You can stream or download the whole radio program at the following link.http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=14-P13-00011&segmentID=4
Consumer worries and health concerns helped prompt the FDA to ban Bisphenol A (BPA) in children’s products. But an investigative report in Mother Jones finds replacement plastics may be just as hazardous. Report author Mariah Blake explains the evidence to host Steve Curwood.
CURWOOD: Along with the environmental costs of manufacturing plastics, there is another set of risks. Though those numbers on the bottom tell you what can be recycled, plastic waste now litters the earth and seas, and what once seemed an inert material can sometimes affect human health. The widely used ingredient bisphenol A, BPA, has been shown to affect the hormone system by mimicking estrogen.
Now it's widely banned in baby bottles and children's sippy cups. Firms have created BPA-free alternatives - products like Tritan - but recent research suggests that the replacements and many other plastics are no safer. Mariah Blake, a reporter with Mother Jones, has investigated just what's in those plastics. She says there was certainly reason to get rid of Bisphenol-A.
BLAKE: The health hazards of BPA are well documented and they are numerous. So they range from breast and prostate cancer to diabetes to heart disease to increased aggression and Attention Deficit Disorder. The list is pretty long and surprisingly diverse. There is no longer any legitimate scientific debate about the health effects of BPA.
-----
CURWOOD: So there were plastics that were put together to replace BPA so that other things could be used for baby bottles and sippy cups and water containers, so what kind of testing has been done on these other plastics?
BLAKE: The way it works in the United States, most chemicals have never been tested for safety, so there’s more than 80,000 chemicals that are used in commerce in the United States, and only a very tiny fraction of those have been tested for safety. And chemicals are generally presumed safe until proven otherwise. So these plastics that are being used to replace polycarbonate - the BPA laden plastic - we don’t necessarily know much about their safety.
-----
BLAKE: The final point - Eastman Chemical performed a variety of testing and, in fact, the initial tests actually found that their product was estrogenic. They ran a test using computer modeling, which predicts based on the chemical structure whether a chemical is estrogenic. And that test found that one of the ingredients in Tritan is more estrogenic than BPA. So what they did was perform animal tests, not on Tritan itself, but on certain ingredients, and they didn’t include TPP, which was the substance that had tested positive for estrogenic activity. The tests are designed, essentially, not to find estrogenic activity.
The clearest example of that is that they often use a type of rat that is called the Charles River Sprague Dawley rat. This rat is known to be insensitive to estrogen, so it can withstand doses of estrogen that are about 100 times higher than a human female with no response. What this means is the industry is testing a chemical that mimics estrogen on an animal that does not respond to estrogen. They published this study and used it to try to discredit the findings by George Bittner, which had found that Tritan was, in fact, estrogenic.
-----
CURWOOD: Now, in your article, you write about PR companies involved in efforts to discredit studies showing tobacco and second hand smoke are dangerous are now helping plastics companies. Tell me more about that please.
BLAKE: Yes, it’s very interesting. Not only has the industry adopted the tactics of Big Tobacco, but, in many cases, they’re relying on the same consultants. So many of the same scientists who were involved in doing tobacco industry research are now doing chemical industry-funded research on chemicals like BPA. And just like Big Tobacco industry-funded studies generally did not find that smoking or second-hand smoke was harmful, these studies are not finding that BPA and similar chemicals are harmful.
[These same people are working for fossil fuel companies which are claiming global warming is not happening, or is not connected to increased greenhouse gases.]
-----
In many ways, regulators are captive to industry, so in the case of BPA, for example, in 2008 it came to light that the FDA was relying on industry lobbyists to write its evaluation of BPA, and that its finding that BPA was safe was based almost entirely on two industry-funded studies, one of which as fatally flawed.
[People who vote for politicians because they cut taxes and oppose regulation, also assume the government is protecting us from this stuff.]
-----
BLAKE: By educating themselves, and by demanding products that are free of all estrogenic activity, consumers can potentially have an impact. I think it’s important for people to be aware that many of the chemicals that are used in the products they use every day have not been tested for safety. We know that these chemicals have some sort of an effect, and we know that many plastics probably contain these chemicals, but we don’t know what exactly the affects will be. One of my sources put it this way, it’s like an “unplanned science experiment we’re doing on our families every day”. I would say until the science is clearer, people may want to consider limiting their exposure to plastics and using natural materials instead. So, for example, I have a three-year-old son. I give him a stainless steel sippy cup which has a nozzle that is not made from plastic. And there’s glass replacements for tupperware. There are various products people can use in lieu of plastic.
-----
We note that court documents relied on by Ms. Blake for her story include internal Eastman communications that show the company took pains to suppress evidence that the product contains estrogenic ingredients.
No comments:
Post a Comment