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FDA Did Not Finish Its Homework On BPA
Yesterday, the Science Board Subcommittee on Food Contact Applications of BPA released its report on the Food and Drug Adminstration’s draft assessment of bisphenol A, a chemical used to strengthen all manner of plastic containers, the most damaging example being baby bottles. This story has been brewing for months, and the public health bloggers who smelled a regulatory proposal baked with industry-authored research are slamming the FDA.
Bisphenol A is an endocrine disruptor–its chemical behavior is similar to that of estrogen and can cause the normal functioning of hormones in a person’s body to go awry.
The crew over at Effect Measure provide a useful archive of their numerous previous posts on the matter and wonder why the agency is now “moving forward with planned research to address the potential low dose effects of bisphenol A” when they should have already done so.
But Sarah Vogel at The Pump Handle is not sure that the FDA is even up to the job of making an appropriate call on the issue:
[C]an the current FDA conduct a transparent, high quality scientific assessment of BPA?…Determining BPA’s safety is not a matter of needing more scientific research. There are already over 700 studies on this chemical. “Credible” minds at the NTP and a consensus of BPA researchers have determined that there are a number of serious risks of exposure to BPA at the levels of human exposure. The challenge to credible scientists and regulators now is to determine the level and magnitude of the risks presented by current BPA exposure at all developmental stages in life.
The tactics used by chemical industry corporations to delay regulation of harmful toxins are well documented–just see David Michaels’s Doubt Is Their Product. This is just another unfortunate example of why relying on industry-funded research to make regulatory decisions isn’t really regulation at all.
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