Something smells fishy

Washington Times, Mike Casey
Published August 18, 2003

There's lies, statistics and then there's ... well, there's Elizabeth M. Whelan and her corporate front group, the innocent-sounding American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Ms. Whelan is upset that our organization did the first-ever tests of PCB levels in farmed salmon bought from American store shelves. ("Taking the fish fright bait," Commentary, Friday). We teamed with an accredited lab to determine the levels of PCBs in the salmon, then compared those levels to standards the Environmental Protection Agency recommends. Somehow, Ms. Whelan thinks consumers shouldn't have that information, because PCBs don't hurt you. She would be practically the only one in the world to say or think this, but that's the viewpoint the chemical industry pays her organization to push. Ms. Whelan won't tell you that, but we can prove it with internal industry documents at www.ewg.org. She questions the motives of others, but hides her master's identity. Ms. Whelan can wail all she wants. But, as we said when we did our testing, it's a shame the government and the industry haven't done extensive testing, and we hope our research will push them to do what they should have been doing in the first place. MIKE CASEY Vice President for Public Affairs Environmental Working Group Washington