AJR  Letters
From AJR,   September 1993

Letters   


Debating Dioxin
In her zeal to attack me and the New York Times, Vicki Monks revealed her own mischievous prejudices and deliberately misled AJR's readers in her June cover story ("See No Evil"). She amassed nothing more than a one-sided, undisciplined and scientifically dishonest account of a painfully complex issue.
Despite writing in a journalism review, Monks failed to consider the challenges faced by environmental reporters. In every issue we cover we are targets for competing economic and political messages and are responsible for independently weighing conflicting scientific and technical data. We are doing this work within a whirlwind of insidious expectations, stirred up by interest groups on every side, about what stories constitute being "for" or "against" any specific cause.
I am a reporter, not an ideologue. I follow the facts and new knowledge about the environment where they lead. I report the results as fairly, accurately, and with as much gravity and honesty as I am capable. Monks has not done that in her piece.
Monks' attack is largely based on an exceedingly narrow view, which she tries to legitimize by quoting experts representing one side of the dioxin issue. There is, however, a more lively and much richer debate in the scientific and public policy communities.
Scientists have long known that animals are more susceptible to the toxic effects of dioxin than humans. But there is disagreement among scientists on what the animal studies mean for people. One of the key issues for the team of scientists participating in the Environmental Protection Agency's reassessment of dioxin, and one of the many important points missed by Monks, is how much weight to give animal data.
The reason this is a crucial scientific and public policy issue is that in other debates about the effect of toxic compounds on health, human epidemiological evidence is incomplete. The EPA and other agencies therefore rely on animal data, and it is on the basis of such data that some scientists are stating that dioxin is more dangerous than previously thought. But there is considerable human epidemiological data on dioxin that doesn't indicate that the chemical has produced immunological effects, reproductive harm or depressed immune systems, according to scientists who have reviewed the studies.
The most authoritative study done on dioxin, prepared by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and published in 1991, did not find such effects. And in 1989, Dr. Karen Webb of St. Louis University, and several co-authors from the Centers for Disease Control and the state of Missouri, published a paper on the subject in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. In her study, Webb conducted medical evaluations of exceptionally high levels. She wrote in the paper that there was "no indication" that any of the subjects had suppressed immune systems or had any evidence of clinical immuno-suppression such as weight loss, increased antibiotic use, infectious diseases and the like.
Monks also completely ignores the fact that other prominent health agencies around the world are taking another look at the risks of dioxin and revising their standards. In 1991, the World Health Organization officially set a new, higher limit for the amount of dioxin it considered safe for people to ingest daily. That level was 1,600 times higher than the level set by the EPA.
Monks takes me to task in her article for comparing the risks of sunbathing to dioxin exposure. But the comparison between the risks to human health from dioxin and sunbathing is accurate and entirely appropriate.
In two seminal studies since 1987 on environmental health risks, the EPA encouraged just such comparisons. The agency estimated that sunlight is the second leading cause of cancer among all environmental factors, causing 10,000 deaths from skin cancer annually in the United States.
The National Cancer Institute estimated that 32,000 new cases of malignant melanoma appeared last year among all Americans and caused 6,700 deaths. In contrast, EPA scientists do not know how many cases of cancer are caused by dioxin every year. They say it could be 100 new cases, 1,000, or it could be none.
This is just one of the innumerable and telling flaws in Monks' piece, flaws that betray her. She is uninterested in and apparently incapable of competently probing a critical debate about human health and the environment.
AJR presumably upholds the highest standards of reporting, impartiality, fairness and accuracy. My reporting on dioxin met those standards. Monks' article did not.


Keith Schneider
New York Times
Washington, D.C.





