Search results for: environmental working group

  • Environmental Working Group (EWG)

    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 their 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. Their 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.

    The EWG issues press releases and studies on a wide range of topics, from sunscreen to cosmetics to drinking water to plastics to vaccines. They have become a go-to resource for the mainstream media, earning mentions in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. Even some conservative outlets, like the National Review, uncritically cite the EWG’s online farm subsidy database that tracks government payments to “Fortune 500 companies.”

    In reality, the Environmental Working Group is a cauldron where many of the worst pseudoscience smear campaigns are cooked up. They prey on the public’s distrust of polysyllabic scientific jargon — and reporters’ ignorance of the same — to make it sound as if everyday items with complicated names are, in fact, deadly dangerous.

    The EWG’s game plan is simple. It releases “scientific” analyses designed to make the public (especially parents) worry about extremely tiny amounts of “toxins” in everyday items. It throws around scary phrases like “cancer risk” and “nervous system toxicity” that is catnip for environmental reporters, many of whom uncritically pass along the EWG reports without scrutiny or fact-checking. If the EWG had its way, America would turn its back on the scientific advances make our crops more productive, prevent cancer, and keep our food fresh and safe.

    What readers are rarely told is that these studies are often based on extremely thin evidence and have a tendency to jump to conclusions unsupported by the science. Before taking anything this ridiculous group has to say seriously, it’s important to understand their pattern of peddling falsehoods. Here’s a sampling of some of the EWG’s greatest misses from the last 20 years:

    • In July 2010, the Environmental Working Group released a sunscreen guide; in it, they argued that certain chemicals that are commonly used within sunscreen solutions are dangerous carcinogens and should be avoided. Their 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.’”

    • An offshoot of the Environmental Working Group, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, released a report in 2007 decrying dangerous levels of lead in lipstick. Thirty-three red lipsticks were tested, and, using the standard for lead in candy of .01 parts per million, they concluded that more than half had “dangerous” amounts of lead. The only problem with the study is that it is total nonsense.

      Campaign for Safe Cosmetics logo

      The first problem comes from comparing lipstick, which is applied topically, to candy, which is ingested in full. Common sense dictates that there is clearly a difference between putting on some lipstick and eating the whole tube. Furthermore, testing conducted by the FDA and published in the July/August 2009 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmetic Science found that “lead levels found are within the range that would be expected from lipsticks formulated with permitted color additives and other ingredients that had been prepared under good manufacturing practice conditions.”

      The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is just as questionable in its use of data as the parent organization that is driving it. “These things sound terribly scary, but there’s a massive disconnect between how toxicologists evaluate risks and how activist groups evaluate risk,” Trevor Butterworth of George Mason University’s Center for Health and Risk Communication told the New York Times. Indeed, the Society of Toxicologists survey found that only 6 percent of toxicologists believe that “any” exposure to a harmful chemical like lead is unacceptable. They feel that the media (and the public) does not understand that “the dose makes the poison.”

      This point is driven home by the fact that the CSC provides no evidence showing that the trace amounts of lead in lipstick have caused any sort of problem. That comports with scientist’s understanding of the situation; in the aforementioned survey of toxicologists, only 26 percent think that cosmetics “pose a significant health risk.” The disconnect between the toxicologists and the EWG’s Campaign for Safe Cosmetics isn’t hard to understand. Real scientists try to determine whether or not a substance is harmful; the Environmental Working Group and its offshoots simply point to a substance’s existence, claim the sky is falling, and put out a press release.

    • At the end of 2009, the Environmental Working Group released a report on the quality of water available out of the tap in various localities across the country. Their results were both explosive – generating many unquestioning headlines from newspapers worried about their local water supplies – and mostly bunk.

      Between 2004 and 2008, the EWG found that the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority in Florida “reported 45 impurities in the water,” according to the Pensacola News Journal. The ECUA then commissioned the University of West Florida to examine the water. The results? “The UWF study showed that the ECUA did not exceed a single water quality standard set forth by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. ‘According to the accepted drinking water quality regulations, the water provided by ECUA offers minimal risk and is safe for human consumption according to federal and State of Florida standards,’” the study said.

      Other responses were blunter, and the study’s methodology was called into question. “The fault is with the Environmental Working Group,” David Wright of the Riverside Public Utilities told the Press-Enterprise. “They lied about groundwater test data and represented that as tap water data.” The EWG had tested water that had yet to be treated and passed it off as the stuff that comes out of your tap.

