Re: Invisible Ingredients

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PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM THIS MAILING LIST. THANK YOU ----- Original Message ----- From: Barbara Herskovitz Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 11:01 PM Sick Buildings Subject: [] Invisible Ingredients Invisible IngredientsFebruary 8, 2002While the rest of America's top amateur athletes gear up for the Salt LakeCity Olympics this weekend, two champion bobsledders will watch from thesidelines -- unfairly disqualified, they claim, as an indirect result of thepolitical maneuverings of an industry that counts Utah as one of its primebases.The sledders, disqualified after testing positive for steroid use, insistthey never knowingly took any banned substances. They had, however, beentaking performance-enhancing herbal supplements which contained steroids --a fact they claimed not to know, because the supplements' labels don'tmention it.The lax labelling is no accident. The $15.7 billion US supplement industry,$3 billion of which is based in Utah, has lobbied hard and spent heavily tokeep labelling laws light. The industry's main champion is Sen. Orrin Hatch,a Utah Republican who led the charge for the 1994 Dietary Supplement Healthand Education Act, effectively quashing reformers' efforts to subjectdietary supplements to Food and Drug Administration regulations andnutritional labelling laws imposed on most foods. That year, the industrydoled out over $400,000 in campaign contributions -- $64,000 of which wentto Hatch.This week, two herbal supplements made by a California company were recalledfrom store shelves after they were found to contain prescription drugs --one a powerful blood thinner, and the other alprazolam, better known underthe brand name Xanax. Those incidents appear to have been manufacturingaccidents, but thanks to the industry's efforts, supplement consumers stillhave no way of knowing whether they are unintentionally ingesting chemicalsthat could do a lot more to them than keep them out of a bobsledding race.-- FAIR USE NOTICE:This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.