NYU School of Medicine Tells Big Lies About BPA

The Dihydrogen Monoxide Award

January 9. 2013 ~ http://hansoffplastics.com

We spend a lot of time and effort ferreting through outrageous media coverage of science issues in determining our Dihydrogen Monoxide Award winners but this time, we’re doing something a little different.

This week’s award goes to the dutiful flacks at the NYU School of Medicine for their January 9, 2013 news release on the results of a study of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) whose co-lead author is a university researcher. In fairness, we should state that a flack’s job is to get media coverage of whatever it is they’re pushing. However, we don’t think that should include shopping around false information in pursuit media coverage and the January 9 release is chock full of blatantly false information.

Let’s start with this whopper, which nicely sets the stage for whipping the media into a frenzy. It’s a close cousin of the old “banned substance” lie:

“The study adds to the growing concerns about BPA, which was recently banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration…”

FACT: The US Food and Drug Administration has done nothing of the sort – ever! As a matter of fact, the FDA has explicitly refused to ban BPA. Oh dear, did the good PR folks at NYU forget that the FDA gave a gigantic smack-down to the Natural Resources Defense Council when the agency rejected the NRDC’s petition to ban BPA? Not very professional, kids. As an antidote for this sort of problem, we recommend reading. It’s very helpful, especially for those interested in facts. Just think of the motto of Faber College – Knowledge is Good.

Apparently not content with promoting the exact opposite position of an American regulatory agency, NYU’s School of Medicine decided to look north and east for new positions to misrepresent:

“Its use has been banned in the European Union and Canada…”

Wow! These guys are just makin’ up stuff left and right! As recently as September 2012, Canada went out of its way to affirm the safety of BPA in food contact applications.

Not only that, but Health Canada also went so far as to note that their position affirming the safety of BPA was the same as policies in the European Union, the United States and Japan!

“… based on the overall weight of evidence, the findings of the previous assessment remain unchanged and Health Canada’s Food Directorate continues to conclude that current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children. This conclusion is consistent with those of other food regulatory agencies in other countries, including notably the United States, the European Union and Japan.” (Emphasis added)

As for the European Union, not only has the EU’s food safety body declared BPA safe for use in food contact, it went out of its way to explain why French efforts to ban the stuff are wrong headed.

Whoa, Nelly! How can a guy get so many fundamental facts wrong in ginning up a news release and not get banned from writing future news releases? It’s a mystery to us too.

There there’s the classic “banned from baby bottles,” line. It thrives on misinterpreting the facts:

“Its use has been banned… in the United States for use in baby bottles and sippy cups.”

This is a factual statement. But what makes it such a cheap shot is the fact that the only reason FDA took the action of banning BPA from baby bottles is because it was asked to ban it for that purpose – BY THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE BABY BOTTLES!

Check out this coverage by USA Today. First, we have the headline:

After baby bottle makers voluntarily ban BPA, FDA makes it official

Then there’s the third paragraph of the USA Today article, which we conveniently repeat hear for your review:

“Consumers can be confident these products do not contain BPA,” FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said. She said the agency did not act because it believes BPA is unsafe but because the bottle industry wanted a formal ban for baby products. “We continue to support the safety of BPA for use in products that hold food.”

Let me repeat that: “She said the agency did not act because it believes BPA is unsafe but because the bottle industry wanted a formal ban for baby products.”

See what we mean? The people who make baby bottles stopped using the stuff years ago and asked the FDA to formally ban the stuff, which it did, and in the process the FDA reiterated “… the safety of BPA.”

One thing that was not factually flawed was how the news release tried to make the case for more money for more research. After all, that may be the point here – to use a bunch of false information to create a lot of bad reporting to raise more money so more researchers can increase their prestige and salaries by conducting more research. It’s kind of a vicious cycle, you know?

So congratulations to the cracker-jack flack squad at NYU’s School of Medicine for winning this week’s Dihydrogen Monoxide Award! We give this award four stars. After all, it manages to completely misrepresent the BPA policy positions affecting a score of nations and hundreds of millions of people. It takes a special kind of skill to pull a boner of this proportion.

