ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DENNIS T. AVERY
SCIENCE, which used to be the leading scientific journal, ran a breathlessly admiring review of ``Our Stolen Future'' in its June 7 issue.
This is the new pop-science book that claims old residues from long-banned chemicals such as DDT and PCBs are destroying human fertility, lowering human intelligence and turning the world's wildlife into homosexuals.
The environmental movement hopes the book will be the kind of blockbuster it has not had since Rachel Carson's brilliantly flawed ``Silent Spring,'' published way back in 1962.
But without the environmental movement's publicity machine, this book would never have gotten published, let alone hyped on network news.
The book's lead author, Theo Colborn, writes about going back to school midlife for a Ph.D. in biology in order to prove Carson's theory that pesticides cause cancer.
When she could not, she settled for trying to frighten us about endocrine disruption even before she had scientific evidence, just like Carson did.
Carson reported that DDT had killed huge numbers of robins. False. Tests on robins show that they can tolerate huge doses of DDT with no ill effects.
Carson wrote that ``six or seven'' of the pesticides then in use were human carcinogens and more would prove to be over time. Wrong again. To date, the only approved pesticide with a proven human cancer risk is lead arsenate, which DDT replaced.
Colborn admits she cannot prove any of her awful contentions but says we should forget scientific proof and just ban all the pesticides and other manmade chemicals before they can do any more harm. The three Science book reviewers, all scientists, agreed.
Unfortunately, neither Colborn nor the reviewers seem to understand the biggest environmental reality of all: If we want to save wildlife, there are no spare acres left in the world.
Banning the world's pesticides would mean lower crop yields. Lower crop yields would mean millions of additional square miles of wildlife habitat would have to be plowed to maintain the food supply.
There would also be a fourfold increase in soil erosion because far more fragile land would be plowed - and without the conservation tillage systems that minimize erosion because they depend on chemical weedkillers.
This is the only way food can be produced. People do not die from a famine until after they have hunted down everything that moves and then plowed the forests and wild meadows for low-yielding crops.
Surprisingly, banning pesticides would also mean a substantial increase in human cancer. Pesticides help protect us from fierce natural toxins that would otherwise infest our crops, such as aflatoxin and ergot.
Moreover, pesticides help provide the strongest weapons against cancer: fruits and vegetables. Consuming five fruits and vegetables per day cuts the risk of cancer in half.
But only 9 percent of Americans are eating five a day, even though produce is low-cost and attractive. How many people would eat five a day if they were twice as expensive and full of wormholes?
The potential ``benefit'' of following Colborn's fervent advice would be eliminating a remote - and apparently unprovable - possibility of endocrine disruption, which allegedly stems from the residues of chemicals that have already been banned. (Excuse me, but the pesticide endosulphan is still on the market.)
No matter, says ``Our Stolen Future.'' ``If this book contains a single prescriptive passage, it is this: We must move beyond the cancer paradigm. ... We need to bring new concepts to our consideration of toxic chemicals.''
Well, how about this new conception of chemicals? High-yield farming, with its pesticides and fertilizers, has fed twice as many people as it did in Carson's day without plowing more wildlife habitat.
If the yields had not been raised, wildlife habitat equal to the entire land area of North and Central America would have already been plowed.
How about this noncancer concept? DDT was said to threaten birds' reproduction and weaken their eggshells, but no tests have confirmed that. Yet tests have shown that PCBs (which are not pesticides) radically cut egg hatchability and that mercury (industrial waste) weakened eggshells.
DDT was banned approximately the same time the Clean Water Act was passed, in 1972, sharply reducing the PCBs and mercury going into our streams. Has Colborn examined which of those governmental actions should get credit for the comeback of the ospreys?
Dr. John Ciesey, a past president of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, says: ``Frankly, Colborn doesn't know very much. She reads the entire literature and picks and chooses things that support her preconceived views.''
Does Theo Colborn really want the world to plow another 4 million to 5 million square miles of wildlife habitat before finding out whether she is right about endocrine disruption?
Shouldn't the homosexuality and reproductive problems she alleges among herring gulls and alligators have shown up pretty quickly in population declines for those species? Neither species is rare, and most of the residues she attacks have been around for decades.
The scariest thing about ``Our Stolen Future'' is the foreword, written by our foremost advocate for politicizing science, Vice President Al Gore.
Guess what? He does not think we have time to wait for science, either. Even though modern pesticides leave none of the persistent residues that fascinate Colborn.
The real truth is neither humanity nor the wildlife can afford to have us move toward a world of 9 billion affluent people in politically correct, nonscientific ignorance.
Dennis T. Avery of Churchville is editor of the Global Food Quarterly and author of ``Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic,'' both published by the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: BOB NEWMAN/Newsdayby CNB