It has taken more than a decade of wrangling but the Environmental Protection Agency has finally said pesticide makers must disclose the hidden ingredients in their poisons.

Yesterday, the agency said it was drafting a new rule which will require manufacturers to fess up and identify the estimated 4,000 different “inert” materials in their pesticides.

Marla Cone, the Editor in Chief of Environmental Health News, writes that inert ingredients as anything added to a pesticide that does not kill or control a pest.

“In some cases, those ingredients are toxic and cites formaldehyde, bisphenol A, sulfuric acid, toluene, benzene and styrene as some of the ingredients that are allowed in pesticides but that are not identified on labels.

Pesticide manufacturers and their lobbyists have been voracious and successful in stalling disclosure of these chemicals.

They said they are worried about disclosing proprietary or trade secrets, but health and environmental activists say the companies really fear how the public will react to the information on what’s actually in the widely used pest, weed and fungal poisons.

For example, Cone wrote that a recent study found that one inert substance, called polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, used in the popular herbicide Roundup is more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself.

Year after year, EPA denied or ignored petitions from public health and environmental activists and the attorneys general in at least ten states seeking disclosure of the chemicals. But now the new administration says it plans to draft a rule that will increase transparency, protect public health and encourage companies to replace toxic substances.

“EPA believes disclosure of inert ingredients on product labels is important to consumers who want to be aware of all potentially toxic chemicals, both active and inert ingredients, in pesticide products,” according to the agency’s website.

Jay Vroom, the boss of CropLife America, which is the public voice of the pesticide manufacturers, said he found the EPA decision “just baffling.”

He again told EHN’s Cone that his clients are concerned they will be revealing confidential business information, or trade secrets, about their formulas.

Here is a link to the EPA announcement.

During the campaign and several times since, President Obama promised to do “everything possible” to increase the safety of America’s food supply.

In what must be considered a very small step, but a step nevertheless, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that their top managers would walk side-by-side through barnyards and farm fields to help develop new food safety rules.

From defendingfoodsafety.com

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says, “President Obama, like most Americans, wants immediate improvements in our food safety system.

“As such, we are pulling together all our best resources – state and federal – to improve the safety of our foods and to work with growers to protect and promote the health of our nation.”

Sebelius’ counterpart, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, says his agency is committed to working to ensure that Americans have access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food.

He adds that the tag-teaming of food safety is another example of an “innovative and aggressive effort to strengthen protections against unsafe food and food-borne illness.”

The White House has shuffled out the joined-at-the-hip Sebelius and Vilsack team more times in the past nine month than the Bush Administration ever did with his HHS and Ag secretaries, according to a friend at the OMB who actually tallies things like this.

But bliss at the worker bee level may not be as easy to generate.

FDA and USDA inspectors with whom I’ve worked over the years say relations between many middle managers in the food safety sections of both agencies has been so sour that it would curdle milk.

In part, some of the intramural angst comes from sparring over budgets (who gets more and why,) regulations (who can and should enforce food safety laws,) and blame-laying (who will Congress and the press dump on after the next massive outbreak of E. coli, salmonella or some other food-borne pathogen breaks loose.)

Leanne Skelton, who heads the Fresh Products Branch of the USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service, has 22 years working with the fruit and vegetable industry.  She is being loaned to the FDA for six months as that agency attempts to develop new safety regulations for produce.

Through the initiative, FDA is gathering information and seeking feedback on safety rules from the fresh produce industry, including small and organic farmers.

Here is a link to Tuesday’s announcement.

In an attempt to head off some of the pithy comments accusing me of being a fear monger, let me admit that, in this case, I am.

Photo from U/Michigan

I don’t think most of us realize how perilous our water supply is.

We may know that the water we drink is often laced with minute amounts second-hand pharmaceuticals: estrogen, antibiotics, and dozens of other meds. In reality, they are so heavily diluted that there is no apparent risk.

Envision a thimble of poison in a swimming pool of water, the EPA offers as an example.  Low dose, but, is anyone studying it?

But what about the growing amount of nano-scale material that is going down our drains? Nanosilver washed from clothing and bedding and the drums of nano-coated washers and driers?

