canned food

Be Thankful for BPA-Lined Canned Goods this Thanksgiving

by Angela Logomasini on November 15, 2010

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Well-meaning environmentalist Mindy Pennybacker, author of Do One Green Thing: Saving the Earth Through Simple, Everyday Choices, offers some sagely foolish advice today on Huffington Post.  She says, “This Thanksgiving, I’d rather have a can of worms than canned food with Bisphenol-A! At least worms make fertile soil. BPA, it appears, just makes us fat and infertile.” Accordingly, don’t eat canned food because containers are lined with BPA-based resins.

No thanks. I’ll stick with the BPA. I hope Pennybacker enjoys those worms with her holiday meal.

BPA — which is short for bisphenol A — is a chemical manufactures have used for 60 or so years to make hard plastics and resins used in food packaging without ever being traced back to any actual health problems. Ms. Pennybacker attempts to support her claims by citing a study that reports an association between BPA and human diabetes, as well as a study on pregnant mice.  Associations don’t show cause and effect and are often accidental; and humans and mice metabolize BPA very differently.  She doesn’t note that many scientific panels that reviewed the full body of research — such as the recent European Union review update — report no problems with BPA.  Yet that doesn’t stop such silly claims about its effects, nor does it stop the many calls for regulation.

The author does temper her folly with a note that we need not “fret” too much about BPA because human exposures from food packaging are well below what EPA considers safe. So then, why does she need to hype the risk at all? She goes on to note that exposures come from other things, like store receipts. Such exposures are not a concern according to the World Health Organization and the overwhelming exposure is from ingestion of food products. And even if you ate your store receipts, it is doubtful BPA would be a problem because humans (unlike mice) metabolize and pass BPA before it could cause problems.

Let’s not forget why we use BPA: It has many benefits! This Thanksgiving, I am going to be happy that the cans my cranberry sauce came in were lined with a resin made with bisphenol-A because it greatly reduces the chance that those cranberries will have been contaminated with botulism or some other dangerous organisms.  It also keeps my food free from rust, which would otherwise detract from the fruit flavors.

The benefits of BPA are just one thing for which I am thankful this year. In addition to good health and family, I am thankful for the freedom that makes America great. That includes the freedom to innovate and enjoy the results of that effort, be it BPA or some other helpful product that makes life better, safer, and more enjoyable. I fear those who would take those freedoms away.

Image credit: LarimdaME’s photostream on Flickr.

Baby Bottle Politics Trumps Science at FDA

by Angela Logomasini on January 19, 2010 · 1 comment

in Environment

The greens are rejoicing today because the Food and Drug Administration has softened its stance on the safety of Bisphenol A, a chemical used in the production food packaging and containers, such as baby bottles. Humans consume trace amounts of BPA in food products, but there is no direct evidence of any human health problems after decades of use.

For years, FDA has reported that BPA levels were too low to pose any significant health problems to humans. Scientific reviews around the (EU, Japan, Canada) world have drawn the same conclusion. Now FDA says it wants more study and might want to regulate in the future. But the science hasn’t changed–just the politics. Unfortunately, in today’s world, fear mongering and hype is more powerful than science.

So exactly what did FDA report this week? They “reviewed the research” and are suddenly more wary about the substance because of conclusions drawn in a 2008 National Toxicology Program report about BPA impacts on rodents. The agency notes that it could not find any direct evidence of problems among humans. It expressed minimal to negligible concern for almost all potential BPA risk factors. It expressed “some concern” in one area because some studies showed associations indicating that bisphenol A “can cause changes in the brain and behavior” and have “effects on the prostate gland” of laboratory animals. The NTP expressed “some concern” that associations between BPA and rodent development may indicate possible impacts on the development of children and human fetuses. NTP called for more research before such concerns could be dismissed.

Yet those concerns are drawn from rodent studies that have largely been dismissed around the world (as well as by FDA) as not particularly relevant or adequate for drawing conclusions. The NTP report noted: “These studies in laboratory animals provide only limited evidence for adverse effects on development and more research is needed to better understand their implications for human health.”

It is difficult to believe that FDA has suddenly found these studies compelling on scientific grounds. Instead, it appears the studies’ limitations are now being overlooked to justify a political agenda. FDA will now likely spend millions of taxpayer dollars to study this issue, but it is unlikely to find anything new. But whatever they find, you can be sure they will use it as an excuse to expand their regulatory power.