Vicki Monks is quite right that over the past few years all kinds of new and nasty things have been learned about how dioxin does its damage. What she doesn't seem to understand is that this fact has very little to do with what Keith Schneider of the New York Times and I were writing about. She is talking about toxicology, about why dioxin is dangerous. We were writing about risk assessment, about how scientists determine dioxin's danger to humans. These are quite separate issues.
Risk assessment is about how you make environmental policy from laboratory observations. It is about what assumptions you use to set a standard for human beings from experimental evidence about a chemical's effect on animals. My coverage of dioxin — and, to some extent, Schneider's — was about the extraordinary debate within the scientific community about how best to make this extrapolation. Is there a threshold effect with dioxin, for example? Is a linear risk assessment model — as the EPA now uses — appropriate for a chemical that is not a mutagen? Does more recent scientific understanding of interspecies differences and tumor analysis permit a reevaluation of the original rodent data on dioxin? Is there a sound reason why U.S. risk assessment assumptions on dioxin differ from virtually every other country in the western world?
I confess to be incredulous that Monks managed to write a lengthy critique of our reporting without once mentioning any of these issues. Perhaps she does not understand the difference between toxicology and risk assessment. If so, I recommend a good freshman biology course. Or perhaps Monks simply didn't read the two lengthy articles I wrote in the Washington Post on these very subjects.
What Monks does seem to have read is a short story of mine that ran inside the paper two-and-a-half years ago on an epidemiological study in the New England Journal of Medicine. To understand how much of a mountain Monks makes of this molehill, one need only know that her critique of my article is in fact longer than the article itself.
In defense, I will simply say this: The study in question, which Monks thinks I reported in a biased manner, stated that out of 5,000 chemical workers chronically exposed to dioxin, only those receiving long term doses 500 times higher than normal had any kind of adverse health effect. And that adverse health effect was a slight increase in tumors of a kind that are not typically known to be associated with dioxin exposure and which, the study conceded, could well have been the result of other chemicals found in the plant. Monks can complain all she wants about who I did and did not quote in my article, but she cannot change the facts. This study simply does not support the popular image of dioxin as a killer chemical.
Finally, Monks wonders why I "for no apparent reason" suddenly stopped writing about dioxin in the spring of 1991. In the spring of 1991, I began covering AIDS full time. It seemed to me back then — and still does — that a disease that is killing tens of thousands of people was more worthy of my time and attention than a scientific dispute about a chemical that has never been conclusively proven to have killed anyone.


Malcolm Gladwell
Washington Post
New York City









Vicki Monks' slam on Keith Schneider and defense of the non-science surrounding dioxin left out conspicuous major facts.
For example, while it's true that dioxin is highly toxic to guinea pigs, thus earning it the title of "the most dangerous man-made chemical," Monks doesn't say that no other animal tested was nearly as susceptible. Thus hamsters required 5,000 times the dose given to guinea pigs to kill the same percentage of animals. Other animals have shown no ill effects at all from dioxin, even though they were given doses far higher than what the guinea pigs received. To call a chemical "the most dangerous" based on the reaction of a single nonhuman species seems specious indeed.
As for humans, Monks mentions dioxin-containing Agent Orange and its alleged effects on soldiers in Vietnam without once referring to the ongoing study of those who actually did the spraying and consequently received far greater doses of dioxin than virtually any soldier temporarily exposed, not to mention the doses received by Americans today. The latest report from this study found no relationship between Agent Orange exposure and "cancer of any kind, liver disease, heart disease, kidney disease, immune system disorders, psychological abnormalities, or nervous system disease."
I could easily fill eight magazine pages with what Monks left out of hers. Suffice to say her article was a perfect illustration of the very truth-be-damned pro-environmentalist reporting that she quoted Schneider as being against.


