A prominent U.S. chemical industry group is taking aim at the World Health Organization's cancer research arm amid disagreements about numerous findings in recent years.
The American Chemistry Council this week announced the Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research, which primarily seeks to reform the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s Monographs Program.
The group alleged that the program, which evaluates substances' risks as carcinogens, is plagued by scientific deficiencies, a lack of transparency and communication issues.
"The IARC Monographs Program has been responsible for countless misleading headlines about the safety of the food we eat, the jobs we do and the products we use in our daily lives,” ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley said in a statement.
The agency particularly came under fire after it declared glyphosate — the most heavily used herbicide in history — a probable human carcinogen in 2015. The agrichemical industry that the European Food Safety Authority and other oversight bodies found no such links.
ACC officials also suggested that IARC findings led to unnecessarily strict labeling requirements under California's Proposition 65.
The group vowed to offer specific reform proposals in an effort to "play a constructive role" in overhauling IARC processes.
“Public policy must be based on a transparent, thorough assessment of the best available science,” Dooley said. “Currently, IARC’s monographs do not meet this standard though U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for over two-thirds of the international program’s budget.”
The IARC, Reuters reported, defended its research and said that its analyses are "widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and ... freedom from conflicts of interest."