BPA Studies Alleging Toxicity Unreproduceable

Previous Studies On Toxic Effects of BPA Couldn't Be Reproduced

Jan. 2, 2013 — Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible. The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.

"Our findings don't say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein," said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU's Bond Life Science Center. "Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb."
Creating reliable data on the effects of the chemicals on mice is important to human health since people are frequently exposed to BPA and genistein and humans share similar biological functions with mice. BPA is a chemical used in certain plastic bottles and may be found in the lining of some canned goods and receipt paper. Genistein occurs naturally in soy beans and is sold as a dietary supplement. Research by Fredrick VomSaal, professor of biological science at MU, and others suggests the chemicals may have other adverse effects on many animals, including humans.

Researcher who conducted the original series of experiments claimed that exposure to BPA and genestein resulted in yellow coat color, or agouti, offspring that were more susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes compared to their brown coat color, healthy siblings. However, Rosenfeld and her team did not obtain the same results when repeating the study over a three-year period.
After failing to repeat the original experiments findings with similar numbers of animals,

Rosenfeld's group extended the studies to include animal numbers that surpassed the prior studies to verify that their findings were not a fluke and to provide sufficient number of animals to ensure that significant differences would be detected if they existed. However, even these additional numbers of animals and extended experiments failed to reproduce the earlier findings. However, the current studies demonstrate that a maternal diet enriched in estrogenic compounds leads to a greater number of offspring that express an agouti gene compared to those that do not, even though equal ratios should have been born.

"This finding suggests that certain uterine environments may favor animals with a 'thrifty genotype' meaning that the agouti gene of mice may help them survive in unfavorable uterine environments over those mice devoid of this gene, Yet, the downside of this expression of the agouti during early development is that the animals may be at risk for later metabolic disorders, such as obesity and diabetes" Rosenfeld said. "In this aspect, humans also have an agouti gene that encodes for the agouti signaling protein (ASIP) that is expressed in fat tissue and pancreas, and there is some correlation that obese individuals exhibit greater expression of this gene compared to leaner individuals. Therefore, the agouti gene may have evolved to permit humans the ability to survive famine, but its enhanced expression may also potentiate metabolic diseases under bountiful food conditions."

While the research casts doubt on the previous study, Rosenfeld said that by understanding the genetic profile of the mice in the first series of studies, scientists could learn more about the correlation between certain genes and obesity. This could eventually influence prevention and treatment programs for patients with diabetes and other obesity-related diseases in humans.

Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/
130102140526.htm

BPA Resubs Replacements May Be More Harmful

BPA resin replacements may be more harmful

By Angela Logomasini, Independent Women's Forum and Competitive Enterprise Institute - 12/27/12 12:00 PM ET – The Hill, Congress Blog

As the year winds down, it’s a good time to look back at what was one of the biggest alarm stories of the year: the alleged health impact of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA). Were the claims true, and what might we expect to happen in 2013?

In 2012, news headlines were awash with faulty claims about dangers lurking in food, cosmetics, cleaning products, and even cash register receipts — all allegedly posed by BPA. Green groups targeted their message to women, who were — and continue to be--barraged with one-sided stories suggesting that BPA containers pose a serious threat to our children.

These activists claim that BPA is an “endocrine disrupter” — a chemical that affects human hormone systems. Supposedly, it impacts human development starting in the womb and eventually leads to everything from breast cancer, heart disease, obesity, and more. But as IWF scholars have explained many times on Inkwell and elsewhere, women should be wary of such hype.

Manufacturers have used BPA for more than 60 years to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line food containers, and there are no documented cases of BPA-related illnesses from consumer exposures. Research shows that the human body quickly metabolizes and passes out trace-levels of BPA found in food, producing no adverse health effects. Comprehensive studies conducted by researchers from the World Health Organization, United States, European Union, Canada, Japan, and other places have deemed the current uses of BPA safe.

Rather than focus on these comprehensive reviews, greens continue to cite random and largely inconclusive studies that claim to “link” BPA to health problems. But many of these studies are more akin to junk science than hard science as they simply don’t have good data to assess BPA exposures. In fact, researchers highlighted this problem in a recent article in the journal PLOS One.