EPA admits that today virtually none of the nation’s public water filtration systems can prevent these minute heavy metal particles, as well as other nano-ized substances, from getting into our drinking water. But, EPA says it hasn’t studied the possible health effects.

If you want to get an idea of how widespread the contamination of our water supply is, here are two links.  The first is an EPA list of contaminants  in drinking water.

The second is an investigation by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg that says, “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected at a Cost in Suffering .”

Duhigg reports that in the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

On the other side of the world, Bao Anh of the Vietnamese paper Thanh Nien reported that more than 100 people living in a commune near Hanoi have been killed by cancer  caused by pesticides from nearby farms fouling the river and community wells.

The U.S. has its own problems with farm chemicals. Can you say atrazine?

It’s one of agricultures most heavily used herbicides, and EPA says that it has been found in high levels throughout the country and has done little or nothing about it.

For more than two decades, battles have been fought within the EPA and the European Union and among their advisory panels over the danger of atrazine.  The agency and the manufacturer insist that the herbicide sold by the Swiss- based Syngenta is safe. Many toxicologists and public and worker health advocates, say they have the proof that it’s not.

“Those most at risk are people living in farming communities where the water supplies, both underground and in reservoirs, are often heavily contaminated with atrazine,” says a weary scientist in EPA’s pesticide office.

“And it’s these farmers and their families who are least likely to raise hell about it because it’s great for crop growth,” he added.

We have the ingenuity to clean or stop most of this pollution of our water supply. What it takes is a willingness and money. Nether appears to be in abundance.

Five years ago, former Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois introduced the Water for the Poor Act of 2005, aimed at poor nations around the world. The State Department says that as of last year, because of Simon’s bill, more than 7.7 million people received improved access to safe drinking water.

Today, a spin-off of that bill stagnates in the Senate. The legislation – sponsored by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Tennessee’s Bob Corker of the Foreign Relations committee – is called Water for the Word Act. It would help provide 100 million people in third-world countries with sustainable access to clean water. But first it has to get to the full senate.

When I asked a lawyer on the Senate committee where the bill is stalled whether it contained anything to help the poor in the U.S. get clean water, he responded that the sign on the committee door said, “Foreign Relations.’’

(Soon I’ll move a little follow up that briefly examines what happens when we have no water, clean or dirty. And that’s well on its way to happening.)

The logo of urine farming fans

The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that plants fertilized with urine produced four times more tomatoes than nonfertilized plants and as much as plants given traditional chemical fertilizer.

The researchers from the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Kuopio, Finland, said urine has been shown to work well on cucumber, corn, cabbage, and other crops, but tomatoes were selected for the study because it is commonly cultivated in home gardens and is an ingredient in many recipes.

The results suggest that urine can be used as a substitute for regular fertilizer to increase the yields of tomatoes without posing any microbial or chemical risks, the report says.

Urine for the study was collected from several private homes over the winter.  Taste testing by a panel of 20 individuals found all tomato samples were evaluated as being equally good.

Here is a link to the actual Finnish study and, if you’re really into this concept of gardening, this is a link to a UK website that will tell you all need to know about urine farming, including where to get urine-diverting toilets and urinals.

Apparently not so.

William Norwood at IFT science conference

William Norwood, president of nanoAgri Systems, said the Environmental Protection Agency told him that he wasn’t permitted to market his company’s new nanosilver, antibacterial packaging.

“This just doesn’t make any sense at all,“ Norwood told me at a recent international nanotechnology science conference convened by the Institute of Food Technologists.

Holding court at a table near the front of the conference room, Norwood ticked off recent reports of dangerous outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

He explained that extensive tests of his company’s nano coating resulted in a dramatic reduction of — and, in some tests, complete elimination of – the most virulent food-borne pathogens.

He said he couldn’t get a clear answer from the EPA on why he couldn’t move forward with the process his company developed.

Twice since the June gathering of thousands of food scientists in Anaheim, I called EPA to find out why Norwood’s product was being held off the market.

I’m still waiting for an official answer, but people in the agency who admit they don’t know the specifics of Norwood’s plight have an opinion. They tell me it may have been prompted by actions of public health activists who demanded that the EPA handle nanosilver products under its pesticide rules. The agency has been slow to react.

