bpa: investigated and reported

In this incredible piece from Fast Company Magazine, BPA is summarized: it’s history and why the government doesn’t want to claim it’s dangerous. Making about $6 billion per year for chemical companies, you can see why there is a strong desire to keep it legal.

The article is long, about eight pages, so as always below are some excerpts.  But in all seriousness, this is an amazing write-up.  Please give David Case (the author) the visibility it deserves.  

Along side a wonderful history lesson, there is also some interesting information about the “independent research” performed by the chemical companies.  Including the hiring of Sciences, an independent lab, that has, in the past, done some deceitful things to help out other harmful industries, like tobacco.  It should be noted that Sciences was started by a woman that also helped start the EPA.

-How could our nation’s health watchdogs reach such divergent conclusions? Are we being unnecessarily scared by the NTP? Or could the FDA be sugarcoating things? What exactly is going on?  We went on a journey to find out. What we learned was shocking. To some degree, the BPA controversy is a story about a scientific dispute. But even more, it’s about a battle to protect a multibillion-dollar market from regulation. In the United States, industrial chemicals are presumed safe until proven otherwise. As a result, the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals registered to be used in products have never undergone a government safety review. Companies are left largely to police themselves.

-Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted — 14 in all — has found no such effects .  It is the industry-funded studies that have held sway among regulators. This is thanks largely to a small group of “product defense” consultants — also funded by the chemical industry — who have worked to sow doubt about negative effects of BPA by using a playbook that borrows from the wars over tobacco, asbestos, and other public-health controversies.

-But Fast Company has learned that Sciences’ conflicts of interest went even deeper. The firm had passed its verdict on BPA, under oath, even before it began the government review. In 2003, Sciences provided expert testimony for the defense in a lawsuit over BPA. On an archived page of the firm’s Web site, the company bragged that, for a private client, it had acted as an expert witness “challenging the validity” of the science on BPA’s health risks. “The case was decided in favor of the defendants,” the site said. (Anderson, who sold Sciences for $5.1 million in 2001 and left for rival Exponent in 2006, confirmed by email that the testimony happened but declined to provide details. Herman Gibb, who took over as president of Sciences, says the staff working on the CERHR contract was not aware of the testimony.)

The NIH terminated the Sciences contract in April 2007, and the firm is now down to four employees. The Environmental Working Group has since reported that Sciences had client relationships with the makers of nearly every chemical it reviewed under the CERHR contract.

** photos by Nigel Cox, taken from Fast Company article

Happy Halloween

I got a late afternoon treat that put a big smile on my face.

The FDA’s science board, a group of outside experts, voted unanimously to endorse a report that found major flaws in the agency’s decision to declare BPA safe.

The science board agreed with the finding that that the FDA was wrong to base its August decision that BPA is safe only on studies funded by the chemical industry. Excluded studies suggest that BPA, which acts like the hormone estrogen, could pose harm to children at levels at least 10 times lower than what the agency allows.

It is not good when an organization like the FDA lets itself get manipulated into approving a chemical by ignoring that it is harmful and instead focusing on the corporate interest and revenue.

I am so happy that the public outcry created the need for an independent review!

HERE is an article about the decision. Although, I will warn you, it is depressing to see how little the FDA did to ensure our safety. For example:

When measuring the amount of BPA to which babies are exposed from liquid infant formula, for example, the FDA used data from more than a decade ago and sampled only 14 liquid formula cans, all from the Washington, D.C. area. It also based its exposure estimate on the average BPA level. That could allow children fed from cans with above-average BPA levels to receive far more of the chemical.

I am sure you will be hearing more about this as the week goes on.

Good news, bad news

The good news is that an independent panel of 36 scientists released a report today admonishing the FDA for their approval of the use of Bisphenol-A as safe.

The bad news… the damage may have been done.

Bisphenol A, used in baby bottles and other hard plastic, has been detected in the urine of 93% of Americans tested. Hundreds of studies have found it to cause health problems in laboratory animals, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hyperactivity, autism and reproductive failure.

I think that this entire debacle with BPA is a shame and will not be erased from my mind. The FDA is supposed to be in place as a protector of the U.S. citizenry. But, I think it was said best in the article:

“An agency that once epitomized independent, impartial expertise in the service of public health has degenerated to a disgraced stenographer for the chemical and plastics industry,” said Ken Cook, president of the organization.

You may find the entire article HERE.

what more can I say?

New data was released from University of Cinncinatti, today, about Bisphenol-A. In case you are new, BPA is a toxin leached in plastic and cans that mimics estrogen, resulting in bad, bad things. (Click HERE for more data on BPA.)

Well, it seems new research has shown that the presence of BPA disrupts the efficacy of chemotherapy. Apparently, not only is it similar to estrogen, it also is structurally similar to DES. The reason BPA harms treatment in two ways, DES makes cancer cells proliferate and estrogen protects cells from chemical attacks. So, if you have something in your body that mimics these, it is nothing but a benefit to the cancer.

So, if you have and are treating cancer… please refrain from using products with BPA.

This really is a huge deal, people. I cannot stress this enough. Please, please, please limit the use of products that contain BPA.

DES has a long, not so good history. You can go HERE to find out more.