The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A

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http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...ry-on-bpa.html

January 14, 2009

The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A

By David Case

Surely you've heard about BPA by now. It's everywhere. Some 7 billion
pounds of it were produced in 2007. It's in adhesives, dental
fillings, and the linings of food and drink cans. It's a building
block for polycarbonate, a near-shatterproof plastic used in cell
phones, computers, eyeglasses, drinking bottles, medical devices, and
CDs and DVDs. It's also in infant-formula cans and many clear plastic
baby bottles. Studies have shown that it can leach into food and
drink, especially when containers are heated or damaged. More than 90%
of Americans have some in their bodies.

BPA is dangerous to human health. Or it is not. That's according to
two government reports in recent months that came to opposite
conclusions. The National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is part of
the National Institutes of Health, reported in September 2008 "some
concern" that BPA harms the human brain and reproductive system,
especially in babies and fetuses. Yet less than a month earlier, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that "at current levels of
exposure" BPA is safe. Even after the FDA's own science board
questioned the rigor of this analysis in late October, the agency
didn't change its position.

Let's take a moment to ponder this absurd dichotomy. 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.

Just five companies make BPA in the United States: Bayer, Dow, Hexion
Specialty Chemicals, SABIC Innovative Plastics (formerly GE Plastics),
and Sunoco. Together, they bring in more than $6 billion a year from
the compound. Each of them referred questions about BPA's safety to
their Arlington, Virginia -- based trade association, the American
Chemistry Council. "Our view would be, Well, no, there isn't anything
to be concerned about," says Steve Hentges, the council's point person
on BPA. "In a sense, you could have 'some concern' about just about
anything."

Perhaps. But consider this: 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.

Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about
90% have found evidence of adverse health effects. 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. A secretive Beltway public-relations
consultant. A government contractor funded by the industries it was
hired to assess. A Harvard research center with a history of conflicts
of interest. These have been the key actors in how the science of BPA
has been interpreted by the government. And it is their work, as much
as the science itself, that has stymied regulation.

Raging Hormones

There are a few facts about BPA that everyone agrees on. One is that
people are constantly exposed to the compound. Babies -- particularly
those fed canned formula via polycarbonate bottles -- are at the
highest risk from BPA; their undeveloped digestive systems metabolize
it poorly. It's also undisputed that BPA mimics the female sex hormone
estrogen, and that some synthetic estrogens can cause infertility and
cancer.

What is in dispute is whether the tiny doses of BPA we're exposed to
are enough to trigger such hormonal effects. For decades, the
assumption was that they didn't. This was based on traditional
toxicology, which holds that "the dose makes the poison." In other
words, a threshold exists below which a compound is harmless. This
makes intuitive sense. Consider alcohol: The more you drink, the
drunker you get; but if you drink just a little -- below the threshold
-- you may not feel anything. In the 1970s and 1980s, government
scientists used standard toxicology to test BPA. They concluded that,
at doses far higher than those found in humans, it may cause organ
failure, leukemia, and severe weight loss. Yet as BPA products have
made their way into every part of our lives, biologists have
discovered evidence that very low doses may have a completely
different set of effects -- on the endocrine system, which influences
human development, metabolism, and behavior.

At first, these discoveries emerged by accident, when test tubes and
petri dishes in laboratories were switched from glass to plastic. A
group of Stanford researchers in 1993 found that breast-cancer cells
it was studying reacted with a mysterious estrogen, which it traced to
polycarbonate lab flasks. A few years later, Patricia Hunt, a
geneticist at Case Western Reserve University, discovered
abnormalities in the chromosomes of her lab mice. She eventually
concluded that damaged polycarbonate cages were at fault.