“Nano is now a fear word and restrictions haphazardly applied will stifle many needed advancements that can improve health and other vital areas,” Norwood said.

“Nanotechnology isn’t being given a chance by federal regulators and environmental activists,’’ he added, rapping his fist on the table.

During his formal presentation, the head of the Virginia-based company explained that the Defense Department alone wastes hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of spoiled or bacteria-contaminated fruit and vegetables that are useless and dangerous when they reach the troops.

Norwood told the scientists that he began working with nanomaterial as a way of protecting his business. Too many of his clients were being forced out of business because salmonella and other bacteria had infected large amounts of the fresh vegetables they were shipping.

“Nano science needs to be given a fair chance,’’ he said.

Norwood’s frustrations are understandable. And people that I spoke to last week at the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA privately said that Norwood’s coating could be of great value.

But, they offered, Norwood may have run into a bureaucratic buzz saw over at EPA. The agency is receiving significant criticism because it hasn’t done more to monitor and regulate nanotechnology.

The fact that Norwood’s process uses nanosilver particles may have made him a more likely target.

The frenzied marketing of more frivolous products containing nanosilver particles quickly reached absurd levels this decade.

Magazine and television ads touted the “miracle anti-bacterial agent and odor-killer” available in nano-infused bras, panties, athletic supporters, socks, pants and scores of other products.

It didn’t take long for environmental scientists to find community water treatment plants loaded with nanosilver washed from these clothing items.

Most filtration systems can’t stop these nano-sized particles from entering the water supply. More importantly, very little research has been done on the health effects from the resulting exposure to humans and animals.

Silver nano particles Photo ACA

The report, authored by Friends of the Earth and Health Care Without Harm Europe, details what they call “the growing public health threat posed by nano-silver particles in consumer products.”

“What we’ve learned is alarming,” said Ian Illuminato, one of the report’s authors.

“Major corporations are putting nano-silver into a wide variety of consumer products with virtually no oversight, and there are potentially serious health consequences as a result. The workers who manufacture these products, the families that use them, and the environment are all at risk.”

Human consumption of silver is not new and medical historians have traced its health benefits back

Ian Illuminato, Friends of the Earth

more than a century. At that time, the literature reports, people had ready access to beneficial silver in their diet because it was plentiful in surface and ground waters.

“What we’re concerned about is when the silver is scaled to nano size because evidence shows that it is far more potent. That potency – the impact on human health – is what is we don’t yet know,” Illuminato told me.

His concern is shared by other scientists who also worry that nanosilver doesn’t distinguish between good and bad bacteria. It kills all bacteria, even the good bacteria that humans and animals need to survive.

“We are playing with fire, especially at a time when anti-bacterial resistance is an ever increasing medical problem globally,” said report co-author Dr. Rye Senjen, of Australia.

“Do we really need to coat cups, bowls and cutting boards, personal care products, children’s toys and infant products in nano-silver for ‘hygienic’ reasons?” he asked.

The Korean manufacturer Samsung made the first clothes washer with a nanosilver-coated drum and said it would kill over 600 different bacteria.

Nanoparticles are one billionth of a meter in size or, as one scientist told me at a nano-in-food conference this week in California, “Slice a human hair lengthwise into a 100 slivers and a single one of those is what we’re dealing with. We are manipulating single molecules and atoms.”

Andrew Maynard

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, one of the best known centers for nanotech policy research, presented testimony before Congress last year and cautioned that hundreds of products with nano particles are on the market, with three to five new ones added every week.

Andrew Maynard, the lead scientist for the Project, told me in an telephone interview from the Regulating Nanotechnology in Food and Consumer Products conference in Brussels yesterday, that the report raises some uncertainties that must be addressed.

“There is no indication that silver at the nano scale goes wild in the body. However, it is known that silver becomes more toxic at the nano level,” Maynard explained, adding, “That does not mean it always does more damage.

“More research must be done.”

A coalition of consumer protection, public health and environmental groups filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency demanding the agency halt the sale of consumer products containing silver nanoparticles

The petition called for the EPA to:

* Determine the potential human health and environmental hazards from nanosilver with nano-specific toxicity data requirements, testing and risk assessments.

