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« Back to Environmental Risks: What's Real? What's Not? main page    Transcript for: Environmental Risks: What's Real? What's Not?Think Tank Transripts: Environmental Risks ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theWilliam H. Donner Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, and the JMFoundation. Airdate: November 25, 1994 MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm BenWattenberg. How dangerous is your food, your water, the air youbreathe? Are Americans being poisoned by industrial pollution andpesticides, or are these threats vastly exaggerated? Joining us to sort through the conflicts and the consensus areJessica Mathews, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations;Lester Lave, professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University;Frederica Perera, professor of public health at Columbia University;and Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The topic before this house: Environmental risks; what's real,what's not? This week on Think Tank. The late political scientist Aaron Waldovsky wrote 15 years ago,and I quote, 'How extraordinary the richest, longest-lived,best-protected, most resourceful civilization with the highest degreeof insight into its own technology is on its way to becoming the mostfrightened.' And since then, it seems Americans have only become morescared. Epidemic disease used to kill Americans by the thousands. Todaypolio, tuberculosis and typhoid are almost unknown thanks tovaccinations and better sanitation. Accident rates have alsoplummeted. Advances in technology and ever stricter safetyregulations have reduced accidents that occur on the road, at workand at home. As a result, U.S. life expectancy at birth has soared,more than doubling from a mere 31 years in 1890 to 75 years today. Yet public fear is high. According to a recent poll, 78 percent ofAmericans believe they are subjected to more risks today than theirparents were 20 years ago. People worry about the health hazardsposed by pesticides, pollution and nuclear waste. But what is reallydangerous to your health? Well, according to a recent study from the University ofPittsburgh, cigarettes are deadly. Statistically speaking, theaverage American male smoker would live 6.6 years longer if he gaveup smoking. Automobile accidents shorten the life of an averageAmerican by 200 days, and bicycle accidents by 27 days. Meanwhile, some of the environmental risks that people fear mostare relatively minor. Foods treated with pesticides cut lifeexpectancy by all of 12 days; hazardous waste only 2.5 days. Andnuclear power shortens the average American's life by less than onehour. But various public health experts and environmentalists say thatwe don't really know how dangerous some things are. Therefore, theysay, we should err on the side of caution when trying to controlrisky activities. They also argue that Americans should not beexposed involuntarily to any risks from pesticides or hazardouswaste. Fred Smith, let me begin with you. Should Americans be scared oftheir environment? MR. SMITH: They should be scared of the risks posed byenvironmental policy. What we've done is created frightening,fear-mongering agencies and laws that encourage people to frightenus, and it's been very effective. The safest, wealthiest society inthe world, as the chart showed earlier, is frightened to death. MR. WATTENBERG: Jessica? MS. MATHEWS: I don't think life expectancy is the right measure atall. There are plenty of risks, and the question is really whatbenefit do you get for a small marginal risk? That's one thing peopleweigh. The other thing people weigh is that they feel totallydifferently about risks they control versus risks they don't, andthat's really what, to my mind, is the crucial distinction. MR. WATTENBERG: Lester? MR. LAVE: I think that we've gotten richer. We're a lot richerthan our grandparents in the 1890s. At that point you could see whatit was that was going to kill you. Now we can't see it or smell it.And so I think we're richer. We're more concerned about these things.We've knocked out most of the causes of what we can worry about. Andso we're more concerned about the things that we can't see that mightkill us. MR. WATTENBERG: Frederica? MS. PERERA: Well, I think Americans are concerned. I'm not sureabout this premise that they're terrified. I think they're concerned,and rightfully so, about environmental risks. There are such risks.We've identified some of them and we've dealt with them, andregulations have been effective in controlling those risks and inlowering cancer rates in workers and male sterility and neurologicdisease in children. So we have seen in our recent history the impactof regulation of risks. And new risks are emerging. It's veryimportant, as we present those to the public, that we're very, veryclear. We owe them that, to be very clear about the basis of riskassessment. MR. WATTENBERG: Has there been, on the part of theenvironmentalists, a regular staccato exaggeration of these threats? MS. PERERA: I'm not sure I would agree with that. I think thereare different takes on the magnitude of risks for one particularpollutant. There's a lot of uncertainty in the risk estimates. But Ithink what's really important is to present the public the range ofestimates and the uncertainty, what government can do and what theythemselves