September 17th, 2008
BPA story gets all political
I hate it when science turns political.
But the controversy over BPA has now gone over that dark edge. So this is the last post you’ll see about it here for a while.
The FDA refused to back off yesterday from its view that BPA is safe, leading to a press conference by Frederick vom Saal where he piled research papers on a desk and accused the agency of being in the tank for the industry.
Meanwhile college journalists are still being told there is nothing to worry about, even if pregnant parents are being told the opposite.
The issue has explosive political potential because the FDA is relying on industry studies for its findings, while scientists and the medical community are lining up on the other side.
More evidence it’s getting too political. Consumers Union issued a statement condemning BPA, stating the chemical needs to be taken out of the food chain. The industry is now running ads in California claiming BPA is safe.
The result is that nothing will happen concerning BPA until a new Administration has a chance to take a position on the chemical. But that’s a political process, not something a health technology blog should be covering.
So what should consumers, not to mention technologists or computer programmers, be doing when the results of scientific research and the political process collide?
Please don’t say you’ll dump your Nalgene bottle. BPA is a hardening agent used in all types of plastics, from CDs and credit cards to the insides of food cans, as the ad above, recent ads from the American Chemical Council makes clear.
Whether BPA is inside you, in other words, is not up to you. Who should it be up to?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 09/17/08
