Alar
Alar is the trade name for daminozide, a pesticide sprayed on apples to regulate their growth, make their harvest easier, and enhance their color. It is produced in the U.S by Uniroyal. It leaves residues in both apple juice and applesauce.In 1986, concern developed in the U.S. public over the use of Alar on apples. The outcry led some manufacturers and supermarket chains to announce they would not accept Alar-treated apples.
In 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided to ban Alar because "long-term exposure" posed "unacceptable risks to public health." The ban followed a February 1989 broadcast by CBS's 60 Minutes highlighting a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council claiming that Alar was a dangerous carcinogen.
Apple growers in Washington filed a libel suit against CBS, NRDC and Fenton Communications, claiming the scare cost them $100M. The suit was dismissed in 1994.
Elizabeth Whelan and her organization, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), were working to establish a narrative of the Alar episode as a scare. The ACSH claimed that Alar and its breakdown product UMDH had not been shown to be carcinogenic, even going so far as to claim that the National Cancer Institute had cleared Alar as a carcinogen (it hasn't). Whelan's campaign was so effective that today, Alar scare is shorthand among news media and food industry professionals for an irrational, emotional public scare based on propaganda rather than facts.
While Alar has been verified as a human carcinogen, the amount necessary for it to be dangerous may well be absurdly high. While the lab tests that prompted the scare required an amount of Alar equal to over 5000 gallons (20,000 L) of apple juice per day, Consumers Union ran its own studies and estimated the human lifetime cancer risk to be between 5 - 50 per million (1 case per million is the threshold at which the government considers a carcinogen a significant public health concern).
The Alar scare also prompted the introduction of food libel laws in 13 states.
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