Another study refutes saccharin/cancer link
More than 16,000 attended this year's Pittsburgh Conference
at Pittsburgh's Penn Sheraton Hotel, which by then was unable to contain the growth pressures. A strike by hotel employees brought the situation to a head and the conference moved to Cleveland's more spacious Convention Center. Scheduling by Cleveland of its Home & Flower Show had become a problem in recent years with congestion caused by exhibitors for that
show moving in as Pittsburgh Conference exhibitors were trying to move out. Conference officials reached an understanding with the city about the consecutive scheduling. But, when last year the Home & Flower Show was again scheduled for the week following the Pittsburgh Conference, the conference officials pulled the event out of Cleveland and made the move to Atlantic City. D
EPA sets schedule for chemical testing rules The Environmental Protection Agency has finally come up with a schedule for proposing rules for testing a number of "priority" compounds identified by the Interagency Testing Committee as potential dangers to human health and the environment. The timetable, required by the Toxic Substances Control Act, for issuing rules on these compounds was long in coming and was finally forced on EPA by its loss of a suit earlier this year brought by the National Resources Defense Council (C&EN, Feb. 18, page 5). In accordance with the court's decision, EPA assistant administrator for pesticides and toxic substances Stephen D. Jellinek has submitted the proposed schedule for 18 priority substances. EPA was to have issued these proposed rules within one year after the compounds to be tested had been selected. The first list of chemicals was submitted in 1977 but no test rules were ever proposed. According to the schedule EPA now proposes, the agency will issue the first proposed rules in June. These rules will cover chlorobenzenes, chloromethanes, and acrylamide. The kinds of tests likely to be required 8
C&EN March 17, 1980
include oncogenicity, teratogenicity, reproductive effects, neurotoxicity, mutagenicity, and behavioral effects. Dates for proposed rules for the remaining substances extend from the end of 1980 into 1984. To keep its workload reasonable and to remain in compliance with TSCA, EPA is initiating advance notice of proposed rule-making procedures for hazardous substances. This practice already is used in other branches of EPA. The purpose is to provide notice of EPA's expected course of action on a substance and to get comments from all interested persons quickly. Jellinek says this may delay proposed testing rules, but final rules may come sooner since in issuing the proposed rules EPA will have considered and perhaps resolved most of the controversial aspects of the rules. A spokesman for NRDC says the proposed schedule enters a period of negotiation at this point, as the two antagonists try to work out their differences. Technically, NRDC and other intervenors have two weeks to present responses to the EPA plan, but it may take much longer before a consensus is reached on this difficult problem. •
Another epidemiologic study, the third to be released during the past few months, adds to the growing belief that users of the artificial sweetener, saccharin, are not subject to an increased risk of cancer. The latest of the studies was conducted by Ernst L. Wynder and Steven D. Stellman of the American Health Foundation in New York City, and is published in the March 14 issue of Science. Their study involved 367 bladder cancer patients, making it equivalent in scope to one conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health and reported a week earlier (C&EN, March 10, page 29). Both studies undermine reports of a few years ago that detected an apparent association between saccharin consumption, particularly when heavy and regular, and increased bladder cancer incidence. Wynder and Stellman state emphatically, "No association was found between use of artificial sweeteners or diet beverages and bladder cancer." Alan S. Morrison and Julie E. Buring, who conducted the Harvard study, hedge only slightly by concluding that "users of artificial sweeteners have little or no excess risk of cancer of the lower urinary tract." All three of the recent studies, including a larger-scale survey directed by the National Cancer Institute (C&EN, Jan. 7, page 25), failed to detect any consistent effect of relative dose (that is, level of saccharin consumption) on cancer incidence. It is not surprising that the Atlanta-based Calorie Control Council has been quick to hail the new studies. "This scientific record should prove reassuring to those persons who rely on saccharin products for dietary or health reasons," says the council's president, Robert H. Kellen. The council is an association of manufacturers and suppliers of dietary foods and beverages. The question of saccharin's efficacy for such users still bothers some members of the medical community, however. For example, NCI epidemiologist Robert Hoover, who coordinated the recent large-scale survey of 3000 bladder cancer patients, still recommends caution. "When all the evidence of toxicity is weighed against the lack of objective evidence of benefit," he notes, "any use by nondiabetic children or pregnant women, heavy use by young women of childbearing age, and excessive use by anyone are ill-advised and should be actively discouraged by the medical community." •
