home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=90TT0365>
- <title>
- Feb. 12, 1990: American Notes:Health
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Feb. 12, 1990 Scaling Down Defense
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 29
- American Notes
- HEALTH
- Bye, Bye, Red Dye
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Will canned fruit cocktail be the same without its rosy
- cherries? How about candy canes without their crimson stripes?
- Some cheeses minus their red-wax coating? After eight years of
- debate, the Food and Drug Administration banned Red Dye No. 3,
- an ingredient in all of the above and in some cosmetics. Though
- extremely high doses of the coloring have induced thyroid
- tumors in laboratory rats, the food industry insists that the
- risk to consumers is negligible. Oddly enough, the FDA agrees.
- But it was forced to ban the dye, for which there is no good
- substitute, under a 30-year-old statute mandating that
- additives with even the slightest hint of a cancer risk be
- outlawed. Said Health and Human Services Secretary Louis
- Sullivan: "Today's action is yet another reminder of the need
- for Congress to consider updating the law."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-