can do if there are steps that they can take. MR. SMITH: The problem is, of course, we're not getting a balancedassessment of risk. EPA tells us a very little bit about the need fora better diet, to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. They terrifyus about the possibility of small residuals -- MS. MATHEWS: The Department of Agriculture tells us a ton aboutfruits and vegetables, so it's not really -- MR. SMITH: The effect is, though, that the agencies that arechallenging us on risk issues are not focusing -- better diets areone of the best ways we can reduce cancer risk, and instead we'retrivializing the risk by running around and talking about organicgood, natural bad. What is it, one ten thousandth of thecancer-causing substances we find in our diets are related toman-made; 99.99 are coming about because of natural ingredients thatour bodies are prepared, partially, to address. MS. PERERA: I question those statistics. In fact -- MR. WATTENBERG: That's Bruce Ames's data, isn't it? MR. SMITH: Yeah. MS. PERERA: Yes. And we've had a debate back and forth, and othershave as well. And I question those numbers there really based oninadequate data on the numbers of carcinogens, their potency. Sothey're very much -- MR. WATTENBERG: But there are carcinogens in natural foods. MS. PERERA: Yes, there are indeed. And I think we should beconcerned about carcinogens like alpha toxin, which is now regulated,actually, and remove the natural, semi-natural carcinogens. But theproblem is that with the pesticides, I think the latest figures werethat 10 percent of pesticides in inert ingredients had actually beentested for toxicity. So we don't know a lot about what thesepesticides do. MR. SMITH: But we also don't know very much about naturalingredients. MS. PERERA: That's right. MR. SMITH: You're talking about -- we're spending much more of ourefforts testing man-made ingredients as though man was trying to dous in, whereas nature's been around a lot longer. MR. WATTENBERG: Fred, let me ask you a question. I've been readingthrough some of this material, and you all might respond to it. Itseems to me that the dynamic that is going on is thatenvironmentalists raise an alarm about something because of thenature of fundraising and political power and everything else. As inany movement, those fears become purposefully exaggerated. Then theother side comes in and says, 'You environmentalists are exaggeratingthis.' But then they also point out, 'Look at all the good thingsthat have happened. You know, carbon dioxide is down. This is down.This is down.' MS. MATHEWS: Carbon dioxide. MR. WATTENBERG: Excuse me? MS. MATHEWS: Up, up, up. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, all the EPA things -- MS. MATHEWS: Right. MR. WATTENBERG: All the measurable things that have beencontrolled in the last 20 years by the Environmental ProtectionAgency, those lines are all coming down -- MS. MATHEWS: Some things. MR. WATTENBERG: -- in part because of environmental activism thatbrought us to this thing. So what you're saying is 'They'reexaggerating, but by the way, their exaggeration has led to a lot ofgood.' MR. SMITH: That's actually not what we try to say. What we'rearguing is that the first-generation haystack problems, as it were --the fact that we had untreated sewage flowing into rivers, andunfortunately we still do in some cases; that we had the massiveflows of millions of tons of particulates into the air -- those kindof problems sometimes can be worked on in the political sector byham-handed regulation. But we're now going not after haystack, butneedle-in-the-haystack problems, these tiny, tiny parts-per-billionrisks where those areas, EPA's own assessment, external reviews ofEPA, EPA asking the wrong questions, the Harvard study -- MS. MATHEWS: There's something to say here, but I think there'sanother proof, and that is, I don't agree that all the current risksare de minimis, but one thing has happened which is in 20 years ourtechnology for measuring chemicals or radiation has improved in somecases by a factor of 1,000 or even 10,000 -- gas chromatographs, allkinds of things that could measure things in parts per trillion thatused to show up as zero. But our capacity for managing those risks, for understanding them,for responding appropriately, let's say generously, let's say it'stwice as good as it was 20 years ago. And some people might not saythat much. So one thing, it's improved in sensitivity by a factor of1,000 or 10,000, and the other by a factor of two. We've got whatappears to be a lot more problems. MR. LAVE: I think this is polarizing the debate by saying thereare risks, there aren't risks. I think we're past that. It's reallymuch more trying to take a look at what are the priorities. Are weworking on the right things? I think the problem is that we're notworking on the right things. MR. SMITH: But that does get us to the point, Lester, where theinstitutions we've created --the EPA and the environmental activistorganizations -- tend to focus on a subset of risks that advancetheir agendas. And the concept that there are risks that regulationscan address and there are risks that regulations create -- the riskthat we're overspending and therefore impoverishing ourselves, thewealthier-is-healthier literature which suggests that -- MR. WATTENBERG: Why don't you explain that,wealthier-is-healthier? MR. SMITH: Well, regulation obviously