CHEMICALS & CANCER

...Some animals died...

...others produced cancer when swallowed but seemed harmless when used in cosmetics...

...Likewise, after several years of quiet agitation by the Food and Drug Administration, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Arthur S. Flemming announced December 11, 1959 that the poultry industry has been persuaded voluntarily to remove diethylstilbestrol from its operations and to make arrangements for an immediate halt in the sales of treated birds...

...The Food and Drug Administration recently, on November 20, 1959, published a list of 182 chemicals "which have been found safe for use in food" on the basis of a questionnaire returned by 355 "qualified experts...

...Although this is a difficult and complex field of investigation, facts already revealed in many technical papers suggest that people living on foodstuffs containing large doses of synthetic chemicals and additives may ANTHONY NETBOY has had long experience in the federal service, in teaching, and in free-lance writing...

...The chemical industry has claimed that the drug's effects are dissipated in the cooking...

...In 1937, Dr...

...Others showed retarded growth, liver and kidney damage, enlarged spleens, anemia, and other ailments...

...The publicity stirred up by the recent courageous actions of the Food and Drug Administration, including its determination to ban any food additive "if appropriate tests show the production of cancer in test animals at any dosage level," indicates an urgent need for it...

...Court of Appeals upheld the FDA order, first of its kind under the 1938 Food and Drug Act...

...While it is possible to find, at least theoretically, a safe dose for any given additive or contaminant for experimental animals under controlled conditions, there is as yet no scientifically valid method for ascertaining such levels for human consumption...

...W. C. Hueper of the National Cancer Institute, chairman of the IUAC's Cancer Prevention Committee, declared that no food dye met "agreed criteria of safety" and that several are definitely known to be carcinogenic...

...This situation has created enough concern to prompt several Congressional investigations since 1950 and some changes, regarded as altogether inadequate by many cancer experts, in our food and drug laws...

...Current urban living emphasizes quick-cooking, with packaged, bottled, canned, or frozen foods made possible by chemicals...

...Since 1938 the chemical adulteration of foods has reached such alarming proportions that Congress is belatedly recognizing the problem and ordering some housecleaning by food processors...

...The government's present authority to certify colors is restricted to coal-tar colors and does not extend to other color additives...

...In an address to the Food Law Institute Conference in Washington last November, Deputy FDA Commissioner John L. Harvey listed as urgently desired legislation: % Stronger and more specific color additive laws...

...Admittedly, certain chemicals are needed to keep food fresh and palatable, particularly if shipped long distances, although they add little or nothing to nutritive values...

...However, little information on cancer agents in food is generally available to the public...

...Because there has never been any direct experimentation on human beings (so far as I know), it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to correlate any given chemical additive with a specific type of cancer in man...

...A survey made a few years ago by a committee of the National Research Council headed by William J. Darby, a Vanderbilt University pharmacologist, found that of the 116 dyes used in food, cosmetics, and drugs certified under the 1938 Food and Drug Act, only 15 had been studied to any extent...

...Hueper submitted a list of chemicals regarded as potentially carcinogenic on the basis of a definition that "carcinogens are agents which, when applied under certain conditions to man or animals, elicit the subsequent development of cancers which would not have appeared otherwise...

...It would be unconscionable for any court to permit their use without the clearest and most uncompromising evidence that usage at certain levels were absolutely safe...

...Smith told Delaney, "My colleagues and I have assembled data to show that the drug is not destroyed by cooking and that marketed poultry have contained per bird up to 324,000 times the amount of this drug sufficing as a daily diet to induce cancer in mice...

...Some of the dyes produced cancer when painted on the skin of animals but had no apparent effects when taken internally...

...The 1938 Act, which widened the government's authority to protect the consumer, was the result of the battering tactics of the Roosevelt Administration spearheaded by Rexford Guy Tugwell...

...By 1950, cancer had jumped to second place, and now it is estimated that one out of seven persons will be afflicted with it during his lifetime...

...According to an Associated Press dispatch, "FDA started its lipstick color crackdown after 90-day feeding tests showed they can harm laboratory rats...

...In this paper Dr...

...It is simply not in the public interest," he said, "to expose consumers to the unforeseeable risks of a host of biologically foreign food additives that may provide eye-appeal or advertising values, but offer no nutritive benefit...

...But Dr...

...The government must assume the burden of proving that coal-tar colors now in use are harmful...

...Biologically a hormone, this synthetic compound is used to fatten and tenderize poultry and cattle before they are put on the market...

...Now that scientists have proven, at least to the satisfaction of intelligent laymen, that cancer and longtime cigarette smoking go hand in hand, government agencies and research foundations might well turn more of their attention to the far more complex problem of carcinogens in our daily food...

...From the evidence presented in Congressional hearings in 1957 and 1958 it is clear that the entire role of synthetic ingredients in our food supply needs to be re-evaluated...

