State Health Chief Assails Ban on Apples

State Health Services Director Kenneth W. Kizer on Tuesday denounced school districts for “precipitously” banning apples from lunch menus and sending “the wrong message” to children that fruits and vegetables are unsafe to eat.

Kizer munched calmly on a Red Delicious apple to emphasize his point that “apples are good for you.” He accused school district officials of succumbing to a “little bit of hysteria” and creating a “toxic bogyman” by banning the fruit due to concerns over children ingesting daminozide, a chemical sometimes used in growing apples.

His remarks at an afternoon press conference in Los Angeles came even as the apple boycott spread through California and the rest of the nation, with Chicago and a major school district in the Washington metropolitan area following the lead of New York City and Los Angeles Unified School District school officials in banning the fruit pending further study.

An informal survey Tuesday found that a majority of Los Angeles County school districts had joined the apple boycott. In Orange County all but five of 28 districts had banned apples. In San Diego County, however, only six of 43 districts had stopped serving the fruit.

Despite the spreading boycott, Kizer said the health risks from eating apples treated with the chemical, known under the trade name as Alar, are “exceedingly low” and are based “on a very large consumption over a lifetime.”

Californians, he said, face a greater risk of cancer if they eschew fruits and vegetables.

“We know, incontrovertibly, that the dangers of not eating fruits and vegetables far outweigh any health danger from eating fruits and vegetables with trace levels of this pesticide on it.

“When we send a message to kids that fruits and vegetables are unsafe, what are they going to eat?” he asked, “Twinkies . . . and other junk” that is low in fiber, high in fat, sugar and salt. Such a diet, he said, has been shown to cause cancer, heart disease, hypertension and other chronic ailments.

Kizer called the school apple boycott “an unforeseen outcome” of a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council that concluded that children who consume tainted apples are particularly at risk of cancer.

Al Meyerhoff, a council spokesman, acknowledged that the group did not specifically call for schools to ban apples, but said that the boycott is “an appropriate response until there is some assurance given that the carcinogen is out of the food supply.”

He said that the cancer risk to children posed by Alar-tainted apples is 1,000 times higher than what the federal Environment Protection Agency has set as an acceptable limit.

The charge has prompted federal health officials to closely examine studies they have conducted during the last eight years which, they say, have shown harmless and declining amounts of Alar in apples and apple products. It is estimated that only about 5% of the nation’s apple crop--all outside California--now is treated with Alar. Major supermarket chains have taken steps to assure customers that their apples are free of Alar.

In Sacramento, the California Grocers Assn., a trade organization representing 7,000 grocers, from major chains to convenience stores, estimated that in the last few days sales of apples have plummeted by 20%.

“We are really concerned about the situation,” said Don Beaver, association president.

The EPA, which has been studying Alar’s health effects for years, has contended that the chemical does not warrant an immediate ban. But EPA officials will decide during the next 18 months whether the chemical should be banned.

Fred Shank, deputy director of the center for food safety at the Food and Drug Administration, said that his office is reviewing all studies “to see if we missed the boat.”

He said, “We think our studies are good, but sometimes there are people who have differing opinions.”

A study in 1988, he said, showed that out of 96 samples of apples, 35 had residues of Alar ranging from barely measurable to a high of 3.7 parts per million. The level of tolerance, he said, is 20 parts per million.

State education officials have asked Kizer’s office to test for Alar in apple products distributed to schoolchildren in this state. Nine samples of juice, apple slices and applesauce have been collected for testing from two warehouses, one in Sacramento and the other in Pomona.

Kizer said he believes that the tests will show trace amounts of the chemical in apples. But he said that, even so, he does not think that the amounts will be high enough to warrant elimination of apples from school diets.

In the meantime, he said that the apple ban by school officials has been “very precipitous and was not done based on any thoughtful analysis of the risk posed by that versus the risk posed by swimming in swimming pools or drinking public water.”

In reaction to Kizer’s criticism, Richard Farrar, director of food services for the San Francisco Unified School District, which banned apples, said: “There might be some truth to that. However, we are dealing with children. If tests are being performed, would it really harm anyone to wait a few weeks until the tests are completed? If we erred, we erred on the side of caution.”

David Koch, administrator of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s business services division, also defended his district’s decision to temporarily remove apples from the school lunch menu.

“It is a temporary discontinuance while we make tests,” Koch said. “It’s not a permanent ban. We feel it is reasonable under the circumstances.”

Even so, the apple boycott spread through school districts across the country Tuesday.

“We’ve received a huge volume of calls from across the country from school officials asking for more information about this because of tremendous pressure (that) their food service operations are receiving from parents,” said Chris Lecos, spokesman for the FDA in Washington. “Many are indicating they will stop serving apples because of the current furor over this.”

Lecos said that the Fairfax County school district in northern Virginia, which serves the metropolitan Washington area, has joined the apple boycott. And in Chicago, a school district spokesman said that apples have been pulled from the school menus.

“We have 409,000 students and they consume about 200,000 apples a week--or they used to,” said Ken Masson, a Board of Education spokesman. He said the district is requesting all apple suppliers to provide certified statements that their apples have not been treated with Alar.

In Sacramento, Steve Delano, administrator of the food distribution section of the state Department of Education, said Tuesday that his office has been “buried under phone calls from all over the state” from school districts wanting to know whether they should follow Los Angeles Unified’s example and take apples and related products off school menus.

“They’re asking basically the rhetorical question, ‘Should we be concerned about apple products in general?’ They may have apple pies, apple turnovers. They’re looking at all the range of products they have,” Delano said.

In Sacramento, consumer confidence in the safety of food seized center stage at the annual legislative conference of the California Grocers Assn., a trade organization representing 7,000 grocers, from major chains to convenience stores.

For example, association president Don Beaver noted that in only the past few days statewide sales of fresh applies has plummeted by 20%. “We are really concerned about the situation,” he said.

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Carl Ingram in Sacramento, Maria Newman and Lucille Renwick in Orange County, Maureen Fan in San Diego and Elaine Woo and researchers Tracy Thomas and Tom Henry in Los Angeles.