The director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, Canada, Joe Schwarcz condemned the unequivocal negative discourse on chemicals in a recent opinion piece published in the Montreal Gazette on March 22, 2013. In the opinion piece he reminds that a chemical is merely a compound of a constant chemical composition, and that most of the chemicals that humans are exposed to are neither unnatural nor hazardous. Referring to a dietary intervention study published in 2011 in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives, he criticized that people focused on the big relative decrease in chemicals of more than 50%, rather than seeing that the overall amount was small and well below regulatory safety limits. Schwartz concluded with a warning against the play with numbers when evaluating chemical risks.
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