There is an author, a cardiologist no less, who is doing the rounds of media telling all who will listen that one item in our food is killing us. GallonDaily will not mention his name or the title of his book because we don’t want you to buy it.

GallonDaily is fed up with supposed scientific experts using their credentials to spread nonsense and sell books or technology. It does not matter whether they are selling fear, as is our cardiologist, or unjustified safety, as the head of a pro-incineration industry group did when he recently told Canadians that “burning garbage in your backyard releases more dioxins in the air than an EFW plant would in a year”. This industry executive clearly does not know what he is talking about and he is, incidentally, bringing scientific discredit to the industry he represents.

Issues of environmental public health are so bad in Canada that, according to Statistics Canada, an agency that GallonDaily still regards as reasonably credible, life expectancy for Canadian men has increased from 59 years in 1920 to 68 in 1960 to 79 in 2006. Life expectancy increases are similar for women. Sure, we still have some very important environmental public health issues, including climate change and air pollution, but there is not much evidence that the food we eat or the air we breath are causing widespread premature death.

It is not too long ago that a CEO selected as an advisor to the federal government made it known that his company’s technology would reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by enough to cause this country to meet its Kyoto commitments. The fact is that if a promise sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Equally, if a risk sounds too bad to be true, that is probably the case as well!