Report, Book Highlight Cancer Risk of Chemicals in the Environment

By ACSH Staff — Nov 19, 2007
A November 19, 2007 article by Steve Mitchell notes the opposition of ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan to a Devra Davis book and a separate report blaming industrial chemicals for disease: Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science andHealth, a group funded in part by industry, told PTCN she disagreed with both the Collaborative report and Davis' book.

A November 19, 2007 article by Steve Mitchell notes the opposition of ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan to a Devra Davis book and a separate report blaming industrial chemicals for disease:

Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science andHealth, a group funded in part by industry, told PTCN she disagreed with both the Collaborative report and Davis' book.

"It's just completely outside mainstream science of what causes human cancer," Whelan said of the Collaborative report. "To say that there's a major problem of occupationally-induced cancer today is simply not grounded in fact."

Whelan called the report's conclusions that pesticides are responsible for some cases of breast cancer and prostate cancer "preposterous" and also disputed the notion that trace levels of certain chemicals could lead to cancer.

"I do not know of any evidence that exposure to trace levels of chemicals poses a risk of any form of cancer," she said.

Whelan faulted Davis' book for also not being grounded in science...