Nonetheless, governments have already begun taking action on BPA merely to alleviate anxieties generated by environmental activists rather than to address legitimate public health problems. For example, following Canada’s lead, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned BPA use in baby bottles and sippy cups this year even though it deemed those uses safe. And the French recently have banned its use in food packaging.

If there is anything to fear, it’s the regulations that may result from the hype. In fact, products that replace BPA may not be any safer and in some cases may be more dangerous.

Ironically, earlier this year, researchers pointed out that the chemical used to replace BPA for plastic baby bottles and reusable water bottles, known as Bisphenol S (BPS), is actually a more potent “endocrine disrupter” and that the human body does not metabolize BPS as easily!

Fortunately, there are many reasons to doubt that trace exposures to BPS — or any synthetic chemical for that matter — could have significant hormonal effects. Synthetic chemicals simply are not potent enough. Consider the fact that natural substances in our diets that we consume every day — such as soy, almonds and a variety of legumes — contain endocrine mimicking” substances that are tens of thousands of times more potent than synthetic chemicals! And we all know, soy and nuts aren’t only safe — they are pretty good for you.

Accordingly while BPS plastic alternatives probably are no more dangerous than BPA, they certainly are not any safer.

Other options are potentially more dangerous. For example, greens suggest glass, but who could seriously deem it safer? We all know the risks associated with broken glass. Indeed, children face far higher risks from cuts and subsequent infections than they do from a trace chemical that has been used for decades without any documented adverse health impacts.

Bans on BPA resins that line cans may pose more serious risks. Specifically, BPA resinsline food containers — from soup to soda cans — to prevent the spread of deadly pathogens like E-coli. Manufacturers pointed out in the Washington Post that there aren’t any good alternatives for this use. Accordingly, bans that force us to buy inferior alternatives may mean increased food-borne illnesses.

Now that’s something to worry about.

Logomasini serves as a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

No BPA Link to Heart Disease

Jon Entine, Contributor

Op/Ed/Forbes

12/06/2012 @ 11:14PM                                               

In Reversal, Bedrock Studies Linking Bisphenol A (BPA) to Heart Disease Challenged

 

Studies supposedly linking the plastic additive to diabetes, heart disease and coronary artery disease have been called a “bombshell” by anti-BPA NGOs and many journalists. Now those conclusions, and a central contention of
campaigners, is in doubt.



The most explosive claim of anti-BPA campaigners—that the plastic additive BPA causes an array of heart-related diseases—is in question, according to a peer reviewed paper on the science website PLOS One.

Environmental health scientist Judy LaKind from Penn State University and the University of Maryland and epidemiologist Michael Goodman from Emory University reviewed data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) that previous researchers concluded linked BPA to chronic diseases. Johns Hopkins mathematician Daniel Naiman did the analysis.

In contrast to those previous studies, which looked at only one, two or three datasets, these researchers found no associations between urinary BPA and heart disease or diabetes across four NHANES datasets. Their conclusions challenge one of the central contentions of researchers who believe that BPA is harmful.
The influence of the NHANES data in creating the popular belief that BPA is harmful cannot be overstated. The controversy originated just a few years ago, when bisphenol A was still a relatively obscure plastic additive that a group of obscure scientists had targeted as dangerously toxic.

Based on controversial studies of rodents injected with the chemical, they had come to believe that BPA was what they called an “endocrine disruptor” that did its dirty work at low doses. It distorted hormonal functions, they claimed, and could be blamed for a host of problems from cancer to reproductive and metabolic issues to heart disease. It was a controversial contention, as toxicity has traditionally been linked to exposure—the dose makes the poison, in Paracelsus’ famous phrase.

Heart disease theory rests on questionable data?

A key turning point in the debate came in 2008 with the release of a study based on the NHANES data covering 2003/4 of nearly 1500 adults in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A team of researchers led by David Melzer, an epidemiologist at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom concluded that respondents with higher amounts of BPA in their urine were more likely to report having heart disease and diabetes.

“This is a big deal,” said University of Missouri biologist Frederick vom Saal, the chief proponent of the “endocrine disruptor” hypothesis, who co-authored an
opinion piece that accompanied the study in

 


JAMA. He and John Peterson Myers, a biologist and longtime collaborator, demanded immediate regulatory restrictions on BPA and phthalates, another class of chemicals they contend is dangerous.

