Cancer & Chemicals-Are We Going Too Far?Marla ConeLast year, California governor George Deukmejian called together many of the state's best scientific minds to begin implementing Proposition 65, the state's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. This new law bans industries from discharging chemical suspected of causing cancer (carcinogens) or birth defects into water supplies. Some claim it will also require warning labels on everything that might cause cancer.去年，加利福尼亚州州长乔治·德米加召集本州许多优秀的科学家开会，开始执行第65号提案，即州安全饮用水和毒品实施法案。
这一新法令禁止各工业部门向水源中排放被怀疑致癌和引起先天缺陷的化学物质。
有些人宣称，新法律还要求在一切可能致癌的物品上贴上警告标签。
A day of esotericscience and incomprehensible jargonwas predicted. But Bruce Ames, chairman of the department of biochemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, had plans to liven the proceedings.原来预计，开会那天将全是些玄妙的科学和难懂的术语，但加州大学伯克利分校生物化学系系主任布鲁斯·爱姆兹却打算使会议开得更有生气。
Walking into the room, Ames looked like the quintessential scientist: wire-rimmedbifocals, rumpled suit, tousled hair and a sallow complexion that showed he spent more time in his laboratory than in the California sunshine.As someone intoned about the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, Ames began to interject his own views.当爱姆兹走入会议室时，他看上去完全是一个典型的科学家形象：金丝边双光眼镜，皱褶的西服，蓬乱的头发，菜色的面庞，显示出他总是呆在实验室里而很少享受加州的阳光。
当某人振振有词地大谈致痛机理时，爱姆兹开始打断他，插进来陈述自己的观点。
"The whole world is chock-full of carcinogens," Ames declared.“ A beer, with its 700 parts per billion of formaldehyde and five parts per 100 of alcohol is a thousand times more hazardous than anything in the water. If you have beer on your breath, does that mean you have to warn everyone who comes within ten feet of you?"“整个世界都充满了致癌物”，爱姆兹宣称。
“啤酒中有十亿分之七百的甲醛和百分之五的乙醇，比水中的任何物质都要危险1 000倍。
如果你呼出的气息中有啤酒味，那是否意味着你必须向你周围10英尺以内的所有人发出警告?”In an era when headlines shout about the latest cancer scare, Ames has a different message: the levels of most man-made carcinogens are generally so low that any danger is trivial compared with the levels of natural carcinogens.在大肆宣传最新癌症恐怖的时代里，爱姆兹带来了不同的信息：大多数人造致癌物的含量一般来说都很低。
与天然致癌物含量相比其危险微乎其微。
Ames is not a quack. At age 59, he is one of the nation's most respected authorities on carcinogenesis. His resume is packed with honors, including the Charles. Mott Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, one of the most prestigious awards in cancer research, and membership in the National Academy of Sciences.Even his critics say the Ames test—his simple, inexpensive laboratory procedure that helps determine whether a substance might cause cancer—is a remarkable achievement.爱姆兹不是个冒充内行的人。
他59岁，是全国最受人尊敬的研究致癌问题的权威之一。
他的简历中尽是各种荣誉，包括通用汽车癌症研究基金会颁发的查尔斯·莫特奖(这是痛症研究中最富声誉的嘉奖之一)。
他还是国家科学院的院士。
甚至他的批评者们也承认，爱姆兹试验是一项突出的成就。
这种试验是在实验室里进行的一种简单廉价的操作方法，它有助于检测一种物质是否能引起癌症。
But Ames slaughters sacred cows. He's taking on the environmental movement, which some have called the single most important social movement of the 20th century. In April 1987, for instance, he and two colleagues, Renae Magaw and Lois Swirsky Gold, published a report in Science magazine that ranked various possible cancer risks.Based on animal tests of nearly 1,000 chemicals, the data show that daily consumption of the average peanut-butter sandwich, which contains traces of aflatoxin (a naturally occurring mold carcinogen in peanuts), is 100 times more dangerous than our daily intake of DDT from food, and that a glass of the most polluted well water in the Silicon Valley is 1,000 times less of cancer risk than a glass of wine or beer is.He's not advising people to stop consuming peanut-butter, beer and wine. What he's saying is that most cancer risks created by man are trivial compared with everyday natural risks, and it's not clear how many of these are real risks. Both types distractattention from such enormous risk factors as tobacco.但是爱姆兹藐视一切貌似神圣不可冒犯的东曲。
他对环境保护运动的观点提出不同看法，有些人把这一运动称为20世纪最重要的运动。
例如，1987年4月，他和两位同事雷纳·玛格和露易·斯沃斯基·戈尔德，在《科学》杂志上发表了一篇报告，列举了各种各样可能引起癌症的危险。
以将近1 000种化学物质作的动物试验所得到的数据表明，每日所消耗的普通花生酱三明治中含有的微量黄曲霉素(花生中天然存在的一种霉菌致癌物)比我们每同从食物中摄取DDT的危险大100倍。
一杯硅谷污染最严重的井水比一杯葡萄酒或啤酒致癌的危险要小1 000倍。
他并不是建议人们停止消费花生酱、葡萄酒和啤酒。
他所说的是，大多数人造致癌物的危险比起日常天然物的致癌危险是微不足道的。
现在不清楚它们中有多少有真正的危险。
这曲种危险都转移了人们对于诸如烟草之类的巨人危险的注意力。
Ames's cancer research began about 25 years ago over a bag of potato chips. Ames, then conducting research for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, was reading the ingredients on the bag. It struck him that no one knew what each chemical did to human genes , and there was no easy way to find out.爱姆兹的癌症研究是25年前以一袋炸薯条开始的。