Word: alaric
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...produced a regulatory tangle at EPA and a superfluous Superfund to clean dump sites. Government restrictions on man-made chemicals are absurdly stringent in proportion to ; their risk, says Ames. He notes that while the public panicked last spring because of trace amounts of the synthetic growth regulator Alar found on apples, many fruits contain natural carcinogens in concentrations 1,000 times as great. Observes Ames: "Eating vegetables and lowering fat intake will do more to reduce cancer than eliminating pollutants...
...speed without wearing seat belts, go hang gliding and expose themselves to the cancer-causing rays of the sun. On the other side, they suffer a bad case of the jitters about the smallest threat to personal well-being. They flee from apples that might bear a trace of Alar and fret about radon, nuclear power...
...most serious case people usually make against grapefruit is that it's a bit too tart. But last week consumer groups in South Korea launched a boycott of U.S. grapefruit because they believe the produce is contaminated with Alar, a chemical preservative and suspected carcinogen that has been used by apple processors...
...South Korean protest was triggered when a test requested by consumer groups showed the Alar content of U.S. grapefruit to be 0.5 parts per million or less. But since the lab equipment was not accurate enough to measure below that level, this was "equivalent to a finding of no Alar," says Dan Gunter, executive director of Florida's department of citrus. Says he: "Alar is not used on grapefruit." The Korean government declared U.S. grapefruit safe, but American growers fear the sour taste may linger...
...sauce over Unilever's Ragu because Campbell runs a day-care center and Unilever invests in South Africa. Consumers are eating chicken instead of tuna salad because thousands of dolphins drown each year in tuna nets. They have put pressure on Uniroyal to halt distribution of the suspected carcinogen Alar, a chemical used to ripen apples and keep them crisp, which may have influenced the company's decision last month to take Alar off the U.S. market...