By the Numbers

—With the aid of sophisticated new genetic tests, scientists have recently discovered that Southern California beach waters are reportedly incubators for human viruses with the potential to make swimmers sick with ailments ranging from diarrhea to hepatitus. According to the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, nearly a trillion gallons of runoff pour into the ocean annually from Ventura to the Mexican border—enough to fill two swimming pools for every man woman and child in the region. Moreover, says the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, every gallon of this sewage contains roughly a thousand particles of viruses carrying as many as 125 different human diseases.

—According to a recent report in Business Week, the FDA is in bad shape after seven years of Clinton Administration budgets. The FDA is reportedly so financially strapped it manages to inspect most of the nation’s 50,000 food manufacturing plants about once every 10 years. Moreover, a program that tests food for pesticide residues now only has the funding to perform 7,200 samples a year, down from 20,000 in 1990, while inadequate facilities regularly force inspectors to delay the analysis of shipments of fresh fish and shrimp at West Coast ports, reducing profits of large seafood companies and causing spoilage. The reason? The main one, according to experts is the fact that over the past decade the agency's budget of $1.14 billion has barely budged in real dollars, while Congress has pushed through more than two dozen bills that give the agency expanded responsibilities.

—In a recent letter to the New York Times, Richard J. Sullivan of the Association of Food Industries disputed allegations that the U.S. food supply was unsafe just because 76 million food-borne illnesses occur here each year. “There are more than 750 million eating occasion in the United States each day,” writes Sullivan, “or about 274 billion eating occasions a year. That means there are about 273 billion eating occasions a year from which no illness occurs. You fault Congress for not providing more money to improve food safety. How much food-borne illness is caused by a failure of Government supervision is anybody’s guess.”

—According to a survey conducted recently by Gallup Canada for the company Traditional Medicinals, Canadians are becoming increasingly accepting of the medicinal use of natural herbal supplements. According to the poll, more that 66% of Canadians agree that natural herbal supplements can be as effective as prescription drugs or over-the-counter remedies in the maintenance, prevention and treatment of health problems. In addition, 51.4% say they would be “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to take an herbal supplement to treat a cold, while 33% admitted to having taken the herbal supplement Echinacea for exactly that purpose. Moreover, more than 68% of respondents said the would be more likely to consider buying herbal supplements if the label provided information explaining its health benefits. In Canada, consumers spend $3.8 billion annually on “alternative” medicines, while the natural products market is growing 15% per year.