...He cited the controversial drug dieth-ylstilbestrol as an example of the hazards to which we are exposed...

...He has done much research in food adulteration since 1938 and Is now collecting material for a book to be called "Consumers in Wonderland...

...The list contained the following: Triphenylmethane dyes (light green SF, brilliant blue, and fast green) and betanaphthylamine azo-benzol dyes (yellow AB and yellow OB used for coloring butter, margarine, and baked goods...

...In a paper presented to a House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health and Science in August, 1957, he reported the occurrence of about 1,500 cancer victims in American and European chemical factories that were making dye intermediates, dyes, and rubber antioxidants, including several of the then certified dyes...

...Estrogenic chemicals used to fatten poultry and livestock (such as diethylstilbestrol...

...It would be impossible to go back to the more natural diet of 1900, when relatively little chemicalization existed...

...In short, "cancer hazards associated with constituents of foodstuffs fulfill two of the main requirements for the successful production of cancer": first, frequent, prolonged, and often lifetime exposure...

...A paper read by Dr...

...Indeed, most cancers caused by environmental agents cannot be distinguished from those which may be attributable to cellular or biochemical action...

...Scientists at the Harvard Medical School, National Cancer Institute, Sloan-Kettering Institute, Rockefeller Institute, and other research centers are probing civilized man's environment for clues to the causes of cancerous diseases...

...Of the 15, several were found to be distinctly toxic when fed to rats at levels as low as 0.25 per cent of a standard diet...

...Cancer experts generally agree that chemicals which can induce cancer in animals are ipso facto not safe for human consumption even in the minutest amounts—a potent reason for the recent ban on cranberries contaminated with the weed killer aminotriazole, a chemical that has produced thyroid cancer in laboratory rats...

...2) absorbed through the skin...

...This report received relatively little notice in the press of Western countries...

...The original Food and Drug Act, passed in 1906, was enacted only after a hard struggle through the efforts of Dr...

...It is hard to find news of cancer and foods in the widely-read media dependent on food advertisers, unless a sensational stop-marketing order is involved...

...A great deal depends, says Dr...

...Hueper also listed as suspect wrapping and coating materials made of polymerized carbon and silicon compounds, like cellophane, polyethylene, and polyvinil chloride, and items made from paraffin and mineral oils that have been insufficiently refined, such as those used for coating cheeses and fruits and impregnating food containers...

...The present law regards colors as either "harmless" (in which case they are allowed in any quantity) or "not harmless" (in which they are not allowed at all), but Harvey said that "no substance is completely harmless, so we have colors allowed in foods, drugs, and cosmetics . . . which may cause harm in high concentration...

...Murray J. Shear of the National Cancer Institute demonstrated in a paper published in the American Journal of Cancer that cancer of the liver is produced in animals with a dye used for artificial coloring of foods in other countries...

...However, this authority could not hide the fact that "under existing law the consumer is not receiving, for the following reasons, adequate protection against the use of colors in food, drugs, and cosmetics: "1...

...f Better labeling of hazardous substances suitable for household use...

...In the summer of 1956 a symposium of the International Union Against Cancer, held in Rome and attended by 52 cancer experts from 21 countries, made sensational charges against the widely used food dyes...

...On January 13, 1959, Secretary Flemming issued a memorable statement to the press on the subject of food colorings...

...It is clear, therefore, that new legislation is required...

...Some of us, according to this theory, may have ingested microscopic amounts of cancerous agents for many years but have been able to overcome their toxic effects...

...Hueper's testimony helped to persuade Congress to pass the 1958 amendment to the Food and Drug Act, which provides, among other things, that manufacturers must guarantee the safety of food packaging materials...

...Hueper, on the general health or resistance of the individual while subjected to the toxic substances...

...Among the suspected causes, the shift from natural, nutritive foods of the days of our grandparents to the chemically-loaded diet of today ranks high...

...He quoted a 1916 study by Salant and Regis of some azo-benzene derivatives, extensively employed in numerous industries and especially in the preparation of foods, showing that certain coal-tar dyes were then already suspect...

...In a survey in 1957 at the headquarters of the American Cancer Society in New York, I found only a few references on this subject in its files—and the Society itself was then sponsoring (so far as I could learn) no research on cancer and foods...

...be asking for trouble since many of these ingredients are known to cause cancer in experimental animals...

...Others may not be so lucky...

...The coal-tar dyes have come under the most concentrated attack, although they are not the only suspected group of additives...

...We should be aware, however, of the potential dangers and understand the manner in which carcinogens that enter the human system can produce cancer...

...He noted that the U.S...

...Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with carcinogenic properties—these appear in soot adhering to smoked foods or generated in food that is grilled or roasted in excessive heat...

