Few Rewards For Journalists Who Debunk Health Scares

DAYS before the Fourth of July weekend, important facts about an environmental health scare were reported in this newspaper and others across the country.

No, I am not referring to the "Fear in the Fields" series by Times reporter Duff Wilson, which sounded the alarm over trace amounts of heavy metals recycled in fertilizer. I am referring to a story about electromagnetic fields published the same day Wilson's front-page series began (July 3).

The page-A 9 article's headline read: "Study: Leukemia is not linked to power lines."

Results of the eight-year, $4.5-million investigation by the National Cancer Institute were published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine after rigorous peer review. The scientists studied more than 1,200 children - the largest EMF study population to date - and found that cancer-stricken children were no more likely to live near low-level, EMF-emitting power lines than healthy children.

For those who have followed the EMF debate closely, this authoritative conclusion comes as no surprise.

Last November, after conducting an exhaustive assessment of over 500 studies published in the last 17 years, the independent National Research Council reported that there is "no conclusive and consistent evidence" that exposure to low-level EMFs threatens human health.

Much of the public's entrenched fear about EMF can be traced to a single journalist, Paul Brodeur, who penned a frightening series on the subject for the New Yorker in 1989. His articles won the Sigma Chi Delta Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia University's National Magazine Award, and an honor from the American Bar Association. Bold newspaper headlines about Brodeur's work (Is My Electric Blanket Killing Me?) engendered parental panic and, to the delight of the ABA, much junk litigation that continues today.

Journalists who questioned the faulty science and bad public policy behind the costly EMF scare - particularly investigative reporter Michael Fumento, who first debunked Brodeur's work in 1993 - won nothing but scorn. Yet, Brodeur was stunningly wrong about what he hyped as "the most pervasive public health hazard Americans face."

So far, however, no organization has asked Brodeur to return his coveted journalism prizes.

As the New England Journal of Medicine noted, Brodeur's crusade "produced considerable paranoia, but little insight and no prevention." The same could be said of news coverage of dozens of other debunked health scares, from Alar and cellular phones to asbestos in schools and acid rain.

Why does this media-generated pattern - shock, regulate, repeat - persist?

One, news that something is not a human health hazard isn't nearly as titillating as ominous reporting that it might be risky.

Two, it is far easier to bash industry and advocate more spending to reduce perceived risks than it is to explain that risk-reduction measures themselves can also endanger lives by diverting public resources from major risks to minor ones.

And three, most of the media and the general public accept uncritically what environmentalists call the "precautionary principle." This is the belief that nothing should be used, sold, or otherwise approved by the government until and unless it's proven safe. Sounds reasonable. But if you applied a prove-it-conclusively-safe standard to the rest of your life, you'd never get in a car or out of bed. We wouldn't have open-heart surgery, penicillin, skyscrapers, airplanes - or electricity.

Life is a progressive series of risk-benefit calculations. For adherents of the precautionary principle, risk-benefit comparisons are irrelevant. All that matters is whether a substance or technology may do harm. If the risk of harm cannot be ruled out, they argue, then the risky product or activity should be banned, regulated or labeled to death.

Which brings us back to "Fear in the Fields." The Times series has prompted a pledge from Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott to draft new federal legislation that will "remedy (the) potentially hazardous practice" of recycling trace levels of heavy metals in fertilizer. State officials elsewhere say they will lobby for more research funds.

This is certainly an impressive demonstration of media clout; Wilson has done some provocative reporting and quality story-telling. But is a regulatory crackdown on fertilizer ultimately in the public interest? Of course, cadmium and lead can cause harm at certain exposures. But so can the chlorine used to kill bacteria in our water supply or the hundreds of naturally occurring chemicals in a cup of coffee. The key question is not "Can X cause harm?," but these: Will a time-tested toxicological principle - Dosis sola facit venenum (Only the dose makes the poison) - be abandoned once again for no-safe-level hysteria? Will regulation be driven by solid evidence of human harm or by public perception? Will the costs of government intervention outweigh the rewards?

Too much caution, as the EMF scare and others like it have shown, can be as dangerous as too little. In a free and fear-prone society, the press has a duty to inform the public about the full benefits of technological innovation and the full costs of regulation - not just vice versa.

Crusading against the "better safe than sorry" mentality will never win a reporter many friends or medals. But if it helps stem the media's seemingly inexorable slide toward irrationality about environmental risk in the modern world, anti-shock journalism will be its own reward.

Michelle Malkin's column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is: malkin1@ix.netcom.com.