ACSH congratulates the New York Times (and health columnist Jane E. Brody) for putting the health risks faced by children in perspective.
Today's Science Times carries an interview with Dr. Robert Brent (Professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia) and an associated commentary that will go a long way towards helping parents and prospective parents distinguish real risks to their children's health from purely hypothetical ones. Dr. Brent, an ACSH advisor, was a contributor to a recent ACSH book, Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals? which covers much the same territory as today's Science Times pieces.
Dr. Brent stresses the basics: only the dose makes the poison, there is much hyperbole about risk in the media, and the real risks are those over which parents have considerable control. These risks include falls, drowning, burns, poisoning, choking, secondhand smoke, and others (a list very similar to the one in the ACSH publication referred to above). He notes that trace levels of chemicals -- just because they can be measured -- do not pose a health risk. He even takes on one of the biggest "environmental-disease" myths around: the widespread belief that chemicals in the environment at Love Canal in upstate New York made people sick, noting "Love Canal was an example of a (problem) that needed to be cleaned up, but there was no evidence of risk to the people who lived there." Precisely ACSH's message on this topic for the past twenty-four years!
The take-home message here is: there are real risks to children caused by trying to avoid phantom risks. It all boils down to a very familiar theme at ACSH: Don't have inverted health priorities. Pay attention to real dangers, not imaginary ones.
Elizabeth Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., is president of the American Council on Science and Health.