In 1995, a developmental biologist named Frederick vom Saal stepped
into the picture. A tenured professor at the University of Missouri --
Columbia, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, vom
Saal tested BPA to see how it interacted with samples of human blood.
He found that, because it bypassed mechanisms that control the dose of
hormones in the body, its estrogenic effects were magnified. "We said,
'Wow, that's bad. This stuff should be considered a lot more potent
than it is,' " vom Saal recalls. He then fed small amounts of BPA --
25,000 times lower than the EPA's toxic threshold -- to pregnant mice.
He discovered that the compound enlarged the prostates of the male
offspring, signaling potentially serious developmental disorders. His
study was published in 1997 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental
Health Perspectives.

In the years since, more than 100 experiments have shown BPA to cause
permanent harm in lab animals at the low exposure levels found in
humans. In 2000, Chandra Gupta, a biologist at the University of
Pittsburgh, replicated vom Saal's prostate study. Hunt, the
geneticist, replicated under controlled conditions her findings of
damage to mouse chromosomes. Others have found impacts on sperm
production, testes development, and mammary-gland tissue, as well as
behavioral disorders including hyperactivity, aggressiveness, and
impaired learning. Most recently, scientists found a correlation
(though it's impossible to determine causation) between BPA levels and
heart disease and diabetes in humans.

If these low-dose findings were counterintuitive to toxicologists,
they made perfect sense to developmental biologists. After all, BPA is
a synthetic hormone. Any physician knows that at small doses, most
hormones are extremely powerful in stimulating their target organs,
while at higher doses -- above a certain threshold -- they can
paralyze these same organs. (Testosterone powers the male sex drive,
for instance, but at high doses causes impotence.)

What's more, BPA is hardly the only chemical to be identified as an
"endocrine disrupter." To date, more than 50 such compounds have been
identified. Dioxins, PCBs, and DDT are some of the more infamous
examples. Some cosmetics and soft plastic toys contain one or more
phthalates -- a group of chemicals that interfere with testosterone
and have been shown to lead to infertility and cancer. But because BPA
is used in so many common products and has shown effects at such low
doses, Hunt says, it quickly became the "poster-child chemical for
these endocrine disrupters."

Rats in the Lab

As the evidence against BPA has mounted, some 29 studies have found
the opposite: that the compound is safe. While these experiments have
been fewer in number, many of them have the advantage of being far
larger in sample size -- and thus, their backers say, more
statistically significant. Yet the largest of these studies also have
another thing in common: They have been funded by BPA's manufacturers.
Sample size, of course, isn't the only criterion for judging a study.
There's also methodology, lab procedures, and interpretation of data.
And a close look at the big industry-funded studies indicates
significant flaws.

One of the first such studies, paid for by the trade group Society of
the Plastics Industry, was directed by Stuart Cagen of Shell Chemical
Co.; another was conducted by John Ashby, at the AstraZeneca lab in
the U.K. Both were attempts to replicate vom Saal's experiment.
Published in 1999, the Cagen and Ashby studies gave BPA a clean bill
of health. Independent scientists, though, questioned the findings. In
addition to testing BPA, Cagen and Ashby had tested the chemical DES
as a "positive control" -- a lab procedure to determine if a study is
conducted properly. Although DES is known to harm mice, neither study
found any effects from it. By the definition of a positive control,
this indicates the experiments were flawed. (Cagen declined comment;
Ashby has retired and could not be reached.)

The largest and most influential industry studies have been conducted
by Rochelle Tyl of the Research Triangle Institute, a private lab in
North Carolina. Tyl's first BPA study, published in 2002 at a cost
that Tyl puts at around $2 million (also funded by the Society of the
Plastics Industry), examined three generations of rats and found no
adverse effects at low doses. Yet here, too, there are questions of
protocol. The study used a rat strain called the CD Sprague-Dawley,
which has been shown to be insensitive to synthetic estrogens like
BPA. (A Japanese study found that the CD Sprague-Dawley rat can
withstand a dose of synthetic estrogen more than 100 times greater
than what a female human can tolerate.) As of early 2007, of the 29
studies that have shown no harm due to BPA, 13 have used the CD
Sprague-Dawley rat. Nonetheless, when the FDA declared BPA "safe" this
fall, it relied almost exclusively on Tyl's work -- a shortcoming that
the agency's science board publicly criticized in October.

