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  • From: Leigh <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: ALAR myth
  • Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:00:01 -0500

Title: ALAR myth
This is from an article in the Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/year/96/5/alar.asp


Like most media myths, this one includes a fact or two. There was indeed an overreaction to the 60 Minutes report, as viewers confused a long-term cumulative threat with imminent danger. But Alar is a potent carcinogen, and its risks far outweigh its benefits. After extensive review, the Environmental Protection Agency decided in late 1989 to ban it because "long-term exposure to Alar poses unacceptable risks to public health."

Moreover, studies and reviews completed after the CBS story aired - including one by Uniroyal - confirmed the earlier ones the NRDC relied on, according to Jim Aidala, the EPA associate assistant administrator for pesticides. Alar, the trade name for daminozide, and its breakdown product during heating, UDMH, are animal and "probable human" carcinogens.

Besides the scientific evidence, 60 Minutes has been repeatedly vindicated in the federal courts. On April 29, the Supreme Court upheld without comment an appeals court decision dismissing a $250-million class-action suit filed in 1990 against 60 Minutes by a group of Washington state apple growers, alleging the show falsely disparaged their product (Auvil v. CBS "60 Minutes"). In October 1995, the appeals court had held that "the growers have failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the falsity of the broadcast." A year earlier the district court had dismissed the case for essentially the same reason.



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