Michael Fumento
Los Angeles







Vicki Monks responds: A new report by the National Academy of Sciences released on July 27 contradicts the assertions made in articles by Keith Schneider and others that "dioxin may not be so dangerous after all," or that the chemical "is only a weak carcinogen if it is one at all."
After reviewing thousands of studies on the human health effects of Agent Orange and other dioxin-contaminated herbicides, including the studies referred to by Michael Fumento, the NAS concluded that exposure can cause three types of cancer and two other diseases, and may be linked to three additional types of cancer. The NAS recommended further study of a long list of other health problems. Dioxin is one of only a handful of other substances for which there is such conclusive proof of harm to human health.
Schneider cites a 1991 NIOSH study as evidence that dioxin causes no immunological or reproductive harm. That study, however, could not find such effects because it did not look for them. The NIOSH study analyzed only cancer mortality based upon reviews of death certificates. According to Dr. Marilyn Fingerhut, NIOSH will publish its first study on immune system and reproductive effects of dioxin next year.
Schneider and Fumento argue that animals are more susceptible to dioxin's toxic effects than humans, but according to studies done by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the dose required to cause health problems in humans is similar to that of rats and mice. Fumento incorrectly states that some animals have shown no ill effects from dioxin. The hamster is the least sensitive mammal ever tested, and it still takes only a speck of dioxin smaller than a grain of salt to kill one. It takes at least twice that much of sodium cyanide to kill a hamster.
Schneider is being disingenuous when he defends his comparison of dioxin with sunbathing by citing the serious carcinogenic effects of sunlight. His original analogy was clearly meant to diminish the perceived risks of dioxin exposure, not to convey the dangers of sunshine. Furthermore, Schneider's analogy is unscientific in that it does not compare a precise amount of dioxin to the specific conditions under which various types of skin might be exposed to the sun.
The World Health Organization has no official standards for dioxin, and according to Dr. Michel Mercier, Director of WHO's International Program on Chemical Safety, reevaluation of WHO's guidelines on dioxin is ongoing. While a WHO committee in 1991 did recommend a maximum safe dose that is far greater than the EPA's, the committee noted that nursing infants in most countries, including the United States, are already consuming more dioxin than the safe level suggested by the committee. To argue that dioxin pollution standards should be relaxed based upon the WHO's recommendations ignores the fact that exposures in this country may be greater than the level considered safe by any standard.
Despite Malcolm Gladwell's protests, toxicology and the other scientific disciplines I discussed in my article are inextricably linked with risk assessment. Moreover, Gladwell's assertions about the NIOSH study of chemical workers are inaccurate. The study showed that workers exposed to dioxin for more than a year — 20 years ago — were 46 percent more likely to die of cancer than the general population. That is not a trivial increase in risk.
My article critiqued several of Gladwell's reports in the Washington Post, including his "lengthy" article on risk assessment. Finally, my comments about the Post dropping its coverage of dioxin were directed at the Post, not at Gladwell.
I wish to express my profound appreciation for your publication of the article "See No Evil" by Vicki Monks. Although I am writing in a private capacity (the opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any government agency), as a chemist at the Environmental Protection Agency, I have been involved in the dioxin debate for many years. The proponents for "detoxifying" dioxin have always been those associated with dioxin polluters, including reporters working for newspapers that have financial interests in pulp and paper mills.
Recently, I was charged with assisting the EPA in its investigation of whether the Monsanto Co. manipulated studies on its own workers to demonstrate dioxin's safety. These Monsanto studies have been widely cited by the press. Although the criminal fraud investigation has not yet been completed, in 1991 the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health directly reversed the Monsanto findings.
Dioxin is now thought to be more harmful, not less, according to pronouncements from the EPA. In a 1992 briefing paper, EPA scientists stated that "dioxin does cause cancer in humans" and "immunotoxicity and reproductive effects appear to occur at body burdens..100 times lower than..cancer." In 1992, an EPA assistant administrator noted that changes in reproductive, behavioral and immunological functions may be occurring now in humans with background tissue levels of dioxin.
Furthermore, in a July 27, 1993, report, the National Academy of Sciences found that dioxin was significantly associated with several cancers and diseases.


Cate Jenkins
Washington, D.C.