* Clarify that nano-silver is a pesticide and thus must undergo the rigorous and extensive testing process involved in registering a pesticide. Moreover, products with nano-silver must carry a pesticide label.

* Take immediate action to prohibit the sale of nano-silver products as illegal pesticide products with unapproved health benefit claims.

The authors of the report say that EPA is not “doing near enough” to address the hazard.

“This report should be a kick in the pants to EPA to start fining companies that use nanosilver without going through the registration process,” Dr. Jennifer Sass, senior scientist and nano specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who is also speaking at the Brussel’s meeting told me in an email.

EPA says it is ready to take action if asked.

“The EPA is prepared to address the nanosilver issue but nobody has applied to the EPA with a product. It hasn’t happened,” said Dale Kemery, an agency spokesman.

Nanoized silver is not the only metal that worries regulators and the public health community. Carbon nanotubes, nano zerovalent iron, cerium oxide and others are on some government hot lists.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control has ordered all manufacturers who manufacture, import, sell or use nano material with those metals to supply the department with extensive information on their source, use, transport, and disposal.

According to the EPA and FDA, they have no plans to collect similar information.

The debate, to some extent, centers on semantics. Pesticides kill bugs and other things and their use is controlled by the government.

The Nanotechnology Industries Association and other trade groups insist that nanosilver is antimicrobial – it goes after germs – and is not a pesticide.

This raises concerns among food safety experts that farm workers and their families in Latin America and Asia can continue being exposed to the neurotoxin, and it may still end up on food exported to this country.

FMC Corp., the manufacturer of the pesticide, told the Charleston (WV) Gazette’s top gun reporter Ken Ward that the ban imposed Monday by the EPA “won’t affect production of the pesticide at the Institute’s chemical plant because most of the product is shipped overseas.”

Food safety activists denounce what they call a double standard for safety.

“The continued export of a pesticide determined too hazardous to be used in the US (shows a) hideous disrespect for millions of people and the environment around the world,” Margaret Reeves, a senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America, told me today.

“There is simply no reason to continue its use and many reasons to ban its use altogether.”

Senior Scientist Jen Sass

It was three years ago, after years of bickering among EPA pesticide experts, public health activists and the chemical manufacturers that the agency finally said publicly that the use of the pesticide must be ended.

EPA said it was beyond dispute that significant dietary, environmental and farm worker risks existed from exposure to carbofuran.

Dr. Jennifer Sass, chief scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that initial word from EPA was that although uses of the pesticide in the U.S. would be cancelled, it would still be allowed as a contaminant on imported coffee, sugarcane, rice and bananas.

This, Sass said, would have meant that the manufacturer could still sell carbofuran in other countries that grow these foods for U.S. markets, thus putting at much greater risk those foreign workers, their families and their environment.

But apparently the restrictions issued by EPA on Monday also slash the amount of carbofuran residue limits (tolerances) permitted on all food imports.
“EPA’s decision will prevent all food contamination, including imports,” Sass said on her well-read blog.

However, the company is not going to sit quietly and allow this to happen.

FMC Corporation strongly disagrees with the EPA’s announcement to revoke all U.S. food tolerances for carbofuran, and the company plans to file objections to the agency’s actions and seek an administrative hearing, said Dr. Michael Morelli, Director of Global Regulatory Affairs for the company, on FMC’s website.

“President Obama has committed EPA to regulate on the basis of sound science, and FMC is confident that a fair hearing based on sound scientific principles will prove carbofuran’s safety to the satisfaction of all,” Morelli said.

If you care about the technical language, here is a link to EPA’s cancellation notice.

Scientists at Cornell University think they’ve solved a widespread public health problem that endangers the health of farm workers and people who live near farms – the drifting of pesticides from the crops where they’re applied to the air that people breathe.

The researchers are encapsulating pesticides in biodegradable nanofibers.
The research team – Chunhui Xiang and Prof. Margaret Frey, an associate professor of fiber science in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology – say using the techniques will keep the pesticides intact until needed and minimize loss to drift or being washed away from the plants they are intended to protect.

