Chemical group attacks cancer agency reports

Abstract

The American Chemistry Council, the U.S. chemical industry’s main trade group, has launched the Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research to attack the credibility of reports on chemicals from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The trade group claims that the agency, which operates under the World Health Organization, suffers from persistent scientific and process deficiencies that result in public confusion and misinformed policy-making. The IARC counters that the charges are wrong and misleading. The report, or monograph, that ACC most criticizes is the one concluding that the herbicide glyphosate, invented by Monsanto, is a probable carcinogen. But the group is also critical of IARC’s carcinogenic labeling of other chemicals. Those determinations are used, for instance, to place warnings on consumer products under California’s Proposition 65, “despite an often infinitesimal risk of developing cancer as a result of products’ proper use,” ACC says. “The IARC Monographs Program has