To address criticisms of her first study, Tyl recently completed a
follow-up, this time with funding from the American Chemistry Council.
"It doesn't matter who pays for my studies," says Tyl, who denies
there has been any industry influence over her experiments. "It
offends the living bejesus out of me, that I'm going to alter a study
design or a result." The follow-up used mice instead of the CD
Sprague-Dawley rat and also found no adverse effects from low-dose
BPA. However, the study's details indicate that the mice were fed a
type of animal chow that has been shown to mask the effects of
estrogens like BPA. Moreover, according to Tyl's own data, the
prostates in both her experimental and her control mice were enormous,
suggesting that her study had, in fact, shown effects from BPA, or
that there were significant flaws in her team's lab practices.

Harvard to the Rescue

With two pools of warring studies, BPA regulation has hinged on
scientific reviews that assess and pass judgment on the overall body
of research. In April 2001, a select group of scientists received a
letter emblazoned with the Harvard University crest inviting them to
sit on the first such BPA panel. The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis
(HCRA), a program under the Harvard School of Public Health, would
assume "much of the technical writing responsibilities," the letter
explained. In exchange for attending three two-day meetings and
reviewing drafts of the panel's report, the scientists would be paid
$12,000 apiece plus expenses. The letter noted that the Society of the
Plastics Industry had commissioned the study and that the panel's
deliberations would be private. The letter concluded, "I assure you it
will be a stimulating and productive experience."

"I said, 'Great! This is a Harvard center. They're obviously an
honorable bunch,' " recalls one accomplished biologist on the panel,
who spoke on condition of anonymity. What he didn't know at the time,
he says, was that the center has a history of conflicts of interest.
Under founder John D. Graham, a Harvard professor and later
administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in
the George W. Bush White House, the center had solicited funding from
companies whose business might be affected by its research. HCRA's
donors have included more than 100 corporations, including BPA
producers Dow, Shell, and Germany-based BASF, as well as industry
associations such as the American Chemistry Council.

"In the past, HCRA has acted very much like a product-defense group,"
says David Michaels, a Clinton-era Energy Department official and
author of the book Doubt Is Their Product. "In a 2000 study, paid for
by AT&T Wireless, HCRA justified letting motorists talk on their cell
phones by arguing that the added productivity outweighs the cost of
accidents. Three years later, in a Harvard-funded study, the same
researchers found that not to be true." A more recent example: In
2005, the center published a study concluding that "government
advisories on fish consumption and mercury may do more harm than
good"; the lead researcher didn't disclose that most of the study's
$500,000 in funding was underwritten by the United States Tuna
Foundation.

Back in October 1991, in a letter to Philip Morris (obtained through
the archives of tobacco-industry files released during litigation and
maintained by the University of California, San Francisco), Graham
demonstrated how HCRA could recast opposition to regulation as concern
for the greater good. In the D.C. debate on fuel-efficiency standards,
he noted, "We have urged consideration of the safety risks associated
with smaller vehicles." The letter concluded with an appeal for money
and an offer of assistance. In an internal memo, a Philip Morris
executive noted, "Depending on the 'vibes' you guys get when you meet
Graham, I would also be in favor of PM becoming a contributor to the
center."

When it came to its BPA review, the Harvard center held several
meetings of its panel between summer 2001 and 2002. But then the
report languished for two years, during which time dozens of studies
were released that strengthened the case against BPA, including a
human study that linked the compound to ovarian cysts (a cause of
infertility). None of those findings made it into the final report.
Instead, the review, published in the journal Human and Ecological
Risk Assessment in 2004, focused on Tyl's research and a few other
industry studies that downplayed BPA's health concerns. The review
concluded that there is "no consistent affirmative evidence of
low-dose BPA effects."