The associations were modest, which led the Food and Drug Administration to immediately reaffirm its belief that BPA was safe. But that’s not how it was played in the media and by advocacy NGOs, which flooded the Internet with hundreds of stories “linking” BPA to heart disease. Thousands of articles have since cited the NHANES study as “proof” of BPA’s harmful effects or otherwise casually asserted that BPA is “linked to” or “associated with” chronic heart problems.

After the release of yet another Melzer study based on more recent NHANES data, in 2010, the Natural Resources Defense Council hyperbolically characterized the findings as a “bombshell” as part of its campaign to connect common exposure to everyday chemicals to serious diseases, such as cancer—claims that are not supported by the evidence.

“Health care reform should be linked directly to toxic chemical reform,” wrote Gina Solomon, a scientist and former blogger for the NRDC. “Chemicals such as BPA are a potentially preventable cause of serious illness, and prevention saves lives and dollars.”

Cherry picking data?

The LaKind-Goodman study identified what appear to be two anomalies in the analysis by Melzer and two other related papers released in 2010 and 2011. A diabetes study included as diabetic people who did not have diabetes but had borderline symptoms—a non-standard definition of diabetes. Without those people included, the BPA-diabetes link disappeared.

The heart disease study found a weak association between BPA and heart disease—but it excluded six people who had the highest BPA concentrations. It turns out that none of those left out had heart disease. The inclusion of those respondents would have led to a finding of no association between BPA and serious heart problems. This contentious evidence led to the “bombshell” finding the NRDC crowed about.

The only explanation for leaving out the healthy respondents provided in the Melzer paper is that those excluded were “outside the range of BPA in the original 2003/04 sample,” which topped out at 80.1 ng/mL. According to
epidemiologists I spoke with, they made an odd and arbitrary choice. In a blistering online response to the LaKind-Goodman study they now maintain that the excluded samples, which range from 83.6 to 150, and one outlier at 383, might have been “contaminated.”

In their response, Melzer et al. sharply challenged the overall thrust of the new study, calling it “unfocused” and “poorly documented, and noted that the LaKind-Goodman research was supported by the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council. According to the paper, and under the rules of the peer review process, “the ACC was not involved in the design, collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; or in the preparation or approval of the manuscript.”

In more substantive criticism, Melzer said that the new study had left out more than 400 survey respondents, implying those excluded could have skewed the results. LaKind and Goodman wrote they excluded survey respondents who omitted their age, body mass, smoking behavior or other variables to keep the data consistent. Melzer and the primary author of the diabetes study, University of Michigan doctoral pre-candidate Monica Silver, also pointed out that the new study included children in the diabetes assessment, which could also account for the different conclusions. Regardless, responded Lakind and Goodman, they claim they consistently found no associations between urinary BPA and heart disease or diabetes across four NHANES datasets.

Melzer pointedly noted that in a more recent study, published earlier this year, his team found that those who developed coronary artery disease tended to have higher urine BPA concentrations up to ten years earlier than those who did not develop heart disease.

The dispute over the data threatens to obscure the LaKind and Goodman’s most salient conclusion. NHANES is a robust and critically important public health database, they maintain. However, it only measures concurrent exposure to chemicals as reflected in urine, and not long-term impacts.

Limitations of NHANES survey to analyze BPA

“Our results don’t shed light on whether BPA is or isn’t a risk factor for diabetes or heart disease,” said LaKind. “Rather, the point we are making is that using data from cross-sectional studies like NHANES surveys to draw such conclusions about relations between short-lived environmental chemicals and chronic diseases is inappropriate.”

Melzer brushed off that point completely in his response. But Monica Silver, who headed the diabetes study using the NHANES data, emailed me: “I completely agree [with LaKind and Goodman on this point] and make similar conclusions in our paper. NHANES’ utility is not in making broad statements of causation of a given disease by a given exposure, but rather in providing preliminary, hypothesis building evidence that can inform future work.”



