Dispatch: Canada s Financial Post Praises ACSH

By ACSH Staff — Jun 23, 2010

Not to toot our own horn, but ACSH's media coverage has been so prolific that we somehow missed sharing these recent mentions with you. Last week, the Financial Post’s Junk Science Week featured expert opinions by ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and identified ACSH as “the best source of useful and objective science on food and health.”

Terence Corcoran, editor and columnist for the Financial Post, criticized a radio appearance by a restauranteer who advised listeners to avoid charring meat so as not to ingest supposedly cancer-causing chemicals, and presented the opposing opinion of Dr. Ross:

The increased risk of cancer from eating charred meat is extremely remote. One would have to eat charred meats daily for one’s entire life to even measurably increase any risk.

The Financial Post also featured an editorial by Dr. Whelan criticizing the baseless chemophobic requests for a ban on the widely used, EPA-approved herbicide atrazine:

Many of the recent media chemical scares, like the two-hour “toxic” presentation on CNN, argue that (a) there are tens of thousands of “chemicals” out there; and (b) the current government policy, assuming these chemicals are safe until contrary evidence was presented, must be reversed so that a chemical is considered hazardous until it is “proven safe.”

But how do you prove something to be safe? It’s like trying to prove a negative — it can’t be done. After all these evaluations and years of use, if atrazine doesn’t meet the criteria for “safety,” what chemical possibly could?