Several members of the 12-person panel didn't feel comfortable with
the conclusions. Four removed their names from the study. One of those
scientists, Marvin Meistrich, says, "I disagreed with the way the
final report was prepared." After the panel's last meeting, the
Harvard center selected additional studies to include in its review --
"ones that tended to demonstrate no effects," says Meistrich. One
panel member who did sign the report, Claude Hughes, turned around and
less than a year later published a paper with vom Saal in
Environmental Health Perspectives (the NIH's premier journal) that
refuted the Harvard center's conclusions.

In the end, HCRA paid even the scientists who pulled their names from
the review. The published paper's acknowledgments thank them by name
for their "helpful comments and guidance." That, in itself, is a score
for BPA's defenders: These scientists have rare specialties that would
be vitally important if BPA were to wind up in court. A judge could
rule that they had a conflict of interest. "It's fairly commonplace
for companies facing tort suits to corner the market on experts,
making it more difficult for the plaintiff to hire witnesses," says
Peter Nordberg, a toxic-tort lawyer at Berger & Montague in
Philadelphia.

Through a spokesperson, George Gray, the acting director of the
Harvard center at the time, declined to comment on the study. (Shortly
after the HCRA review appeared, President George W. Bush appointed him
assistant administrator of the EPA.) For its part, the Harvard School
of Public Health distances itself from the center's controversial
past. "HCRA is a much different place since John Graham left [in
2001]," says assistant dean Robin Herman. Graham says that
industry-funded studies at the center have always been subject to
"rigorous quality-control procedures."

You might expect that a compromised review like this would wither
away. Yet the opposite is true. The plastics industry still uses it as
evidence that BPA is safe. Journalists and consumers who visit
bisphenol-a.org, a site created by the American Chemistry Council, can
see that none other than Harvard University has weighed in and
pronounced BPA harmless.

For a Few Dollars More

In December 2005, another review of BPA began, this one spurred by the
federal government, not industry. The National Institutes of Health
had started the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human
Reproduction (CERHR), an arm of the National Toxicology Program, in
1998 to study chemicals that might be contributing to alarming trends
in the developmental health of Americans. Infertility and birth
defects are up. Sperm counts are down. Girls reach puberty earlier.
Breast cancer, prostate cancer, and neurobehavioral conditions such as
attention-deficit disorder are mounting. Soon after the center's
inception, however, its operations were outsourced to a Beltway
consultancy called Sciences International. For a fee of about $1
million a year, Sciences ran the evaluation of roughly 20 chemicals in
an eight-year period.

On the surface, Sciences International appeared highly qualified for
the task. Its president and founder was Dr. Elizabeth Anderson, a
former government toxicologist who had helped establish the EPA. She
conducted the EPA's first studies on carcinogens and later spearheaded
its Office of Health and Environmental Assessment. A 10-person firm,
launched in 1993, Sciences had analyzed the toxicity of dozens of
chemicals for the EPA, the FDA, and other government agencies.

Sciences had also built a robust practice helping corporations grapple
with lawsuits and regulation. Among its clients were law firms, trade
associations, and oil-, tobacco-, and chemical-industry giants. Until
2006, Sciences reported on its Web site that it had defended MTBE (a
gasoline additive since banned in 25 states), TCE (an industrial
solvent in drinking water found highly likely to cause childhood
cancer and birth defects), and perchlorate (another toxin in drinking
water that California has deemed "a serious threat to human health").
Tools of the trade included providing expert testimony in lawsuits and
producing scientific papers for publication.

