Alar

Alar

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Moore said, “EPA is still concerned about the dietary risks of Alar and plans to take action to remove Alar from the marketplace. Until this action is complete, EPA considers the risks acceptable since exposures are generally limited.”

Rappahannock County Extension Agent Tommy Williams, himself a farmer and orchard ist, agrees with the EPA’s assessment. “Alar was probably used on less than four percent of the nation’s apples last year," he said in an interview last week. He added that he didn’t know of anyone in Rappahannock County who used the product in 1988.

Gordon Thornhill, manager of the Rappahannock Farmers' Cooperative, said that the co-op has not sold Alar for five or six years. “It’s too expensive for the area growers, so we stopped selling it a long time ago.”

Responding to what they called a “toxic bogeyman,” officials with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have provided a toll-free number (800-2849452) for Virginia residents with questions about food safety.

The danger from Alar, Mr. Williams said, has been greatly exaggerated. He pointed out that for a person to be exposed to the amount of Alar which caused tumors in the lab rats, “you must eat 28,000 pounds of Alar-treated apples every day for 70 years.”

“I think Pd die of something other than cancer if I ate that many apples," joked Rappahannock orchardist Alex Sharp. He said he used Alar for six years prior to 1986 and ate the treated apples from his orchards. "And I don’t have cancer."

Both Mr. Sharp and Mr. Williams stress that consumers should know that farmers don’t want to cause the public harm, and that they always have the interests of the consumer in mind.

“That is why most growers have stopped using the product, even though it is very useful," Mi-. Wil