Chicken Little and Carcinogens

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Compassion Versus Guilt. pp. 39 - 41

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Chicken Little and Carcinogens

Recently 35 wells were closed down in Silicon Valley because they contained cancer-causing chemicals, presumably as industrial wastes from the computer firms located there. Such actions are often cheered by environmentalists, investigative reporters, "concerned" politicians, and others with a vested interest in moral indignation.

But, before joining this cheering, you should know that the actual amounts of cancer-causing substances in the water from most of the wells that were shut down was less than that in the water from your faucet—and much less than that in colas, wine, or beer.

Professor Bruce Ames, chairman of the biochemistry department at Berkeley, pointed out recently that every meal we eat is full of cancer-causing chemicals—from nature. Professor Ames was not trying to throw a scare into us. On the contrary, he was illustrating the pointlessness of Chicken Little hysteria over often insignificant amounts of man-made carcinogens, compared to vastly more numerous—and sometimes more potent—carcinogens in nature.

The plants we eat as vegetables produce their own toxic pesticides to fight off insects, fungus, and other threats, just as the human body produces chemicals to fight bacteria. According to Professor Ames, "5 basil leaves are 100 times more hazardous than the worst well in Silicon Valley." Altogether, we eat or drink natural pesticides "in amounts at least 10,000 times more than man-made pesticide residues." All this is according to a scientist who has won several prizes in biochemistry.

What are we to do—stop eating? Even that won't do it, because oxygen is also a cancer-causing substance, and so is sunlight. Apparently the only really safe thing to do is to starve in a dungeon while holding your breath.

No one who has lost a loved one to cancer (as I have) can take that horrible disease lightly. But what is both Utopian and hysterical is the impossible dream of getting rid of all man-made dangers—however minute or remote. This has not only exorbitant costs but pathetically little effect.

There has to be some sense of proportion. Cigarette smoking is truly dangerous, and tens of thousands pay for it with their lives each year. Some chemicals are highly toxic, and anyone who dumps them ought to be fined or jailed. But we cannot panic over minute traces of every substance that has harmed laboratory rats when given in astronomical quantities. Moreover, some chemicals that cause cancer in rats do not cause cancer in mice, and vice versa. If there is that much difference between these two closely related species, extrapolating from them to human beings is questionable.

Sometimes panic is not only useless but counterproductive, because many things that are harmful in one way are helpful in another way. Many foods which contain traces of cancer-causing substances also contain cancer-fighting substances. Depending on the proportions, you could be worse off by eliminating such foods from your diet. Cooking meat creates chemicals that can shorten your life, but not cooking it properly—especially if it is pork—can shorten your life a lot faster.

Although people live in many places where the natural radiation from the ground exceeds that from any nuclear power plant, still there is a minute increase in the risk to life from living next to a nuclear facility. But if you decided to move away, driving just 10 miles down the highway would create a risk to your life greater than that of remaining next to the nuclear power plant. People were in fact killed driving away from the Three-Mile Island "disaster," which itself killed nobody.

All life is a matter of proportions and trade-offs. But crusaders don't want to hear about trade-offs. They want "solutions" that produce absolute "safety." Crusaders like to say things like, "We should not sacrifice a single human life to the pursuit of profit."

That's the kind of talk that gets you applause from the environmentalists and a welcome into the ranks of the deep thinkers. But it doesn't save any lives.

The devastating economic impact of environmental hysteria on the nuclear power industry is only a faint foretaste of the massive sacrifices of everyone's standard of living that can be expected if the Chicken Littles get their way. Economic productivity has generated the standard of living which enables us to support a level of health care that has been constantly increasing the human life span. If we let hysteria kill the goose that lays the golden egg, we will be sacrificing our own lives as well.

—March 3, 1986

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28 May 2024