Debunking the Debunker's Debunker

The effect of environmental contaminants on cancer should be a scientific issue, not a political one. But it is probably too late for that. Industry exploits the uncertainties (for a good account of the phenomenon see Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's book Merchants of Doubt), but so do personal injury and mass-tort lawyers looking for the deepest pockets when they represent plaintiffs with cancer. Environmental organizations have their own agendas, and that was the problem with the Mother Jones article I described in my previous post. It was not an objective journalistic inquiry but a product of the Center for Public Integrity, which aims to show that hexavalent chromium (aka chromium 6) really did cause a cancer outbreak in the town of Hinkley, California, the site of the Erin Brockovich story. I already described why there is serious doubt that chromium 6 in drinking water is a human carcinogen. Epidemiological ...