Image: Matt Collins
This January the Food and Drug Administration warned parents not to pour hot liquids into plastic baby bottles and also to discard bottles that get scratched. Otherwise, a potentially harmful chemical might leach out of the plastic. This warning was the agency’s first, tentative acknowledgment of an emerging scientific consensus: many widely used chemicals once deemed safe may not be.
But a warning was all the FDA could offer worried consumers. The agency does not have the power to force baby-bottle makers to stop using the chemical in question—bisphenol A, better known as BPA. Nor is the FDA alone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator Lisa Jackson testified to Congress last September that her agency lacks the muscle to restrict the manufacture of BPA and other chemicals. The relevant law, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, is simply too weak. It must be strengthened.
As the law stands, the EPA cannot be proactive in vetting chemical safety. It can require companies to test chemicals thought to pose a health risk only when there is explicit evidence of harm. Of the 21,000 chemicals registered under the law’s requirements, only 15 percent have been submitted with health and safety data—and the EPA is nearly powerless to require such data. The law allows companies to claim confidentiality about a new chemical, preventing outside evaluation from filling this data gap; some 95 percent of new submissions fall under this veil of secrecy. Even when evidence of harm is clear, the law sets legal hurdles that can make action impossible. For instance, federal courts have overturned all the EPA’s attempts to restrict asbestos manufacture, despite demonstrable human health hazard.
Consequently, of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S., only five have been either restricted or banned. Not 5 percent, five. The EPA has been able to force health and safety testing for only around 200.
BPA is a case study of what has gone wrong. Although scientists identified potential problems decades ago, regulatory changes have been slow to follow. First synthesized in 1891, the compound became essential to the plastics industry as a building block of the polycarbonates in our eyeglass lenses, the polyesters in our clothes and the epoxy resins lining our cans. In the 1930s BPA was identified as a potent mimic of estrogen; it could bind to the same receptors throughout the human body as the natural female hormone. But the Toxic Substances Control Act explicitly allowed chemicals already employed at the time of the law’s passage—BPA and more than 60,000 others—to continue to be used without any evaluation for toxicity or exposure limits.
Nor did the act give the EPA the power to reevaluate chemicals in light of new information—such as the concerns about BPA that emerged in the 1990s. Researchers in a genetics laboratory noticed that a control population of mice developed an unusually high number of chromosomally abnormal eggs. The reason? BPA leaching from their plastic cages. From this serendipitous discovery, scientists began to explore anew BPA and other chemicals like it, known collectively as endocrine disruptors. Studies since then have linked BPA to asthma, behavioral changes, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. The National Toxicology Program warned in 2008 that “the possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed.” Some health effects from BPA may even be passed from one generation to the next, and in contradiction to textbook toxicology, low doses of BPA may be as harmful as high doses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that 93 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPA by-products in their urine.
This problem is not confined just to BPA. New evidence is emerging about the dangers posed by the chemicals used to make plastics flexible or retard burning, among others. Although most chemicals are presumably safe, the lack of testing and ongoing bureaucratic delay imposed by existing legal requirements pose an unreasonable risk. It should not take decades for government agencies to catch up with the latest findings of science.
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8 Comments
Add CommentAccording to the article, "...scientists identified potential problems decades ago...". Trouble is, they haven't proven that any problems exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) see no problem in continued use. Japan, which has conducted its own studies on bisphenol A, does not see any need for a ban either. This attack on BPA is political.
A simple solution to this problem is to use tempered glass baby bottles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe defense of BPA is political.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt includes quite a bit of blatant lying.
Fortunately people can look this stuff up for themselves.
Don't believe some guy on a blog.
Don't believe your own memory, it only works backward.
Read what the guy posted above on April 7th.
Then search for yourself.
You'll find, for example:
31-Mar-2010
An international summit on bisphenol A (BPA) hosted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ....
* Denmark bans bisphenol A in food packaging for young children
* ... French call to shelve bisphenol A
Japanese research:
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15376511003646689
US research:
http://www.nature.com/jes/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jes20109a.html
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Science doesn't provide proof; science provides the best available information on what's probable.
Reread the information in the original post.
BPA was never tested for toxicity, it was 'grandfathered' in.
It's the 7th largest volume industrial chemical in use.
It's material they had to find some way to get rid of -- else it would be an expensive toxic waste disposal problem.
Even though testing may not by required under statute, BPA is one of the most extensively tested materials in use today. So the claim that "BPA was never tested for toxicity" is patently false. The fact that an eco-crazy country like Denmark has banned BPA means very little. The EU banned all GMO foods while no problem has ever been found.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most definitive tests of the validity of the low-dose hypothesis for BPA are two large-scale reproductive and developmental toxicity studies using accepted protocols. Both of these studies clearly demonstrated the absence of a low-dose effect of BPA.
The most comprehensive of these is a three-generation study conducted at the Research Triangle Institute (now RTI International) under the direction of Dr. Rochelle Tyl (Tyl et al, 2002). A similar study was commissioned by the Japanese National Institute of Health Sciences and carried out by the Chemical Compound Safety Research Institute (Ema et al, 2001)
I didn't wade through all the links you posted. The Japanese study was a real laugher. It proved that if you feed rats BPA (as in they eat it), it shows up in their milk and passes to their rat babies. So what? The question answered by my studies is whether there are any ill effects from low doses of BPA, which there aren't.
I only use plastic as a last resort. It stains, holds odors and who knows what else! I save glass jars to store food. Mice eat right through plastic, must taste good.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSoccerdad,
It would not surprise me if you were paid to comment.
When I see your name...It's always standing up for something that is most likely not healthy.
No study can demonstrate "the absence of a low-dose effect" -- all a study can do is fail to reject the hypothesis, that particular time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you expect proof, you have the wrong idea about how science works.
The study you cite isn't even that author's current work.
Look at the "cited by" list for the human studies, which are far more relevant to human exposure.
Remember how much longer people live compared to mice, and ask yourself why some effects don't show up in a mouse's laboratory lifetime.
I am not paid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI reject unfounded claims. Things are rarely as dire as claimed. Go back to some things that were written in the 1970's about the doom and gloom coming our way.
Remember silicone breast implants and the FDA actions? They drove a company to bankruptcy on junk science, only to admit a decade or so later that they were wrong. Remember the previous ecological disaster before GW (acid rain). That was never really a problem. Remember DDT and bird eggs? That claim was never proven.
Pee into a polycarbonate bottle and wash it out when its full. After a few months, just try washing the bottle. Now let's see what happens when it is recycled.
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