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December 11, 2006
Which Time Magazine Do You Read?
A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine ran an excellent cover story on risk, discussing how we often worry about the wrong things because they are scary.
The following week, Time ran a scare story.
It was a scare story on toys, based on San Francisco’s ban on articles containing phthalates and bisphenol A. Titled “What’s Toxic in Toyland,” the story contains as grossly incorrect a statement as I have ever seen in print in my seventeen years as manager of the Phthalate Esters Panel. I won’t directly repeat the negative, but let me say this flatly:
There are no animal studies linking phthalates with prostate or breast cancer.
It is correct to say that phthalates can cause problems with the male reproductive organs of rodents. But that is true only of some phthalates, when consumed by rats in high doses over long periods of time. But no study has shown it to be true for the phthalate most commonly used in toys, called DINP, for either rats or humans.
It is doubly disappointing to see huge errors like this in a top-tier media magazine because I, and others, spent hours communicating with the reporter. The source of this misinformation is not indicated. Only one anti-chemical group is mentioned in the story. Assuming the reporter did not knowingly make these mistakes, it is distressing to think that the reporter was deliberately fed misinformation in pursuit of an agenda. I understand and respect that some think the regulatory framework for chemicals should be changed. But how does it advance the cause of human health, much less quality of life or peace of mind, to invent, exaggerate, or misrepresent the evidence? Do the best policy decisions emerge from debates that are heavily fed by fiction and emotion-triggering trickery?
For more comment, see http://www.stats.org/stories/times_toy_scares_dec13_2006.htm
Posted by Marian at 1:28 PM | Comments (0)