Re: Food Irradiation

["H. G Claycamp" <hgc2+@pitt.edu>]

There were several early studies utilizing a toxicology feeding
protocol that seemed to lead to ill health in mice or rats.  ALL of such
studies can be shown to be related one or both of two ARTIFACTS:

1.	heavily irradiated foods lose vitamins.  In the monotonous rodent
diet, there aren't enough other sources of vitamins to replace the missing
vitamins.  This is clearly not the case in the typical US/Canadian/West
European diet.

2.	The logic of toxicology studies on food additives is to increase
the dose (i.e., look at saccharin!).  In order to increase dietary content
of irradiated foods, some ill-conceived studies fed too much of one food.
Even the controls (non-irradiated food) eating too much of one food source
will get sick.

Carefully designed and performed science has, since the 1920's, shown
irradiated food to be safe.  

Recommended:  J.F. Diehl, THe Safety of IRradiated Food, 2nd Ed., 1996?


(hgc2+@pitt.edu)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
H. Gregg Claycamp, Ph.D., C.H.P. 
Assoc. Prof. and Assoc. Chair 
Dept. of Environmental and 
  Occupational Health 
University of Pittsburgh 
412-967-6524 FAX:  412-624-1020


On Tue, 3 Nov 1998 Tedchp@aol.com wrote:

> A recent issue of Modern Maturity has a somewhat positive article about food
> irradiation.  However, as a counterpoint they quote Ronnie Cummins, director
> of the Pure Food Campaign, as saying that, "there are numerous instances where
> feeding animals irradiated food produced heart problems, cancer, reproductive
> damage, and chromosome abnormalities."
> 
> Does anyone have any information on these "numerous instances"?  I am not
> aware of any studies that showed those affects from gamma irradiated food, but
> thought this was a good place to check before writing a rebuttal letter to the
> editor.
> 
> Ted Allen, CHP
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