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Junk Science at Work by Daniel Mindus Guest Commentary, The Oregonian, September 2, 2003

In its report on the safety of farmed salmon, the error-prone Environmental Working Group revealed only that the average concentration of PCBs in the fish was a small fraction of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's established safety limit ("PCB test pits farmed salmon vs. wild," July 30).

The FDA has set a ceiling of 2,000 parts per billion, but the Environmental Working Group found an average concentration of only 27 parts per billion. The FDA has already affirmed that consumers "should not alter their consumption of salmon" because of the group's misleading report.

This Environmental "Worrying" Group has a long history of using junk science to make the public needlessly fear its food, for the purpose of steering Americans toward more expensive organic (or in this case, "wild") options that aren't any safer or healthier to eat. The Environmental Working Group's shoddy work has been rightly criticized in the past by officials from the FDA, Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health.