Many science-challenged journalists and activist NGOs, like the NRDC and Environmental Working Group that put advocacy ahead of science, consistently misrepresent and hype studies that show the presence of chemicals in urine, as if that signals likely toxic effects. The use of biomonitoring data is problematic, say scientists, particularly as it pertains to BPA. According to the FDA reflecting the emerging scientific consensus, “[O]ral BPA administration [of BPA] results in rapid metabolism of BPA to an inactive [and therefore harmless] form.” In other words, BPA is detoxified and excreted.

That was confirmed in what is considered the state-of-the-art, independent study financed by the Environmental Protection Agency on the potential harm of BPA—headed by Justin Teeguarden, a senior scientist at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of the nation’s premier research centers, to assess how humans process BPA. Their conclusion: Despite the presence of the chemical in urine, human blood concentrations of BPA are infinitesimally low—undetectable in most cases and thousands of times lower than any level that is likely to cause harm to humans.

Although low doses of certain chemicals can induce non-monotonic effects, scientists who have reviewed these studies, time and again, have come away unconvinced these effects consistently or even generally suggest harm. Since 2007, there have been more than a dozen comprehensive reviews of BPA studies by independent government scientists around the world, including in Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States, and each has concluded that current uses of the chemical are safe.

The European Food Safety Authority in summer 2010, a joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization/WHO expert panel on BPA in November 2010, and a special Advisory Committee of the German Society of Toxicology in spring 2011 have all independently concluded that the collective body of evidence demonstrates that BPA does not pose serious neurological dangers or cause cancer in humans, and has not even been shown to be an “endocrine disruptor,” although it does have modest but not necessarily harmful endocrine effects.
Most recently, in October, Health Canada and that country’s Bureau of Chemical Safety upheld its prior scientific finding that found BPA poses no serious threat. “Based on the overall weight of evidence,” reads the report, “the findings of the previous assessment remain unchanged and Health Canada’s Food Directorate continues to conclude that current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children.”

More on science literacy at the Genetic Literacy Project
Follow Jon on Twitter
Jon Entine is senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Management and STATS at George Mason University.

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This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/12/06/in-reversal-bedrock-studies-linking-bisphenol-a-bpa-to-heart-disease-challenged/

More False BPA "Science" By News Release

 

By Alan Caruba

News releases trumpeting not merely inaccurate, but false, science have become a way of life for Americans and others around the world. There is rarely, if ever, any fact checking done by the editors and reporters who pass along often dangerously false science on a wide range of topics, with many reports designed to alarm consumers.

Such is the case with bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that has been in use for some 60 years to protect the contents of metal food containers and create shatter resistant plastics. In 2011 I wrote a four-part series about the efforts to ban BPA which has been subjected to more than 5,000 studies, none of which has found harm or undue risk in normal use. Its safety was reaffirmed earlier this year by the refusal of the Food and Drug Administration to ban it.

But the anti-chemical drumbeat continues. A recent study at the University of California-San Diego that purported to show a risk of danger when BPA was metabolized and this finding was announced by a news release issued by the university. It was reviewed and approved by researcher Michael Baker and contained the traditional hype we see when organizations want to whip up public concern when none is warranted. Remarkably, the tactic was exposed in a lengthy article by Jon Entine in Forbes magazine.

News releases trumpeting information that is not merely inaccurate but false have become a way of life for Americans and others around the world. There is rarely, if ever, any fact checking done by the editors and reporters who pass along often dangerously false pseudo-science on a wide range of topics, from chemicals to the climate. But Entine’s article revealed something many has suspected but few have ever admitted.

Baker confessed to Entine that “I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused by some.”

“Misused”? Hardly. More like part of the massive effort by the opponents of the real science regarding BPA and it is designed and intended to frighten people because fear is the most potent weapon that the many advocates of false causes that mask themselves as saving lives or even saving the Earth.

Writing in the National Review, Julie Gunlock noted that reports on Baker’s study, read by those without knowledge of the real facts about BPA, “causes moms like me to gnaw off their fingernails at the thought that we might be poisoning our children with chemicals. But that’s okay; regular moms and dads (already struggling with high food and fuel costs) can just run out and support the cottage industry that has sprouted up in the wake of these terrifying headlines—the BPA-free industry.”

