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From: sanders@menlo70.UUCP (Rex Sanders)
Newsgroups: net.cooks,net.veg,net.med
Subject: Re: irradiated food
Message-ID: <199@menlo70.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Feb-84 15:13:10 EST
Article-I.D.: menlo70.199
Posted: Sun Feb 26 15:13:10 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 13:28:23 EST
References: <544@shark.UUCP>
Organization: USGS, Menlo Park CA
Lines: 32


  Everything I've read on the subject indicates that radioactive food
is not the worry - it's the chemical changes in the food caused by the
high-energy radiation blasting in.  (There is some fancy name for these
"byproducts", but I can't recall it now.)  Basically, the same
mechanism involved with producing cancer in living tissue.

  The main concern about these byproducts is their toxicity or
carcinogenicity (whew!).  The ammount and types of byproducts
identified so far inidicate no danger from direct toxicity.  All the
studies are not yet conclusive on the cancer-causing effects, because
the state of the art in detecting and evaluating these chemicals has
advanced so rapidly recently - i.e. 20 years of studies are not
necessarily relevant to this problem.

  Another thing to consider is *who* conducted the studies.  I'm not
referring to the usual claims of conflict of interest.  The scandals
surrounding several of the "independent" testing labs (IBT comes
quickly to mind) indicate that healthy scepticism is warranted of any
studies done by 1 or 2 labs, especially if the studies disagree.

  Can anyone quote studies with sources that touch on the byproducts &
carcinogen problem?

  One more thing to consider - if the food irradiating industry has
anything like the safety track record of the rest of the food industry,
how many workers will suffer from improper handling of the Cobalt-60?
How many shavings from those rods will fall off into the food?  How
will those rods be shipped and stored all over the country if this
becomes a large industry?

-- Rex