Margaret Frey, an associate professor of fiber science in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and Chunhui Xiang, led the research. File photo by Cornell University

“Our technology will decrease the amount of pesticides applied, which is good for the environment,” said Xiang.

The researchers say the new technology also extends how long the pesticides remain effective and improves the safety of applications.

“The chemical is protected, so it won’t degrade from being exposed to air and water,” Frey said. “It also keeps the chemical where it needs to be and allows it to time-release.”

The nano delivery system is created by electrospinning solutions of cellulose, the pesticide and PLA – a polymer derived from cornstarch.

To find out if pesticides delivered this way could really work, another group working with Prof. Michael Hoffmann planted squares of pesticide-loaded fabrics with pole bean seeds in greenhouses on campus.

Pesticide delivered from the fabric effectively controlled white flies on the bean plants, he said.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” Frey said.

And that’s precisely what’s concerning many who worry about the safety of food and leads to obvious questions being raised:

* Will the nonmaterial enter the flesh of the food it’s protecting?

* Can it be washed off?

* Can the residue of the pesticides be accurately measured?

“I wish I knew more about it,” says Dr, Charles Benbrook, chief scientist for The Organic Center, a food public advocacy group.

He says that progress in delaying the delivery of a pesticide will cut both ways,

“It will extend the time while the active ingredient is around, but it will also lower the dose available at any point in time, which means the total amount of pesticide delivered will need to be increased,” said Benbrook who was the director of the National Academies of Science’ agricultural board.

“The concept of delayed-release delivery of pesticides is seductive on many levels, but likely will pose new challenges and lead to a new generation of unintended consequences,” Benbrook added.

Chuck Allen, a reporter for the Quincy Valley Post Register, wrote a story today about the Quincy City Council unanimously tdefeating the appointment of former mayor Martin as the city recreation director.

You’ve got to read Allen’s story to see why this is so absurd.

Regrading the vote, Martin told the reporter that, “I’m sorry I’m such a threat. It wasn’t about whether or not I could do the job. It’s about making sure a person who stood up to do the right thing and against something that was illegal doesn’t have a voice.”

It was a decade ago that Martin, then the mayor of Quincy, Washington, a 2-square-mile town about 160 miles east of Seattle, took on the agri-chemical industry.
She was worried about the harm to consumers and farm workers that might come from the very common practice of using industrial waste as fertilizer on the potatoes, apples, wheat, corn and vegetables produced on the hundreds of thousand of irrigated areas in the Quincy Valley.

She and some concerned farmers found that there was illegal dumping of hazardous waste, which, because of bizarre EPA rules magically became “safe” when it was called fertilizer.

Many local farmers hated her. Major agricultural chemical companies expressed evil wishes about her well being. Her enemies included global corporations feared her crusade would somehow get the attention of the outside world and USDA and EPA might crack down on the dangerous practice.

Restraint and subtly were unheard of in the assaults on her and her farmers.

Duff Wilson, one of the nation’s best investigative reporters, worked for the Seattle Times when he learned of the mayor’s battle. For months he chased the story and did a fantastic job of documenting the toxic dangers and corporate and government shenanigans surrounding this public health atrocity. He was a finalist for Pulitzer Prize for public servive for his work.

Wilson’s 2001 book, Fateful Harvest, gets to the heart of an environmental crime that continues today, albeit somewhat better hidden.

I covered hearings and public meetings where policy makers in EPA headquarters used Martin’s findings and Wilson’s work to try to halt the toxic waste shell game. However, the Bush White House, buckled to the agri-chemcial lobby and ordered the OMB to stifle the new regulations.

Today, Wilson, who is doing his reporting magic for the New York Times, told me that Martin “helped expose and reform” the dangerous practice.

“As a result of her calling this to public attention when she was mayor of Quincy eight years ago, many states reformed their fertilizer rules and set limits on these so-called toxic tag-alongs in fertilizer,” Wilson wrote me in an email.

“It’s sad for me to see that (she) continues to suffer retaliation in her hometown for trying to make fertilizer, farming and food safer.”

For more of the story on what Martin did and Wilson wrote, check out this link and ask how much of this is still happening.

