Yes, Bisphenol-A is Toxic

Long before Daily Green, where Dan Shapley serves as news editor, we broke the facts on Bisphenol-A Industry Wrote the Rules on Bisphenol-A , where you find it and why it is toxic, as well as an endocrine disruptor. This happened because I was curious about the '7' stamped on the bottom of Nalgene bottles carried around in the college town where I lived at the time by almost everyone.

You may also not know that dental sealant, usually applied to the teeth of children, contains bisphenol-A.

And often overlooked in the press is that under the current and last administrations, the involvement of industry in writing regulations has been commonplace or SOP as they say in acronym-using circles.

A 2005 post can be found on this blog - "Is Your Nalgene Bottle Cool or Cruel"

Now as things have caught up to me and my usual style of being ahead of the curve and offering differing options for your thought and erudition, I think it's a good time to turn in your bottles for Kleen Kanteens.

The sad part though is that can liners still may contain fluoride and BPA components and in the states it may take a while to clean up the act here, being what the current ideology is circulating amongst the Beltway Bandits (D.C. for those outside the US).

Think The Mainstream Media Is Irrelevant? The Bisphenol-A Story Shows Otherwise By Dan Shapley, October 24, 2008

In another sign that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a more effective consumer watchdog than the federal government, the newspaper has turned up evidence that the chemical industry wrote the Food and Drug Administration assessment that deemed Bisphenol-A safe, despite a growing number of independent and government research to the contrary.

The Journal-Sentinel should be commended, again, for its role uncovering and publicizing industry influence on chemical risk analysis in various federal agencies. (Pulitzer, anyone?) Lest anyone fail to realize the cost of turmoil in the mainstream media, this is an example of why the health of the nations newspapers matter. The Journal-Sentinel announced plans in July to cut 130 jobs -- 10% of its full-time staff -- and that was before its parent company announced a third-quarter loss of $17.1 million, according to Forbes.

The paper's latest revelation is that the FDA used an American Chemistry Council report as the basis for its own health analysis of Bisphenol-A, an ingredient in plastics and the lining of cans. It mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a wide range of problems in laboratory studies and, increasingly, human health studies.

The chemical industry, which profits handsomely on sales of the chemical, asserts its safe. The FDA, similarly -- and, not surprisingly, as it turns out -- has agreed. Canada, meanwhile has declared it hazardous and ordered it removed from baby bottles. The U.S. National Toxicology Program also expressed concerns.

The FDA is now reviewing its health assessment. One can hope that shame, if not a sense of public duty, will compel it to independently consider independent science, rather than the industry's spin.

And one can only hope that newspapers with investigative teams like the Journal-Sentinel can survive the turmoil traditional media faces. It's not that online media can't undertake investigations of the same kind, but these news gathering institutions have deep histories, long experience, and are still -- unquestionably -- relevant.

(Another example: The McClatchy news service wrote today that the White House Office of Management and Budget weakened the Environmental Protection Agency's new rule restricting airborne lead, a known neurotoxin, so that 60% fewer facilities would be regulated.)