Wrong again as usual since you refuse to inform yourself
NO You Still made an Appeal to Emotion ... without posting and information to back up YOUR Assertion
now that you have, let us have a look at your quote ...
"This week Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler announced the agency’s decision to allow farmers to keep spraying a dangerous brain-damaging pesticide on fruits and vegetables. The pesticide, chlorpyrifos, has been shown to harm a child’s brain even at low levels of exposure."
Quoting a Progressive Chicken Little Group does little for your argument ... junk science and scare tactics
more emotional drivel
Environmental Working Group
Environmental “Worry” Group
EWG has overseen a Reign of Error lasting more than two decades
If you’ve picked up a newspaper during the last twenty years, odds are you’ve come across a breathlessly written news report warning against some item that is secretly poisoning you. “Sunscreen is causing cancer” the headlines might scream. “Why your baby’s bottle is poison,” says the local newscaster. “Non-organic vegetables are covered in toxins,” another report might ominously warn. If you actually read the story that accompanies these attention-grabbing headlines, you’ll notice that many of them come from the same source: the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and related organizations like the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
There’s really only one thing you need to know about the Environmental Working Group when it comes to its studies of toxins: 79 percent of members of the Society of Toxicology (scientists who know a little something about toxins) who rated the group say that the Environmental Working Group overstates the health risk of chemicals.
That’s because the EWG has a history of passing shady “science” off as solid facts. Its main talent isn’t research, it’s duping reporters into credulously transcribing their “findings.” A nonprofit organization that has learned how to turn public panic into a stream of hefty donations, the Environmental Working Group has no problem ginning up outrage that causes families needless worry and does incalculable damage to honest industries. Hyperbole, it seems, is big business – last year the EWG raised more than $6 million.
Sunscreen Scare
In July 2010, the Environmental Working Group released a sunscreen guide; in it, EWG argued that certain chemicals that are commonly used within sunscreen solutions are dangerous carcinogens and should be avoided. Its bad guy du jour was retinyl palmitate. As Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society pointed out in the Montreal Gazette, “better known as vitamin A, retinol plays an important role in maintaining normal skin function. When added to creams or lotions, it can reduce the appearance of fine lines, giving the skin a more youthful appearance.” Since it’s not stable, it is turned into retinyl palmitate, which enhances collagen formation and increases cell division.The EWG based its report on laboratory experiments showing that mice exposed to ultraviolet light while having retinyl palmitate applied to their skin developed tumors more quickly than mice that didn’t. The only problem, as Dr. Schwarcz points out, is that the study has not been peer reviewed, no sunscreen lotion consists solely (or even primarily) of retinyl palmitate, and another study from 2009 on hamsters concluded the exact opposite of what the new study shows. (Make that “the only three problems.”) Indeed, the New York-based Skin Cancer Foundation disputed the report’s findings and, according to the Palm Beach Post, is worried that “consumers confused about the report might stop using sunscreens.” This is a legitimate concern, since over-exposure to sunlight is a well-known cause of skin cancer.The Skin Cancer Foundation and Dr. Schwarcz weren’t the only ones to express concern. The Orange County Register reported that “Dr. Matt Goodman, a dermatologist in the melanoma program at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, says the Environmental Working Group’s claims on retinyl palmitate are suspect because they rely on research done on mice. … ‘This leads me to conclude that risk is extremely low, if nonexistent.’”
Greens Want to Hide the Truth about Chlorpyrifos
As part of that appeal, farm groups have filed an amicus brief detailing how the ban would undermine food production. Apparently, the greens don’t want the farmer’s side of the story told because it shows that bans come with serious tradeoffs. In this case, a potential court-ordered ban on chlorpyrifos would impose verifiable and real costs to farmers and consumers in exchange for little to no health benefits.
Claims about chlorpyrifos risks are based on junk science and outlandish hype. You can learn more about that from a prior post and paper on the topic. Here we take a look at what farmers say about the ban.
Filed on behalf of 28 farm-related organizations, the amicus brief combines comments and data provided by a wide range of agricultural producers. See the brief for the footnotes to the original quotes included in excerpts provided in this post.
Farmers use chlorpyrifos and other pesticides because they provide critically important crop protection benefits. When these products are banned the adverse impacts can be substantial. In the amicus brief, they explain:
[T]he panel’s Order directing EPA to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations of products containing chlorpyrifos threatens to wreak havoc on Agricultural Amici in the coming growing seasons. As the Secretary of Agriculture succinctly stated, “[f]or some crops and target pests, chlorpyrifos is the only line of defense, with no viable alternatives,” and the “immediate, and total loss of this crop protection tool endangers agricultural industries and is expected to have wide economic impacts.”