    • One of the worst things that the Environmental Working Group has done is contribute to the myth that vaccines are leading to a spike in autism in America’s children. In 2004, the EWG published the paper “Overloaded? New Science, new insights about mercury and autism in children.” The paper reported that there are “serious concerns about the studies that have allegedly proven the safety of mercury in vaccines” and stoked fears that childhood vaccines like those for Measles, Mumps and Rubella are responsible for increased incidences of autism.

      The EWG was playing a dangerous game here. By trying to put a scare into parents about the health of their children in order to score some free media coverage, they contributed to a growing subculture in which vaccines are shunned and kids are getting sick. In 2010, for example, an unvaccinated San Diego boy contracted measles during a trip to Europe, exposing 839 people to the disease upon return to the U.S.

      The EWG is literally putting children at risk of devastating childhood illnesses by propagating this phony science. And that’s what the vaccine-autism scare is: phony. It was first cooked up by a charlatan who fudged his data and is no longer allowed to practice medicine in his home country, and the theory has been rejected not just by autism activists but by the federal court system. Meanwhile, the EWG’s website continues to host articles alleging a link between vaccines and autism.

    • Vaccines aren’t the only healthy products that the Environmental Working Group has tried to scare people away from utilizing; they also have claimed that trace amounts of mercury in fish represent such a health risk that people should avoid eating seafood altogether. Instead of trying to balance concerns over mercury in fish with the health and nutritional benefits of eating seafood, the EWG put out scary press releases designed to oversimplify the issue and ensure a hyped-up response.

      As a result, Americans are now depriving themselves of the health benefits of fish. An article in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that, when it comes to scaring non-pregnant women away from eating fish because of mercury, “the net public health impact is negative. Although high compliance with recommended fish consumption patterns can improve public health, unintended shifts in consumption can lead to public health losses.” They also found that pregnant women who ignore fish altogether are also worse off with regard to heart disease, stroke, and prenatal cognitive development. Tuna is called brain food for a reason, after all.

      Of course, an even-handed look at the benefits and risks of eating fish is unlikely to convince reporters to cover the topic. Over-the-top warnings about the dire threat unborn children face from mercury? That’ll be sure to grab some eyeballs, keep the EWG in the public spotlight, and keep the donations flowing in. 

    • The EWG has long argued in favor of organic agriculture, claiming that pesticides are a danger to our health and a horrible threat to humanity. What they’re not telling us, of course, is that most of the pesticides we find on fresh produce are natural, and manufactured by plants themselves. In a 1995 interview with Vegetarian Times magazine, the award-winning Berkeley biologist Bruce Ames insisted that “99.99% of the pesticides we eat are naturally present in plants to ward off insects and other predators… Reducing our exposure to the 0.01% of ingested pesticides that are synthetic is not likely to reduce cancer rates.”

      And even that small portion of agricultural pesticides that are synthetic have resulted in tremendous gains for humanity, despite EWG’s unfounded assertions to the contrary. Man-made agricultural chemicals have been in use for over 50 years in the United States, and they are among the most rigorously tested and heavily regulated products in the economy. They have undeniably made fresh fruits and vegetables cheaper and more readily available for Americans, especially for the economically disadvantaged. The U.S. Public Health Service says that “such nutritional advances are largely responsible” for much of the 30 years of increased life expectancy that we’ve all gained in the last 100 years. Organics aren’t necessarily any healthier; only one in ten toxicologists thinks that “organic or ‘natural’ products are inherently safer.”

  • Environmental Media Services

    If you’ve ever been advised to steer clear of a food, beverage, or other consumer product based on the claims of a nonprofit organization, you’ve likely been “spun” by Fenton’s multi-million-dollar message machine — and Environmental Media Services (EMS) has probably been the messenger.

    EMS is the communications arm of leftist public relations firm Fenton Communications. Based in Washington, in the same office suite as Fenton, EMS claims to be “providing journalists with the most current information on environmental issues.” A more accurate assessment might be that it spoon-feeds the news media sensationalized stories, based on questionable science, and featuring activist “experts,” all designed to promote and enrich David Fenton’s paying clients, and build credibility for the nonprofit ones. It’s a clever racket, and EMS & Fenton have been running it since 1994.