...Hueper's paper was released, the FDA in November, 1955, had outlawed three of the 18 approved dyes used to color, among other things, candy, cakes, cookies, carbonated beverages, desserts, frankfurters, and oranges...

...The government does not have the discretion to permit the use of coal-tar colors in specified quantities or in specified products, even when it arrives at the conclusion that such use is absolutely harmless...

...This requirement arises from the scientific conviction that some of the chemicals in shiny wax containers, plastic bags, and the like are able "to migrate" into the food they protect or harbor...

...The words of the Court are worth quoting: "The colors here involved have been shown to be alarmingly toxic...

...The enormity of the problem of identifying possible cancer-producing substances in common foods is evident from the fact that some 400 or more chemicals are now used for various purposes in food processing...

...Oranges, by the way, are still painted red because of tricky legal maneuvering by the orange growing industry...

...The government does not have authority to prohibit the careless or excessive use of the coal-tar colors now in use...

...In addition to buttressing the legal structure against harmful chemicals and contaminants, we need wider dissemination of reasonably authenticated facts...

...The article In this issue is based on research performed at the National Cancer Institute in consultation with some of the leading experts mentioned In the article...

...The medical journals have also almost universally ignored the subject...

...Pre-testing of cosmetics...

...In 1900, it was only seventh among the most deadly diseases in this country...

...After a nine-month legal battle instituted by the chemical industry, during which the dangerous dyes continued to be used, the Second U.S...

...To this we might add aminothiazole, found in cranberry spray...

...Smith proposed that the restrictions should extend not only to chemicals introduced into food (as in bread, margarine, processed meat, canned goods, etc...

...But the fact remains that the American public needs stronger protection from food adulterers than we are now getting...

...Chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, especially Aramite and DDT, present as residues in foodstuffs...

...Harvey Wiley, Upton Sinclair, President Theodore Roosevelt, and others...

...He warned that "a public health menace exists" so long as these additives are used because there is "no mandatory provision for assuring . . . that biologic properties of each . . . particularly later long-term or delayed effects, have been adequately studied...

...The mere listing of all these suspected chemicals does not mean that we should become panicky and immediately shun wax-coated cheese, charcoal-broiled or grilled steaks and hamburgers, and luscious-colored cakes and pies...

...This order specified purposes for which safe chemicals may be used and in some instances the limits of tolerance—a step in the right direction, but by no means a guarantee to consumers that all of the 200 chemicals not on the list are harmless additives...

...Even colorings for eye appeal may be admissible, but the question is, how small a dose is safe...

...Only five dyes "have not manifested deleterious effects on experimental animals...

...Shear's experimental work on pure strains of mice with these dyes confirmed the suspicions...

...Arsenicals found in foodstuffs as pesticide residue and as an additive of animal feeds...

...Hueper outlines the process roughly as follows: % The frequent or lifelong introduction of biologically foreign chemicals into the human body produces a delayed reaction...

...Supreme Court had upheld the 1958 amendment to the Food and Drug Act and that the FDA was now in a position to ban the use of coal-tar colors whenever it marshals evidence that any color is "not harmless...

...Editors shy away from the subject, as I found a few years ago in proposing a documented article to various West Coast newspapers...

...Even before Dr...

...but to those administered to animals destined for human consumption...

...The attitude of competent investigators was well expressed by Dr...

...One editor admitted, "The food advertisers would be on our necks...

...Most of the tremendous research on cancer has dealt with cures and palliatives, and only in relatively recent years has some attention been directed to the causes, particularly the "environmental causes...

...or (3) produced as the result of faulty metabolism...

...Most doctors with whom I have talked pooh-pooh the suggestion that there may be a correlation between our chemicalized diet and the spectacular rise in the incidence of cancer...

...Thus, cancers may be elicited in specific organs or tissues by a substance (1) ingested or inhaled into the body...

...Since this ruling, the FDA has removed all oil-soluble coal-tar dyes from certification for use in food and, as of January 6, 1960, from lipsticks, unless the cosmetic industry chooses to fight the order in the courts...

...The causes of cancer are still largely obscure, although gleams of light are being thrown on some of the more common types...

...Contact of an individual with dietary carcinogens contributes to the total carcinogenic load acquired from other sources, such as pollutants in the air and cigarette smoking...

...and second, exposed individuals live long enough to survive the latent period, which may be years, even decades, between first exposure and appearance of a cancer...

...W. C. Hueper has been one of the foremost American authorities in studying the relationship of chemical additives to cancer...

...William E. Smith, at one time a staff researcher at the Harvard Medical School, the Rockefeller Institute, and the Sloan-Kettering Institute, in a letter to Representative James J. Delaney of New York, a leader in the fight to strengthen the Food and Drug Act...

...The hazard to workers from two substances—beta-naphthylamine and 4-aminadiphenol —was so high that some plants had to discontinue their manufacture...