“Of course, what parents won’t hear about is Baker’s mea culpa because if there’s one thing parents can count on from today’s science writers is an absolute dearth of Entine-esque journalism when it comes to BPA.” She could not be more correct.

Science writing today is one of the most debased forms of popular journalism found in newspapers and magazines and BPA is just one example. Consider our food supply. A recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Henry I. Miller, a physician, molecular biologist and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, cited the way Greenpeace, one of the leading environmental organizations, “has always had a flair for publicity” to become “a $260 million-plus per year behemoth with offices in more than 40 countries.”

Dr. Miller warns that the Greenpeace PR machine “is now spearheading an effort to deny the poorest nations the essential nutrients they need to stave off blindness and death. The targets are new plant varieties collectively called ‘golden rice.’ Rice is a food staple for hundreds of millions, especially in Asia. Although it is an excellent source of calories, it lakes certain nutrients necessary for a complete diet. In the 1980s and 1990s, German scientists Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer developed the ‘golden rice’ varieties that are biofortified, or enriched, by genes that produce beta-carotine, the precursor of vitamin A.”

Hundreds of millions of children of pre-school age are at risk of vitamin A deficiency, leading to blindness and death within a year for about 70% of those children and Greenpeace is using its multi-million dollar flacking apparatus to ply its nonsense to a gullible and uncritical news media and reduce access to this valuable food source.

Now ask yourself how many children and adults would die from botulism in unprotected cans and bottles of food?

These and countless other examples represent the deep commitment of environmental organizations to limit and reduce billions of human lives which they regard as a nuisance that harms the Earth. Like golden rice, BPA saves lives. It is just one of countless chemicals that protect and extends life every day.

The real threat is the researchers and agenda-driven scientists intent on advancing the environmental movement’s objective of killing as many people as possible to “save the Earth.” They accomplish this through a media that either approves of this agenda or is just so starved for ratings and financial survival they’ll report any sensational headline available. The real threat is the debased “science journalism” that aids and advances this agenda.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

BPA Found Safe...By a Researcher Who Doesn't Want to Admit It

BPA Found Safe . . . By Researcher Who Doesn’t Want to Admit It

By Julie Gunlock

November 6, 2012 4:54 P.M.

I’ve written on this site several times before about bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in everyday products like baby bottles, storage containers, and in the lining of canned food and the bad science surrounding efforts to ban it. Now science writer Jon Entine has a must-read article in Forbes that confirms long-held suspicions about the motivations of activists opposed to the use of BPA.

 

 

Entine explains that University of California-San Diego researcher Michael Baker hyped the results of his BPA research in a press release – a press release that Baker himself now renounces (how convenient for him to backtrack after his specious press release generated dozens of terrifying headlines).

Baker actually admitted his error to Entine, saying “I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused by some.”

Oopsie.

Just a tiny little mistake that causes moms like me to gnaw off their fingernails at the thought that we might be poisoning our children with chemicals. But that’s okay; regular moms and dads (already struggling with high food and fuel costs) can just run out and support the cottage industry that has sprouted up in the wake of these terrifying headlines — the BPA-free industry.

 Parents won’t mind that these products are much more expensive. After all, isn’t your baby’s health worth it? Surely parents aren’t already cash-strapped with the truck-load of diapers they purchase on a monthly basis along with the toys, books, and other baby items one simply must supply a child with these days.

Of course, what parents won’t hear about is Baker’s mea culpa because if there’s one thing parents can count on from today’s science writers it is an absolute dearth of Entine-esque journalism when it comes to BPA. Baker’s study might not have generated such dramatic headlines if these journalists had revealed, as Entine does, that Baker has zero prior expertise in studying BPA or that his study didn’t include humans or even animals but rather was a computer simulation. Even more stunning, Entine discovered that Baker was unaware of the quite impressive body of research that shows BPA is safe.

In fact, thousands of studies conducted have shown BPA to be perfectly safe, yet those with an evangelical interest in continuing the hand-wringing about BPA cling desperately to any shred of information, no matter how far-fetched, supporting their position. And now, the very researchers who study BPA can’t be counted on to stick by their own findings that BPA is safe.