has economic consequences.It calls for money to monitor and to create rules. So there's awealth effect. We're somewhat poorer when we regulate. We'd better bebuying something for that. If the risks we're addressing byregulation are very small and the costs of those regulations arelarge relative to the risk, we may be creating more risks by makingus a poorer nation than we're addressing by making us anoverregulated nation. And wealthier-is-healthier arguments -- I mean, you're in thepublic health area. One of the best things you can do to improvepublic health as a nation in America, but especially the third world,is to allow these countries the ability to rapidly expand the use oftechnology and economic growth. It makes them healthier. MS. PERERA: Well, I've been doing research for several years inEastern Europe. Now, that's not a wealthier environment, but that'san example of where you had development and exportation of resourceswithout regulation, which is absolutely horrendous. (Cross-talk.) MS. PERERA: I'm giving you sort of an extreme example. I mean,you're implying that our regulations have had no benefit, thatthey've been useless. In fact, I think we can document very greatbenefits in terms of health protection for children. There were anestimated 10 million children who were protected by the leadstandard, prevented from having nervous system damage during theirearly years. And there are other such real milestones. Now, it's true that we are dealing with less obvious risks and wehave moved from waiting for human data, which we did initially, tobasing risk assessments on testing data in the laboratory and usingstatistical modeling. Now, my whole point is that we must do a solidjob of assessing the risks and then, when they are significant andagencies are not supposing to regulate risks that don't exceed -- MR. SMITH: That's not true. MS. PERERA: -- quite a threshold. MR. SMITH: But it's not really true, Doctor, because, in effect,if you look at the way we're -- MS. PERERA: It's true that the riskshave to be significant, and usually that's quite a high threshold.MR. SMITH: Alar, asbestos, dioxin, over and over again -- MS. MATHEWS: Alar is a known potent carcinogen. MR. SMITH: Yes, of course. It's always -- MS. PERERA: And estimates by EPA said that the risks were one in10,000. MR. SMITH: No, but we're not talking about -- of course there arerisks of chemicals. I think every -- the problem is there are alsorisks of overregulating some of these. MS. MATHEWS: Sure there are. MR. SMITH: When we reduce the use of pesticides or all these othertrace elements, undoubtedly there is some health benefit, but thereare also health consequences. There are risks and there are risks.And when we say that the only risk we face in the modern society istechnology, we're trivializing the situation. MS. MATHEWS: But there are also -- there's a question -- MR. WATTENBERG: Jessica, would you feed your children apples withalar? Would you have a problem with that? MS. MATHEWS: Well, I mean, luckily that doesn't arise. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, it did. I mean, in the past they weresprayed with alar. My understanding is that it was all a red herring,or a green herring, depending on the apple. MS. MATHEWS: No, I think it -- I mean, I think there are stillsome uncertainties, although my understanding is -- and maybe Rickican confirm it -- the last study that was done, in fact, found --after alar was removed from the market, found it to be a more potentcarcinogen than had previously been known, and at lower doses. Thereare -- MR. WATTENBERG: But were they at dosages that could harm humanbeings? I mean, they do these tests where they pump up a laboratoryrat with 10,000 times the amount -- MS. MATHEWS: Sure. And that's a -- MR. WATTENBERG: It's just like saying alar is a carcinogen; if youtake a bag of it and drop it on a rat, it'll die. But that's notsaying that if you give it a tiny -- MS. MATHEWS: But a -- if you say to me, 'Here's an apple that'sbeen treated with alar; would you like your child to eat it?' I'llsay no because I can have an apple without it. And so the questionthat I think the society asks is, what benefit did alar bring? Andthat's the thing I think also -- it's not just the cost of whether touse it or not. But is it a marginal benefit that apples stay longeron the trees and are easier to harvest or look pretty? MR. WATTENBERG: Lester, could you give us sort of a ranking ofwhat is most dangerous to us, starting from the top and going down?Let's get some numbers out there. MR. LAVE: If you're currently a smoker, then smoking is the mostdangerous thing you can do. If you don't do your seat belts in thecar, that's probably the most dangerous thing you can do. I'msometimes struck by seeing children roaming around in the back of thestation wagon with a parent up front who's smoking. That's really anirresponsible set of actions. Beyond that, we're certainly talkingabout bias, for example, of what it is that you're -- MR. WATTENBERG: Well, alcoholism is a -- MR. LAVE: Diet is going to be more of a problem than alcohol, atleast for the average American. As you get on down, we still havesome -- I think that we're just in danger of trivializing the issue.There certainly are some environmental risks. I think that throwingout the laboratory testing, saying that that stuff is invalid, isjust not right. