California Lawmakers Actually Turn Down An Opportunity For More Restrictions!
August 18th, 2008
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Bisphenol A is a common substance found in many plastics. Generally it stays there (in the plastic) but every once in a while a few molecules come out and could possibly be ingested by someone drinking from such a plastic container. Based on studies in which rodents were given massive doses of the stuff, many concluded that it was some of the most dangerous stuff on the earth. A bill was introduced in the California legislature to ban it from baby products such as bottles. Because, of course “OH THE CHILDREN! FOR THE LOVE OF THE POOR CUTE LITTLE CHILDREN! PROTECT THE CHILDREN!”
This all sounds pretty familiar, but one thing that makes this event absolutely astounding is that the California State Legislature actually voted down thew bill! The Bill’s sponsor said that she would re-submit the bill for another vote in the future and continue to fight to get the substance banned, especially from children’s products. This ban is not actually as potentially damaging as others, as the material is not found in all plastics and could likely be replaced with other formulas for such products. Still, evidence shows that this panic is a bit overblown and the regulation is unnecessary and poses a burden on distributors manufacturers that is just not justified. Not to mention, legislation like this can help to increase fears in general by providing government sanctioned warnings, which could also be used to bolster frivolous lawsuits.
One thing that may have helped in this circumstance is that just a few days before the vote, the FDA released a draft of a report on a review of avaliable scientific data. The FDA has concluded that the substance is safe and no evidence exists that it is harmful to humans, especially in low doses. The report found “Adequate Margin of Safety” for Bisphenol A, which has been used in consumer products for decades.
“with bisphenol A, we already know so much about it … it’s not likely that anyone’s going to do an experiment tomorrow that will render everything that we know today wrong.”
Ah, some rare sanity on such an issue. Hell, even the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment found no reason to believe the substance dangerous and Germany has practically created a cottage industry over finding reasons to fear chemicals. Extensive studies have generally found that bisphenol A is not readily absorbed by humans, and tends to pass through the digestive tract with very minimal uptake. That which absorbed has a short biological halflife and appears to break down quite readily.
Sorry I couldn’t write more about this at the moment, but it’s a bit late and I’ve been bogged down with other things.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Good Science, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 18th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
This particular cycle of fear-mongering may be coming to and end. Eventually the public becomes saturated with this sort of ‘toxic substance of the week’ type of reporting and simply doesn’t give a damn anymore. I’ve pointed out in the past, that if all the things that were considered dangerous at low doses, where as bad as the chicken-little types made them out to be, we’d all be dead by now.
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August 19th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I’m sure I’ll be attacked like I always am when I say anything sane and intelligent on this page of bad science, but I’d like to hear why you think the US FDA is so trustworthy that all you need is their blessing on something and you take this on good faith.
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August 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am
George, I might point out that if you follow the links you will find that the European Food Safety Authority, The German Government, The Canadian Government and several large studies found no reason for concern. Also the FDA report doesn’t just say that it’s safe because they said so but it cites all the major studies and relevant data.
This seems to me like the whole thing with cell phones and cancer and claiming we should take precautions because we just don’t know and we need more studies. How the hell many more do they need? This goddamned stuff has been around for most of the 20th century and has been studied many many times. The high dose rodent studies have been proven to be poor indicators of what very low exposure might do to humans.
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August 19th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
bisphenol A has a biological halflife in humans of just hours before being excreted in the urine and that does not include internal breakdown of it. It has a very fast biological decomposition rate even in the enviornment its halflife before decomposition is a matter of days. Therefore it can’t remain in your body long enough to build up beyond minute concentrations even if you’re exposed to it at high levels.
The concern about it came from the finding that it could trigger certain hormone receptors and they showed in rats that if they exposed them to high levels at a constant rate such that they maintained a constant high level in the body, even as it was broken down and excreted it would have hormonal effects and especially on throwing off sexual development.
Something to consider about hormones is that they don’t do much at very low levels. All men have measurable estrogen although its a tiny tiny portion of that of women it is there and yet men don’t grow breasts, why? Because it’s not like low levels of hormones are going to have the same effect of high levels sufficient to change chemistry and development of certain tissues. The levels in the body after drinking something from a plastic bottle are so minute that even if they do mimic the effects of human hormones they are drowned out by the much higher levels of even trace hormones which are too low to manifest traits that are observable in any way.
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August 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
I googled this and boy all the pages on this subject seem to be really dramatic and sky-is-falling pages about the toxic chemicals and the government conspiracy. I finally found some decent reports on google page six or seven from the CDC and from a university page listing studies and information and upon reading it, I can’t see what the fuss is. It sounds like the research is conclusive that it is not going to do much especially because it does not get retained long at all if it goes into the blood which it normally does not. Also, they said that a plastic bottle should not leach more than very tiny numbers of molecules. This is crazy!
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