandchildren not to eat awell-done hamburger or anapple,” he added.•Robert Scheuplein, director of the FDA’s Office of Toxicolog-ical Sciences, described as “totalbaloney” Ed Bradley’s claim thatAlar was the “most potent car-cinogen in the human diet.”Scheuplein has also stated thathundreds of carcinogens generat-ed by cooking are more potentthan Alar. Indeed, he has opinedthat it is not a carcinogen.•Harvard physics professorRichard Wilson has stated thatfrequently eating Alar–treatedapples was less risky than drink-ing chlorinated water with chlo-roform at the maximum EPAlevel.
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An Unhappy Anniversary: The Alar ‘Scare’ Ten Years Later