CNN Under Fire For Pushing Plastics Study Critics Say Overstates Health Risks

The chemical industry and a pro-science consumer group are pushing back on a CNN story that warned most plastic chemicals threaten human health.

CNN ran the story, headlined “Over 90% of common household items contain hazardous plastic chemicals” on Sept. 30. It was based on a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based environmental nonprofit, that was “provided exclusively to CNN,” according to its text.

Critics say the report’s headline figure rests on a narrow slice of the chemicals it studied and leaves out major U.S. regulations.

“It’s disappointing that a major news organization like CNN chose to amplify such a deeply flawed study in the first place,” Matthew Kastner, senior director of media relations at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the chemical industry’s trade group, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The report’s finding that 92.8 percent of chemicals pose a high risk covers only the 738 chemicals that had both toxicity and exposure data, out of 3,552 analyzed, Josh Bloom, director of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences at the American Council on Science and Health, which describes itself as a pro-science consumer advocacy organization, wrote in an Oct. 9 article on the group’s website. The 685 chemicals the report labeled high risk make up 19.3 percent of the full list, he wrote.

“If CNN set out to scare the hell out of people, its recent plastics report was a spectacular success,” Bloom wrote.

Most of the chemicals with exposure information were counted as having only a “potential for exposure,” not evidence that they leach from plastics, Bloom wrote.

“But presence isn’t exposure. Exposure isn’t absorption. Absorption isn’t dose. And dose isn’t harm,” he added.