The recent opinion piece in The Anniston Star entitled "Monsanto PCBs to be here a long time" (Feb. 25) presents a one-sided and misleading perspective on the potential adverse human health effects of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Your readers deserve and depend on your paper to provide a fair and balanced presentation of issues of importance to the community. The Anniston community is appropriately interested in and carefully watching matters involving PCBs. It is vital that these issues be handled properly and sensibly.
As long-time members of this community, our company and its employees and retirees care deeply that PCB issues be handled appropriately.
We at Solutia are committed to working responsibly and effectively to manage and control PCBs associated with our former manufacturing operations. Working cooperatively with state and federal regulators, we have successfully designed and implemented extensive projects at and near our plant, as well as other locations in the greater Anniston community. We will continue to work with the communities and with state and federal agencies to put in place secure and effective actions that address environmental and community needs.
For everyone to be able to make informed decisions about the issues facing the community and Solutia, it is important that scientifically sound information be available. Mr. Myers' selective comments about possible health effects associated with PCBs were not helpful in that respect. In the paragraphs below, I have relied on publicly available information, written by respected scientists and public health officials, to illustrate that the weight of scientific evidence simply doesn't support the conclusions that Myers presented in his opinion piece.
Myers describes as "striking" a 1997 article reporting for the first time an association between PCB levels in blood serum and the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
But what do the authors of the study say? They describe their study as "hypothesis-generating," which means the study raises a question worthy of further investigation. They go on to note that their results need to be repeated and that other potential causes need to be examined. Finally they state, "Moreover, the inconsistency between our findings and those from studies of PCB-exposed occupational cohorts needs to be explained."(1)
For example, the most recent and most thorough study of PCB-exposed workers found no association between PCBs and lymphomas. In contrast to the contention in The Star article that the links between PCBs and cancer have grown stronger, the authors of this large study conclude: "... The lack of consistent findings with respect to occupational PCB exposure and mortality in studies conducted to date would suggest a lack of an association.(2)
The Star article also raises the specter of children suffering from "impacts on cognitive development" because of exposure to PCBs. A number of studies, including those noted in the article, report subtle effects on children exposed in utero (during gestation) to the highest levels of PCBs measured in the studies. However, these results are not universally accepted, especially by scientists and public health officials who have critically reviewed all of the evidence.
For example, two public health officials from Alaska, commenting on the Jacobsen study cited in the article conclude: "... We think this study provides little evidence that in utero exposure to PCBs affects intellectual function."(3)
Two physicians from Yale University concluded: "... the significance of the Jacobsen data is uncertain, and their findings ultimately shed little light on these issues."(4)
In addition, a recent study by U.S. government scientists concluded in a paper presented last year: "These data provide no support for the hypothesis that in utero exposure to background levels of PCBs is associated with lower IQ scores at age 7."(5)
Finally, it should be noted that the children tested in the various studies perform in the normal ranges of the various tests. The Jacobsens themselves, in the study cited by Myers, state: "There was no evidence of gross intellectual impairment among the children we studied."(6)
Myers relies heavily on the experience of a group of people in Taiwan who consumed rice cooking oil accidentally contaminated with very high levels of a heat-degraded industrial fluid. While the article implies that PCBs were the cause of the adverse health effects observed in these poisoning victims, it is widely accepted in the scientific and medical communities that the causes of the "rice-oil disease" were not, in fact, PCBs. Again quoting the Yale physicians:
However the Japanese and Taiwanese syndromes ... have been attributed mainly to polychlorinated dibenzofurans, thermal degradation products of PCBs present in the contaminated oils, rather than to PCBs themselves."(4)
Other statements in the article deserve response, but these examples demonstrate that Myers' selective interpretation of the scientific literature does not reflect the views of the broader scientific community, including the authors of the studies on which he relies.
In order to provide the Anniston community with access to information relevant to these subjects, Solutia is placing the information referenced in this letter in the Anniston Public Library.
Robert G. Kaley II is Director of Environmental Affairs for Solutia Inc., St. Louis, Mo.
Abstracts for Kaley's references:
(1) A nested case-control study of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and serum organochlorine residues, Rothman N, Cantor KP, Blair A, Bush D, Brock JW, Helzlsouer K, Zahm SH, Needham LL, Pearson GR, Hoover RN, Comstock GW, Strickland PT, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland; The Lancet, July 26, 1997.
(2) Mortality in male and female capacitor workers exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls, Kimbrough RD, Doemland ML, LeVois ME, Institute for Evaluating Health Risks, Washington, D.C.; Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, March 1999.
(3) Intellectual Function of Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero
John P. Middaugh, M.D., Grace M. Egeland, Ph.D., Alaska Division of Public Health, Anchorage, Alaska; Letter to the Editor, New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 27, 1997.
(6) Intellectual Impairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero, Joseph L. Jacobson, Sandra W. Jacobson; New England Journal of Medicine,Sept. 12, 1996.
Abstracts for two of Kaley's citations are not available on the Internet:
(4) Borak, J., and L. Israel, "Does In Utero Exposure to PCBs Cause Developmental Toxicity?", The OEM Report, 1997, Volume 11, No. 2, pp. 13-18.
(5) Gray, K., et al., "In Utero Exposure to Background Levels of Polychlorinated Biphenyls and Cognitive Functioning Among School-Aged Children," Supplement to American Journal of Epidemiology, 2000, Volume 151, No. 11, page S24.