A 2005 investigation in Environmental Health Perspectives raised
questions about the boundaries that Anderson and her firm were willing
to cross in service of their clients. The journal focused on Sciences'
defense of the pesticide phosphine. In the late 1990s, the EPA
proposed stricter standards for phosphine after several people died
near fumigated warehouses. The tobacco industry determined that the
restrictions would cost millions and turned to Sciences for help.
Correspondence between Anderson and R.J. Reynolds, obtained from the
UC San Francisco tobacco archives, reveals that Anderson lobbied her
former colleagues at the EPA to reconsider. Then, with input from her
clients, she drafted a report arguing for the old standards and
offered to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal. "My experience
is that consultant reports funded by those being regulated, and
written expressly for the EPA, are easily and frequently ignored," she
wrote in a memo to Joel Seckar, a toxicologist at R.J. Reynolds.
"Since I am currently editor-in-chief of the international journal
Risk Analysis, perhaps the peer-review process could be expedited."
For this, "Sciences would need an additional $35,000 over and above
the $50,000 provided by the original contract," the letter concluded.
When the EPA eventually decided not to change the exposure standard
for phosphine, the agency cited the review by Sciences International
as justification. (Risk Analysis's board -- which included HCRA's
George Gray -- later tightened its conflict-of-interest standards,
after examining the Sciences-phospine episode, but allowed Anderson to
remain editor. Anderson declined to talk with Fast Company about the
matter.)

Among the first tasks in Sciences' examination of BPA was to draft a
review of previous studies. That draft would serve as a foundation for
a panel of scientists who would judge the compound. According to
biologist Pete Myers, chief scientist of the nonprofit Environmental
Health Sciences, who analyzed the 330-page report, it shared flaws
with the discredited Harvard review. "They contained similar biases,
both giving undue weight to flawed industry studies and dismissing a
wealth of research funded by the National Institutes of Health," he
says. In its own investigation, the Environmental Working Group, a
D.C.-based consumer advocate, found that the Sciences draft failed to
note which studies were industry funded and ignored details such as
Tyl's use of the estrogen-resistant CD Sprague-Dawley rat.

A further complication was that the panel of experts brought in to
conduct the review itself -- while all highly accomplished in their
own specialties -- included only one person with any experience in BPA
research. Unfamiliar with the thousands of pages of literature, the
panel was heavily dependent on the Sciences draft review, says Myers.
In November 2007, the panel issued a weak warning on BPA: that the
research merits "minimal concern" for most of the effects studied.

The fact that the National Toxicology Program eventually overruled the
panel -- strengthening the warning to "some concern" -- has much to do
with outrage in Congress over revelations that Sciences International
had a significant conflict of interest. In February 2007, another
investigation by the Environmental Working Group had revealed that
Anthony Scialli, a top Sciences employee whose title was "principal
investigator" under the 2005 CERHR contract, had coauthored a 2004
study on birth defects from chemicals with a toxicologist from Dow, a
manufacturer of BPA. In response, Senator Barbara Boxer and
Representative Henry Waxman, both of California, wrote letters
upbraiding NIH brass and vowing to keep a close eye on the BPA panel.
The NIH requested an explanation from Sciences, which denied that any
conflicts had "impaired its judgment or objectivity."

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.

Echoes of Agent Orange

As the Sciences International scandal broke, John D. Dingell, Michigan
congressman and then-chair of the House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, launched an investigation into the product-defense industry.
"I have grave concerns that science may be for sale at these
consulting firms," Dingell told Fast Company. "If supposedly reputable
scientists are paid to cast doubt on valid scientific data that raise
public-health concerns about everyday products, then the public's
health and safety are being endangered."

"Science may be for sale at these consulting firms," says Congressman
Dingell. "If supposedly reputable scientists are paid to cast doubt on
valid data, the public's health and safety are being endangered."



