Public Health and Independent Risk Assessment

Our plain-English summary of Public Health and Independent Risk Assessment, by P. Vineis (American Journal of Public Health, 2019).

The study

• Author: P. Vineis
• Journal: American Journal of Public Health
• Published: 2019;109(7):978-980
• Type of article: Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This is an editorial, not a research study, by Paolo Vineis of Imperial College London, published in the American Journal of Public Health in July 2019. It reports no new data. The author argued that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs credibly and transparently sum up scattered cancer evidence for policymakers. The Monographs combine human, animal and laboratory evidence and sort agents into categories such as carcinogenic, probably carcinogenic and possibly carcinogenic. The author noted that real situations do not always fit one category and that "possibly carcinogenic" is hard to communicate. Asbestos came up only briefly. The author cited a separate article in the same issue, by Rosner et al. on asbestos in talc, as illustrating how economic power, science and information intertwine. As an example of conflict of interest, the author cited a glyphosate review published in a supplement that Monsanto funded through Intertek; several of its authors had been Monsanto consultants and two were former Monsanto employees. The author concluded that the Monographs are a good if not unique example of credible, transparent evidence synthesis.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: editorial (opinion piece); no original data
• Exposure: No exposure was studied. Asbestos is mentioned only through a reference to a separate article by Rosner et al. on asbestos in talc in the same journal issue.
• Main results:
  • The author argued that the IARC Monographs have features that make them suited to providing evidence for policymaking: established procedures, the use of evidence from different sources, and summary in discrete categories.
  • The author noted a drawback of the classification approach: real situations do not always fit a single category.
  • The author gave a review of glyphosate as an example of conflict of interest, describing it as a merging of economic interest, research and risk assessment.
  • The disclosure the author reproduced (Box 1) states that the supplement containing the glyphosate review was sponsored by Intertek, with the funding provided to Intertek by Monsanto.
  • The same disclosure lists several of the review's authors as former consultants for Monsanto, and two of them, John Acquavella and Larry D. Kier, as former Monsanto employees.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the IARC Monographs are a good if not unique example of a credible and transparent way to synthesize scientific evidence.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Talc and vermiculite.

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