    Tired of being nagged about which fish are politically correct to eat? Fretting about choosing the “right” catch of the day? You just might be under the influence of SeaWeb and the Natural Resources Defense Council (both Fenton clients), and their “Give Swordfish a Break!” campaign, communicated for over two years by the trusty flacks at EMS. Never mind that Rebecca Lent of the National Marine Fisheries Service said that Atlantic swordfish “are not considered endangered.” The point was to make SeaWeb and NRDC more believable and trusted when the next big enviro-agenda came along.

    Freaked out about so-called “Frankenfoods”? Worried that biotech corn will make you glow in the dark? You’ve probably been exposed to something harmful, all right — EMS’s anti-biotech message, approved and bankrolled by the large segment of the “natural” and organic foods industry that relies on Fenton Communications for its publicity. These include Whole Foods Markets, Green Mountain Coffee, Honest Tea, Kashi Cereal, and Rodale Press, a magazine publisher (Organic Style, Organic Gardening, and many more) that makes millions off of the misguided notion that organic foods are safer to eat than their conventional or biotech counterparts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s position, by the way, is crystal clear. Former USDA Secretary Dan Glickman has said that “[j]ust because something is labeled as ‘organic’ does not mean it is superior, safer, or more healthy than conventional food.”

    Afraid to eat dairy products from cows that have been treated with hormones to produce extra milk? Scared that the hormone, which the FDA calls “entirely safe,” will make its way into your body and cause cancer or other irreparable damage? Beginning with a huge press conference in 1998, EMS pushed that very message relentlessly for over two years. And they did it on behalf of Ben & Jerry’s, a paying Fenton client. Why would Ben & Jerry’s care? Because their ice cream is made with hormone-free milk, and David Fenton calculated that a little health hysteria would drive customers to their “alternative” product quite nicely.

    It’s called “black marketing,” and Environmental Media Services has become the principal reason Fenton Communications is so good at it. EMS lends an air of legitimacy to what might otherwise be dismissed (and rightly so) as fear-mongering from the lunatic fringe. In addition to pre-packaged “story ideas” for the mass media, EMS provides commentaries, briefing papers, and even a stable of experts, all carefully calculated to win points for paying clients. These “experts,” though, are also part of the ruse. Over 70% of them earn their paychecks from current or past Fenton clients, all of which have a financial stake in seeing to it that the scare tactics prevail. It’s a clever deception perpetrated on journalists who generally don’t consider do-gooder environmentalists to be capable of such blatant and duplicitous “spin.”

    The first rule of this game is that it’s strictly pay-for-play. For a price, you too can promote your product by maligning the competition with junk-science smear tactics. To Fenton Communications, you’ll be a “client”; down the hall at EMS, though, you’ll join the ranks of its “project partners.” And nobody will be the wiser.

  • 10 YEARS AFTER ALAR, APPLES STILL NEED A CLEANUP

    Headline of a full-page New York Times advertisement run by the Environmental Working Group in 1999, paid for by a grant from the Florence & John Schumann Foundation, whose principal trustee is PBS’s long-time environmental scaremonger Bill Moyers

  • David Fenton

    Co-founder, Environmental Media Services; director, Environmental Working Group; founder, Fenton Communications; co-founder, New Economy Communications; co-founder, Death Penalty Information Ctr.; former PR director, Rolling Stone Magazine

  • Drummond Pike

    President, Tides Foundation & Tides Center; president, eGrants.org. president, Highwater Inc.; director, Environmental Working Group; director, Solidago Foundation; founder & assoc. dir., Youth Project (Wash., DC); former exec. dir., Shalan Foundation

  • Kenneth A. Cook

    Co-founder & president, Environmental Working Group; board member of The Organic Center; board member, Environmental Media Services; former vice pres., Ctr. for Resource Economics; former press dir., World Wildlife Fund

  • Brody Charlotte

    Chairwoman, Environmental Working Group; organizing director, Center for Health, Environment, & Justice (f.k.a. CCHW); Co-coordinator, Healthcare Without Harm campaign; former director, Planned Parenthood of North Carolina; former professional nurse (RN)

  • Sandy Buchanan

    Secretary, Environmental Working Group; Executive Director, Ohio Citizen Action


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