New Research Revealed: Environmentally Caused Cancers Are 'Grossly Underestimated'

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Environmental Health News / By Marla Cone

New Research Revealed: Environmentally Caused Cancers Are 'Grossly Underestimated'
Obama was advised to help "remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity."

May 6, 2010 |


The President's Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens.

The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."

The 240-page report by the President's Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.

Environmental exposures "do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program," the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. "The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures."

The panel, appointed by President Bush, told President Obama that the federal government is missing the chance to protect people from cancer by reducing their exposure to carcinogens. In its letter, the panel singled out bisphenol A, a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic and can linings that is unregulated in the United States, as well as radon, formaldehyde and benzene. Environmental health scientists were pleased by the findings, saying it embraces everything that they have been saying for years. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/146758/new_research_revealed%3A_environmentally_caused_cancers_are_%27grossly_underestimated%27_

[skepticscott]

1. The question is

how much it would cripple our nation's productivity if we were to remove every trace of every possible carcinogen from very conceivable environmental source?

[Altoid_Cyclist]

2. I used to work for a chemical distributor & manufacturer in Connecticut.

One of our largest customers was American Cyanamid. They actually used to joke about their ability to expand their plants due to the cheap cost of property around their plants.

They said that the reason for this was very simple. They said that once enough of the local citizens died from cancer, the rest of the local residents were more than glad to practically give away their homes.

That's one hell of a business model.

[Scuba]

3. Perhaps they should be regulated????

[Altoid_Cyclist]

4. They were regulated, but they knew how to play the game.

They were so large and powerful that fines and legal actions were just part of how they conducted business. They epitomized arrogance since they knew that they could afford it.

This is a brief history of the company from Wiki.

American Cyanamid was a large, diversified, American chemical manufacturer, founded by Frank Washburn in 1907. It was the only United States firm manufacturing thepolio vaccine of the Sabin type.

Lederle Laboratories- maker of Centrum, Stresstabs vitamins and Orimune the Sabin oral polio vaccine - was Cyanamid's pharmaceutical division. Davis & Geck was the company's medical device division. In consumer products, its Shulton division made Old Spice cologne, Breck shampoo and Pine-Sol floor cleaner. Melmac was Cyanamid's trademark for plastic kitchenware.<1>

In its later life, the company frequently brushed up against the law for its environmental practices. In the process, it abandoned a number of hazardous waste sites to the government, notably the Bound Brook and Bridgewater sites in New Jersey.

The company merged with American Home Products in 1994.

The company was involved in a well-known legal case in the United Kingdom which set the test for interim injunctions in England and Wales and set down what became known to lawyers as the "American Cyanamid" rules.


This section probably showcases just how bad they were to the environment and their workers.

http://www.answers.com/topic/american-cyanamid

The company was also affected by unfavorable publicity from labor disputes and environmental abuses. In 1973 the Georgia State Water Quality Control Board forced Cyanamid to stop dumping sulfuric acid in the Wilmington and Savannah rivers, a practice that the state charged was killing fish. When workers at the Bound Brook, New Jersey, plant charged in 1978 that employee health was being compromised by exposure to carcinogens, they found management unsympathetic. 1,300 workers decided to strike in order to protest health hazards at the plant only to be told by plant manager Eldon Knape that "we don't run a health spa." When the company decided that exposure to lead compounds at the Willow Island, Virginia, pigments plant might cause birth defects, women of child-bearing age in the plant were ordered to quit, accept demotion, or be sterilized. A large amount of adverse publicity resulted from this last incident after five women admitted they had themselves sterilized in order to keep their jobs.


They eventually merged with what is now Wyeth. One of the main points addressed in the purchase was that Wyeth would assume responsibility for all of the lawsuits that AmCy was currently involved in.

Going through Google brought up so many lawsuits and Superfund sites that it just makes you shake your head and wonder how one company can cause so much damage.