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, what are they? MR. LAVE: Well, what we have to do is we have to start looking atwhat are the highest priorities. The Environmental Protection Agency-- we don't have to ask what Lester Lave's opinion is. We have boththe senior staff of the Environmental Protection Agency and then theacademic scientists who are on the Science Advisory Board. Theyranked what the risks were. They said that there are some things thatare vastly overregulated, overstated, like hazardous waste dumps.There are other things, like indoor air quality, radon in homes, thatare much more of a risk than that. And so they wanted to get the priorities straight. And we've hadEPA administrators who have pleaded with Congress to give them theability to get the priorities straight, and unfortunately we haven'tdone that. So let's get away from this debate about whether we'regoing to drop 10,000-pound bags of alar on rats and see whether ithurts them. Let's talk about real risks and priorities. MS. PERERA: In fact, that really isn't true. Animal testing doesnot occur that way. That's really quite a distortion of themethodology that's used. And as I mentioned earlier -- MR. WATTENBERG: They do overdose them. They don't give them normal-- MS. PERERA: No. Well, a dose is chosen; that is, a tolerated dosefor that animal, a maximum tolerated dose, and then fractional dosesbelow that, because of the fact that the animal has such a short lifespan compared to humans. And the most recent assessment of thatquestion, 'Are Animal Tests Valid?' by the National Academy ofSciences working group on that subject, reaffirmed it as a validprocedure. What's the alternative? To wait for human data. So I wantto dispel another myth here. MR. WATTENBERG: Wasn't there a major dissenting opinion for thatin that very report? MS. PERERA: There were, in fact, I think, several dissentingopinions in the report, one saying it's not going far enough and, youknow, strong enough, and one disagreeing. But I'm not certain howmany dissenting opinions there were. But the fact is that that is anestablished methodology that we use because we don't want thealternative of waiting for cases of illness and actual death. And wewant to move forward from this chemical-by-chemical -- MR. SMITH: You're missing the point. I really think, look, we'renot arguing that there are not risks associated with the unknown.We're always in a sense of walking into a world we don't know thatwell. The trick is, can we know everything before we act? Is thiswhole idea that before we open doors we have to be absolutely certainwhat's behind there? Are there risks of stagnating our society byfrightening ourselves and avoiding the role of technology? We are arguing, are there risks from pesticides? And I think weall are aware there must be some risks, high or low, but fairly smallin the area of pesticide usage. But we're also aware that a betterdiet for people is a health-enhancing situation, and pesticides areone of the most dramatic ways we have made food so much moreplentiful and so much more available throughout the world. We'retalking about the risks of pesticides and the risks of higher-pricedfoods. MS. MATHEWS: Yeah, but you're posing questions that don't exist. MR. SMITH: They do exist. MS. MATHEWS: No, they don't. The question is which pesticide doyou use? MR. SMITH: No, it's not. Pesticides are being attacked by theenvironmental community. MS. MATHEWS: But Fred, look what happened to the apple industryafter alar was removed. MR. SMITH: That's right. Apples became somewhat less fresh,somewhat less available, and the apple industry absorbed largelosses. That's what happened. MS. MATHEWS: No, sir, that is not what happened. MR. SMITH: That is exactly what happened, and it's happening overand over again. We have now got $150 billion -- MS. MATHEWS: Fred,stop for a second. MR. SMITH: -- we're spending on regulations. Thatis not invisible. MS. MATHEWS: Apples are not more expensive. Apple industry profitshave doubled. MR. WATTENBERG: Lester, you're an economist. MS. MATHEWS: It's a fact. It's a fact. MR. LAVE: I love to hear people talk about economics. You may oneday want to get my stock market predictions. (Laughter.) I think that-- I don't hear anybody here saying that we shouldn't havepesticides. I mean, if I'm wrong about that, let somebody comeforward. I think that everybody here would say that the unintelligentuse of pesticides, which many farmers have done in the past -- thatis, applying far too much of them when it's not needed -- everybodyhere would condemn that. So we're now all in the middle ground of asking what is it thatpeople should do? Does a farmer who's not educated in this stuff,should that person have the sole ability to make the choices whenthere are spillover effects because of foods, because of what goesonto somebody else's property? I think the answer is clearly no aboutthat. Now, can we be so restrictive in these regulations that we driveup the price of food and we hurt people? Absolutely we can. Havethere been EPA decisions like that? I believe there have, although Ican't name one for you right now. Now, let's talk about -- Fred had this earlier. What are the kindsof institutions that we need? How do we get to make these decisionsin real time instead of hanging them up for years? How do we get newclasses of pesticides which are more benign in to replace the badones of the past? MR. WATTENBERG: Let's say I am a typical American consumer andparent. I'm Charlie Consumer. I'm getting my sources of informationfrom industry groups, I'm getting them from environmental groups andI'm getting them through the media. Who am I supposed to believe? MR. LAVE: I think that exactly the problem is that all of theinstitutions that you're talking about have at some time in the pastlied to the public, whether you're talking about -- MR. WATTENBERG: Government, media, environmentalists and industry;they've all lied to the public at some point? MR. LAVE: Absolutely. That's a large problem that we have in oursociety now is that there is a lack of trust for experts andinstitutions. The public understands that no matter who it is whosays something that you have to believe that that may not be true.Now, we have a number of institutions that are catching up and areactually trying to do something now. I think, for example, of thechemical industry's care program which is trying very hard to winitself to the public. Certainly some of the environmental groups aredoing exactly that. Our problem as a society is precisely that we've told lies in thepast and now we have to generate the trust of the public again ifwe're going to get beyond this nonsense we're in right now, where thepublic doesn't believe anybody on anything. MS. MATHEWS: There's something else to it, which is thatscientists, because they work on a frontier between what's known andwhat's unknown, are very comfortable with uncertainty. They have waysto measure it. It's a thing for them that is sort of a positive. Ifyou don't have uncertainty, you're not doing real science. You're noton the frontier. And so they think in terms of uncertainty. Theymeasure it. They're comfortable with. The whole rest of society operates by trying to stamp outuncertainty, right; our legal system. The jury can't come in and say,'We think this defendant has an 80 percent probability of beingguilty.' Right, it's yes or no. So all the rest of us are trained tothink black, white, yes, no. And scientists alone have a completelydifferent approach to uncertainty. And it doesn't translate in themedia at all. MR. WATTENBERG: We are running out of time. What I would like todo is go around the room, starting with Fred, with a brief response,please, to a question we like to ask here, which is, given thisdiscussion, what do you all agree upon and disagree upon? MR. SMITH: I think the main thing we agree upon is that thecurrent way we're managing risk in our society has many flaws andthat we desperately need to look at risk in a more intelligent wayand reach some way of allowing America to proceed into the futurewithout frightening itself to death. How we do that is not clear, andwe certainly have enough incentive today. MS. PERERA: I think -- I agree very much with what Jessica said. Ithink we need, in our communicating with the public, to spell outwhat we know and what we don't know and the assumptions that we usein the face of that uncertainty. I think, coming from a school ofpublic health, that we should be protective and preventive in ourapproach. But we are faced with a situation of catch-up and dealingwith chemicals that are already out there. And for the future, Ithink -- I sense an agreement that pollution prevention is a verygood thing. MR. SMITH: Lester? MR. LAVE: We've made an enormous amount of progress; frankly, muchmore agreement than I thought before the show. I think we agree thatthere are some problems out there in the environment. I think that weagree that getting rid of all chemicals, all pesticides, is somethingthat we're not even going to think about seriously. We have to thinkabout how we manage it. Precisely the way that we do that, whetherit's through an Environmental Protection Agency or something else, wedon't have agreement here. But I think that the bogeyman of sayingthat chemicals are terrible or chemicals are the best thing that everhappened to you, we've dispelled. MS. MATHEWS: I would agree with, Ithink, everything that's been said. I think Lester has made the pointseveral times and it needs to be emphasized, that there is not a verygood match between what we understand to be the biggest risks andwhat the public perceives to be the biggest risks. It'll never beperfect and it never should be, but it could certainly be better. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, Jessica Mathews, FredericaPerera, Lester Lave and Fred Smith. And thank you. We enjoy hearingfrom our audience. Please send your comments to New River Media, 115017th Street, NW, Washington DC 20036. And we can be reached viaE-mail at thinktv@aol.com. And thank you. We enjoy hearing from our audience very much.Please send your comments to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street,N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Or we can be reached via E-mail atthinktv@aol.com. For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, bringing better,healthier lives to people worldwide through biotechnology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theWilliam H. Donner Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, and the JMFoundation. BEN WATTENBERG Return toThinkTank Online Home Page Think Tank ® is a Registered Trademark of BJW, Inc. All Content © Copyright 1995 New River Media, Inc. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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