Tuesday, September 27th 2016
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is launching an inquiry into the National Institutes of Health's support for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC that has made several controversial proclamations about agricultural chemicals and their safety. On Monday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the committee chairman, asked in a letter to the National Institute of Health to provide a number of documents and to agree to a briefing with committee staff. Although the IARC's work has faced scrutiny in agriculture circles for its classification of herbicides glyphosate and 2,4-D as "probably carcinogenic" to humans, the IARC has assessed 989 substances as of April 2016. The group determined just one ingredient found in nylon is "probably not" carcinogenic. That means the other 988 substances either pose some level of risk, according to IARC, or require more research to determine the level of risk. In his letter, Chaffetz said conclusions by the IARC have contradicted a body of science on glyphosate, 2,4-D and a number of other substances. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Cancer Assessment Review Committee, or CARC, completed a report last year entitled, "Cancer Assessment Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate." The CARC report posted inadvertently concludes glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. EPA officials posted the report April 29 then removed it May 2. Yet EPA insisted when the agency took down the report that more work needed to be done. The EPA just recently released a 200-plus-page report concluding glyphosate likely was not carcinogenic. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world, but regulators in both Europe and the U.S. have been reviewing the science and market approval for the herbicide ever since the IARC concluded in March 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic" to humans. A House Science Committee investigation also focuses not only on the inadvertent release of the EPA's report last spring, but whether there was any connection between the EPA's analysis and conclusions reached by the IARC.