Dingell's probe zeroed in on a 75-employee Beltway firm called the
Weinberg Group (tagline: "Science minds over business matters"). The
firm got started in the 1980s defending the carcinogenic defoliant
Agent Orange. According to documents from the tobacco archives,
founder Myron Weinberg was a major player in Philip Morris's infamous
"whitecoat" project, under which the company secretly paid dozens of
PhDs to challenge the findings that secondhand smoke caused cancer.
More recently, the firm has fought restrictions on drugs such as
ephedra and Fen-phen -- both since pulled from the market. On its
site, it has noted that when the FDA proposed canceling an unspecified
client's drug, the Weinberg Group launched a lengthy appeal process
that led "to 10 additional years of sales prior to the ultimate
cancellation."

An April 2003 marketing letter written by Weinberg vice president P.
Terrence Gaffney provides insight into the services the firm offers.
The letter offered DuPont help in defending PFOA, a component of
Teflon that has been the subject of lawsuits and EPA enforcement
costing the company more than $100 million. "Manufacturers must be the
aggressors," the letter urged. "We must implement a strategy at the
outset which discourages government agencies, the plaintiff's bar, and
misguided environmental groups from pursuing this matter."
Specifically, Gaffney offered to facilitate "the publication of papers
and articles dispelling the alleged ... harm." He promised, "We will
harness, focus, and involve the scientific and intellectual capital of
our company with one goal in mind -- creating the outcome our client
desires."

According to Dingell's investigation, Sunoco is among the
manufacturers that hired the Weinberg Group to defend its BPA
business. A spokesperson for Sunoco confirms the company hired
Weinberg but says it was only to analyze BPA science. Weinberg also
downplays its role. "The Weinberg Group certainly has been involved,"
says spokesman John Kyte, managing director of PR giant
Burson-Marsteller. "But critics want to attribute to the Weinberg
Group this exorbitant influence and this cloak-and-dagger kind of
thing. In the big picture, it's not the reason the product is in
widespread use."

James Lamb, a lawyer and toxicologist, has been a prominent advocate
for BPA's safety, both as a Weinberg vice president and an independent
contractor. In 1998, when BPA became a major issue at a scientific
conference in Kyoto, Japan, Lamb led press conferences attacking vom
Saal's studies. In a 2001 press release publicizing Tyl's study using
the CD Sprague-Dawley rats, Lamb -- identified only as a former NIH
scientist, not a consultant to BPA manufacturers -- declared that "the
concerns raised by sketchy or incomplete data have now been
conclusively addressed. The results indicate very clearly that there
is no risk to human health from these low-dose exposures."

The Weinberg Group also sponsors the journal Regulatory Toxicology and
Pharmacology, which has published much of the industry-backed science
on BPA. It published one of Cagen's BPA studies, as well as the Ashby
experiment that cast doubt on vom Saal's prostate findings. George
Gray, formerly of HCRA, is a regular contributor, and many of the
studies the Harvard center sent to its expert panel were published
here.

Reg Tox Pharm, as the journal is known, is published by the
International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. That
may sound like a weighty organization, but its annual budget is about
$50,000, according to its nonprofit tax return. The society was headed
by its founder, C. Jelleff Carr, until he passed away in 2005 at age
94. It is now managed by his wife from her suburban Columbia,
Maryland, home.

Every year, the society presents an International Achievement Award,
for which "there are no specific criteria ... however, international
scientific developments in toxicology are of special interest,"
according to the society's Web site. The 2004 award went to Dr. Lester
M. Crawford, who later was appointed FDA commissioner by President
Bush but resigned after two months. The following year, he pleaded
guilty to conflict-of-interest charges. In 2005, the award went to
Jerome H. Heckman, general counsel to the Society of the Plastics
Industry since 1954. And the 2006 honoree was Elizabeth Anderson of
Sciences International.

Watchdogs and Canaries

Where the BPA saga goes from here is unclear.

