Health Threat in a Bottle?

The Food and Drug Administration has announced concerns about the safety of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used to harden plastics that is found in plastic bottles, soda cans, and many other food containers and consumer products. Researchers have found that BPA leaches into the food it contains, and its use is so prevalent that 90 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But is it dangerous? Researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K. have found a strong association between levels of BPA in human urine and heart disease. The same research team has also found an association between BPA and diabetes. Sarah Vogel of The Pump Handle, a site for public health professionals, has details. Other studies have linked BPA with cancer and sexual dysfunction.

Now, “association” and “link” don’t necessarily mean “cause.” A statistical link between two things doesn’t always mean that one caused the other. But there is growing reason for concern. The FDA is planning targeted studies to determine if action is necessary to protect public health, but it has not yet moved toward banning BPA or even requiring manufacturers to label products containing BPA.

But like everything else in Washington, the issue of BPA promises to become a partisan fight. Conservative groups already have declared concerns about BPA to be some looney liberal plot. David Green of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, “BPA is just the latest bogeyman that the environmental movement has latched onto in order to attack something they’ve hated ever since the phrase ‘Plastics my boy, Plastics’ was uttered in ‘The Graduate.’”

Yes, and where have we heard this before? The first reports of a link between asbestos and mesothelioma cancer were similarly ridiculed. Dr. Irving Selikoff, a physician who published case studies of mesothelioma patients in the 1960s, was belittled as a kook.

Last month the Senate confirmed the nomination of epidemiologist David Michaels, Ph.D., to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Dr. Michaels is a well respected scientist who has personally studied of the health effects of exposure to toxic substances such as asbestos. Dr. Michaels has been trying to raise concern about BPA for some time, and to Dr. Michael’s critics, this made him an unacceptable choice for the OSHA position.

Last fall the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which headed an effort to block Dr. Michaels’ nomination, listed Michaels’ concerns about BPA as one of the factors that disqualified him. Calling BPA “a plastics hardener some consumer activists and many trial lawyers claim is unsafe,” the Chamber claimed that Canada’s equivalent of the FDA had found BPA to be safe.

In fact, that Canadian governmental agency had BPA banned.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 9:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.