Don’t expect anti-BPA activists to be bowed by this latest blow to their religious crusade. Their ideology might still be intact but the science is proving them wrong. That’s a good thing for parents who have grown weary of these alarmist claims and who just want to keep their kids safe without spending a fortune.

http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/332574/bpa-found-safe-researcher-who-doesn-t-want-admit-it/julie-gunlock#
 

The BPA Wars: Junk Science and Junk Journalism

By Alan Caruba

On Tuesday, September 18, FoxNews.com posted an article by Alex Crees, a health news reporter, “Chemical BPA linked to obesity in children, teens.” If Ms. Crees had done any research to verify the facts she recounted in “a new study”, she would have known it was yet another bogus effort to correlate eating food with BPA.

Bisphenol-A, more commonly called BPA, is a chemical that has been in wide, safe use for over 50 years. It is used to coat the insides of aluminum cans and plastic bottles and protects them against food pathogens such as botulism and has the added value of protecting plastic bottles against breakage.

As I noted in my six-part series, The BPA File, In 2011 “the German Society of Toxicology released a review of more than five thousand previous studies of BPA exposure that concluded that BPA ‘exposure represents no noteworthy risk to the health of the human population, including newborns and babies.’” Researchers concluded that BPA is neither mutagenic nor likely to be a carcinogen.’”

Let me repeat that, “more than five thousand previous studies.” At what point can one expect a Fox News journalist to actually check her facts?

A graduate of New York University, Ms. Crees studied journalism, psychology, and Spanish. There is no indication she studied chemistry. If “journalism” is defined as mindlessly repeating some news release that says BPA “may increase the risk of obesity in children and teens”, permit me to suggest that eating lots of snacks, ice cream and candy “may” also increase that probability!

Anyone who wants to learn the truth about BPA is advised to visit Junkscience.com, the website of Steve Milloy who has gained a solid reputation for debunking so-called “science based” fear campaigns. His data on BPA reveals that there is no scientific evidence that BPA:

• Has ever harmed anyone despite 50 years of use;

• Acts as an endocrine disruptor; and

• Has any health effects at low doses;

Furthermore, the data debunks some of the most oft-cited and false claims about BPA.

• BPA is not carcinogenic or mutagenic;

• BPA does not adversely affect reproduction or development at any realistic dose;

• BPA is efficiently “metabolized” and rapidly excreted after oral exposure

My series on BPA confirms Milloy’s findings, but Ms. Crees has written an article intended to add to the multitude of similar distortions while questioning the facts offered by authoritative sources.

The effect of this avalanche of articles has triggered a number of governments to ban some uses of BPA despite more than a half century of its use without any evidence of alleged harm, but governments are famous for acting on the bogus “precautionary principle” that essentially says that anything that might cause harm should be banned.

Going back centuries, it has been known that it is the amount of any given chemical that represents harm. Let’s understand a fundamental determination of what is toxic or not. As Paracelsus (1492-1541) said long ago, “All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison.”

Ms. Crees’ article noted that “the study’s lead investigator Dr. Leonardo Trasanda, associate professor of pediatrics and environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, told FoxNews.com, ‘This study raises concerns about the need to reconsider that stance (the presence of BPA).”

Excuse me, but what the heck is “environmental medicine” other than an excuse to scare people with studies about every chemical known to man and God? As for Dr. Trasanda’s study, it set out to correlate extremely low amounts of BPA in the urine of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 years old.

In the event no one has pointed it out to Dr. Trasanda and Ms. Crees, urine is excreted by the body, but Dr. Trasanda said, “We are especially concerned that children who ate too many calories might also ingest BPA.”

The operative word here is “might” and the likelihood that eating “too many calories” might play a far larger role in obesity than any other factor!

To her credit, at the very end of the article, Ms. Crees quoted Steven Hentges of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council, who she identifies as a representative of “chemical manufacturers”, as saying that “Attempts to link our national obesity problem to minute exposures to chemicals found in common, everyday products are a distraction from the real efforts underway to address this important health issue.”

“Due to inherent fundamental limitations in this study, it is incapable of establishing any meaningful connection between BPA and obesity.”

Ms. Crees is guilty of both junk science and junk journalism. The Steven Hentges quote should have been the lead paragraph, not the last.

© Alan Caruba, 2012