Among the most devoted, cautious parents of ankle-grabbers that I know, few serve a total organic-only menu, and that was even before the towering gas prices jacked up almost all food � organic and otherwise. Imagine red peppers at $3.50 each, and that’s conventional grown.

I have long planned to write about pesticides and the economics of food. Well, Scotland on Sunday beat me to it. Nevertheless, here’s a couple of points that I do want to make.

Toxic paranoia: Scientist says 300 compounds in coffee aroma, including some that cause cancer in animals.

Imported produce � fruits and vegetables � are cheaper than our domestic crops. In part, this is due to far lower labor costs, which is obvious to most. What may not be as evident is that it is cheaper to grow almost anything if you’re free to use any pesticide and as much of it as you’d like.

Remember, our warm and cuddly chemical corporation sell chemicals that have been banned in the U.S. and EU as too toxic to food and too dangerous to farm workers, everyplace else on the globe that their army of high pressure salesmen work. (Yes, I said salesmen, because I’m told that most of them are.)

In an attempt to avert a whole bunch of hostile email, allow me to acknowledge that there are some overseas growers who are as careful and caring as the best U.S. farmer. However, many will dump on any chemical they can on their crops to kill weeds, black spots, nasty bugs and all the other agricultural blights that plague farmers around the globe.

Jeremy Watson wrote in the Scottish publication of plans by the European Union to ban a range of up to 50 chemicals for use on crops because of they contain ingredients, which have, in high doses, been linked to cancer and other conditions.

Farmer leaders in Scotland predict rises of up to 50 percent on some staple items such as cereals, potatoes and fruit at a time when food price inflation is already at its highest for almost 30 years.

The farmers across the pond tell Watson that the products have been used safely for decades with no evidence of harm to humans.

Crops would be replaced with more expensive imports with economists forecasting a 5o percent rise in the cost of grain, leading to a 15 percent increase in the price of bread, 19 percent for milk, cheese and eggs, and a 16 percent increase in meat if the proposals go ahead.

The National Farmers’ Union in Scotland and England is now lobbying members of the European Parliament to prevent the ban coming into place.

Unlike here, consumer groups in the British Isles have joined the farmers saying that they were worried about the prices.

The proposals were agreed in June by a majority of EU farm ministers who want to see European food production move away from the use of pesticides to more “organic” production methods.

A spokesman said: “The commission proposal would affect only a few substances, which are the most problematic ones for human health and the environment.”
If you want more details on this looming battle, here is a link to Scotsman.com.

The brouhaha over pesticides also bubbles up with our neighbors to the North.

Keith Mathews, Executive Director of Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association sent me a story from the Ottawa Citizen on “Our chemical paranoia.”

Columnist Don Gardner writes about the calculation of pesticides gather and distributed by the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit U.S. advocacy.

Gardner talks about the EWG’s list of 45 fruits and vegetables ranked according to the level of pesticide contamination found in more than 55,000 tests conducted by U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

He quotes the group as saying “There is a growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people.”

However, Gardner says “This has been a standard message of environmentalism for 40 years and the public has certainly heard and embraced it. When researchers ask people what other words come to mind when they say “chemical,” they often say “toxic,” “poison” and “danger.” Chemophobia is rampant,” Gardner reports.

The writer says he talked to Joe Schwarcz, the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. I’ve interviewed him several times and he is a colorful and popular author and television personality who often denounces those who warn of dangers of chemicals.

Schwarcz called the EWG guide “meaningless.”

“Just because something is there doesn’t mean that it’s doing anything. Amounts matter,” Schwarcz tells Gardner. “Where is any study that has shown that those amounts have any negative effect?”

Quantities matter. Or as Paracelsus said in the 16th century, “the poison is in the dose.” And the professor warns that there are over 300 chemical compounds in the aroma of coffee.

Schwartz has horrible things to say about the air in Seattle, or rather the coffee aroma that fills our air.

“If you sample coffee aroma,” Schwarcz says, “you will find over 300 compounds. They are probably present in greater amounts than these pesticide residues. And some of those compounds are known animal carcinogens. So do we worry about smelling coffee? I don’t think so.”