As a journalist and Vietnam veteran, I want to thank Vicki Monks and AJR for exposing the biased reporting and shoddy journalism of the New York Times' Keith Schneider and other revisionists seeking to exculpate dioxin producers.
Schneider is hardly the first to buy into the bogus claims of conscienceless corporations and government deception.
Back in 1990, a Centers for Disease Control study, which eventually was discredited, produced headlines such as "Agent Orange not tied to cancer," and "Agent Orange: the menace that wasn't."
That year, Jon Franklin, then science writer for the Sun in Baltimore, concluded that there was no medical evidence to support the dioxin horror stories told repeatedly by Vietnam veterans who had been exposed to the chemical in the defoliant Agent Orange. He wrote, "The Agent Orange story was a myth created by a group of Vietnam-era protesters, seized upon by Viet vets and disseminated by the press."
Richard Harwood, then the Washington Post's ombudsman, seized upon Franklin's series to depict Vietnam veterans as a bunch of whiners with their hands out, and journalists who reported on the veterans' and their childrens' health problems as irresponsible.
My response to Harwood's column was ignored by the Washington Post. Cleveland's Plain Dealer, which reprinted Harwood's column, was more willing to provide some balance by printing my piece.
The jury may still be out on dioxin and Agent Orange. But thanks to Monks' well-researched article, at least, we know who the irresponsible journalists are.


David C. Lange
Editor
The Chagrin Valley Times
Chagrin Falls, Ohio





Vicki Monks did a terrific job sparking renewed debate on challenges, standards and ethics in our field.


Beth Parke
Executive Director
Society of Environmental Journalists
Philadelphia


AJR Unfair to Rieger
Steve Taylor's "The Standup Syndrome" (July/August 1993) has a lot of valid points. I'm making it available to my staff to read.
However, there are two points that deserve comment.
Generally, research shows — and my experience in 22 years of television bears it out — that viewers want to see who is talking. So reporters' packages without some sort of on-camera exposure is psychologically disturbing to viewers. However, if the reporter is a well-known person in your on-air lineup (especially an anchor) the omission of "seeing who's speaking" is less of a problem. The viewers already know what they look like.
Second, AJR seems to have fallen into the trap itself. You ran photos of three reporters on the same page as your subhead: "When television reporters go on camera, they often leave attribution and objectivity behind." No question those three reporters pictured with the article are tarred with the claim they've "often left attribution and objectivity behind." After reading the article and re-scanning it, I found no mention of Wendy Rieger. I guess she's pictured because she's with a local outlet and you had easy access to her photo.
By the way, we do run corrections — preferably within the same newscast — and if someone on our staff is not objective, we've "corrected" that too. Fortunately that doesn't happen often.


Walt Brown
News Director
KERO-TV
Bakersfield, California







Editor's Note: WRC's Wendy Rieger was not mentioned in the article and her photo should not have appeared. We regret the error.

Super Bowl and

Domestic Violence
Jean Cobb's discussion of the Washington Post's distorted attack on Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting's anti-domestic violence campaign ("A Super Bowl-Battered Women Link?" May) was one of the few accounts that was based on actually talking to the various parties involved.
FAIR has no problem with being held to the same standards we apply to the media. Too many media outlets, however, tossed out those standards in a rush to attack a group that has the presumption to criticize the press.


Jim Naureckas
Editor, Extra!
FAIR
New York City


It's Stupidity
Viki Reath's "A Tale of Plagiarism in Old Nantucket" (Free Press, July/August) — concerning a story lifted from a sister paper of ours, the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, and sent to us by an Inquirer and Mirror editor as an original piece of work — made it appear that I regard plagiarism as a trivial matter.
I abhor plagiarism, and thought I made that point very clear when Reath called me.
The article said I "sounded..exasperated" that AJR considered this matter newsworthy. If in Reath's judgment I sounded that way, so be it. All I intended to convey was, as you accurately reported, that I regard this particular act of plagiarism as "more an act of stupidity than an act of theft." After all, our paper and the Inquirer and Mirror are near neighbors and are under common ownership. How could any sensible journalist imagine that such a misappropriation wouldn't be noticed?
And may I set the record straight on another point? Reath reported that the Nantucket Beacon "broke the story" of this misdeed. In fact, we reported the story, under a two-column head, "Inquirer and Mirror editor quits after plagiarizing story," in our business section, well ahead of the Beacon.


William J. Breisky
Editor, Cape Cod Times
Hyannis, Massachusetts

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