The dueling government reports' effect on business began rippling out
as early as last April, when a draft version of the National
Toxicology Program decision was made public. Outraged activists
accused the chemical industry of poisoning infants for profit. Trial
lawyers filed class-action suits against bottle manufacturers. Senator
Charles Schumer of New York proposed banning the suspect baby bottles
outright. Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, and CVS all announced plans to phase
out polycarbonate bottles. Some companies, such as bottle maker
Nalgene, have adopted BPA-free plastic. Yet most businesses stuck with
BPA products -- at least partly because they don't have a good
substitute. Nearly all of the 130 billion food and beverage cans made
in the United States each year are still lined with a BPA resin, for
example. There is an alternative called Oleoresin, but it's more
expensive, has a shorter shelf life, and can't be used for acidic
foods like tomatoes.

You might expect the government to start controlling the use of BPA,
but the track record suggests otherwise. The United States has a long
tradition of keeping harmful substances -- lead, DDT, tobacco, PCBs --
on the market for decades after scientists find adverse effects. The
National Toxicology Program report citing "some concern" has no
regulatory impact, and the FDA has repeatedly deemed BPA "safe," even
in the face of criticism. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, who has
launched numerous investigations into the agency, contends, "The FDA
has got to be a watchdog, not a business partner with industry." (The
agency owes a substantial portion of its budget to fees it collects
from companies registering new products.) What's more, the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel reported that the outside scientist supervising the
FDA's latest review, Martin Philbert of the University of Michigan
Risk Science Center, failed to disclose a $5 million donation from a
man named Charles Gelman -- a retired medical-device executive and an
opponent of BPA regulation.


The government is unlikely to start controlling the use of BPA. The
United States has a long tradition of keeping harmful substances --
lead, DDT, tobacco, PCBs -- on the market for decades after scientists
find adverse effects.



The EPA could theoretically step in, but that's unlikely too. The
agency "has no real program to regulate industrial chemicals, as a
result of deep flaws in the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act," says
Andy Igrejas, environmental-health campaign director for the Pew
Charitable Trusts. Under the act, the EPA needs to show "substantial
evidence" that a chemical is harmful, and must weigh the costs of
restrictions against the economic benefits of keeping the chemical in
commerce. That's a byzantine chore and helps explain why the agency
has managed to restrict only five chemicals in the law's 33-year
history. Under the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, Congress ordered
the agency to screen industrial chemicals to determine if they
interfere with the endocrine system, a program that might have flagged
BPA. Nine years after the 1999 deadline, the agency has yet to screen
a single chemical.

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey has proposed an overhaul of the
whole system. In May, he introduced the Kid-Safe Chemical Act of 2008,
which would reverse the burden of proof on chemicals, requiring
manufacturers to demonstrate their safety in order to keep them in
commerce. The E.U. passed a similar law in 2006, as did Canada in
1999. (Canada has banned BPA in baby bottles.) Still, even if
Lautenberg's bill passes, the question remains whether it would be any
less vulnerable to product-defense firms gaming the science.

In the meantime, consumers and concerned producers and retailers of
BPA products are left with two options: Trust that the chemical
industry has their best interests at heart, or take precautions. In
its report, the NIH's National Toxicology Program advised "concerned
parents" to reduce their use of canned foods; use BPA-free baby
bottles; and opt for glass, porcelain, or stainless-steel containers,
particularly for hot foods and liquids. Independent scientists
applauded, though many of them contend that the advice should have
been even more strongly worded -- and would have been, were the agency
not constrained by the industry-funded science.

"The U.S. has this disjointed approach to chemicals management that
doesn't focus on the inherent hazard of the chemical," says Joel
Tickner, project director at the Center for Sustainable Production at
the University of Massachusetts Lowell. BPA is far from the only
modern-age substance whose effects we don't fully understand, and
isn't the only product whose safety record has been twisted. In that
way, perhaps, it may be the canary in the coal mine. And so the
question looms: In our quest for progress -- and profit -- are we
putting our future at risk?

David Case interviewed unlikely wind-power tycoon T. Boone Pickens in
the June 2008 issue. He is an editor of the Global Post.