In the last few months, I’ve fallen victim twice to an overbearing display of panic in the face of misinformation. First it was “evil plastic” and now “killer tomatoes.” Neither of which constituted a real threat, and one of which was labeled by The Canadian Food Inspection Agency as “an abundance of caution.”
The “evil” plastic - Bisphenol A - has been made out to be the greatest killer since polio by some parties. Yet rarely do we ever hear of who is truly at risk; young children. An infant who’s parent use formula minght ingest up to 13 µg/kg/day of Bisphenol A; a full 37 µg/kg/day less than is specified as safe by the US Government. We see that at those rate there’s an “increased chance” of prostate or breast cancer. Nowhere that I could find is that “increased chance” quantified. It’s just “more.” 1% more? 10% more? 100% more? No one seems able to tell me. What’s more, how long have we been using Bisphenol A in food packaging? About 50 years. That doesn’t seem like a very long time for an involved study on the long term effects of its use.
Now I’m not advocating the use of plastics containing BPA - I even replaced my babies bottles (better safe than sorry after all…) - but to buy into the theory of the risks of Bisphenol A because people say I should drives me crazy. How controlled can the experiments to determine the long term consequences of heightened usage be? How many other factors are involved in creating a control for something this complex? How large were the sample sizes? For how long were these studies held? Most importantly: where is any of that information in any of the news coverage we’re exposed to? To my mind, the news these days strictly adheres to forgetting the facts and selling the fear. It’s absolutely appalling.
For the recent Salmonella scare, things are even more ridiculous. In Texas, Salmonella was found on some tomatoes from one farm. That’s a bad thing, the tomatoes from that farm should be pulled from shelves. But what actually happened? In Alberta, tomatoes from ALL farms were pulled from shelves. That is just silly. I will admit that I know relatively little about Salmonella, how it spreads, or any of that. What I do know is that a large percentage of the tomatoes that I purchase here in Alberta are grown in BC. Not Texas. So the tomatoes that were pulled from my grocer’s shelves were - in all likelihood - grown over 4,000km away from where the Salmonella ridden tomatoes were. Where was that little tidbit in the news coverage? Absolutely nowhere to be seen or heard.
My willingness to accept or respect modern news agencies plumments with each and every day they spend fear mongering with half truths and human interest BS. I don’t know which is worse; that news agencies hold no respect for facts, or that we - as their audience - don’t demand it. Have we really become so docile as to blindly buy into anything we see on the television?
