November 12th, 2009
Watch BPA get taken seriously now
The warnings about Bisphenol-A (BPA), which we began covering here some time ago, have mainly gone unheeded. (Picture from China’s Peoples Daily of a chemical explosion in Jilin, China.)
It’s hard to take the flexibility out of plastic. It’s hard to create something new in quantity. It might be expensive to spray something other than BPA into metal food cans. And then what about liability?
And what’s it hurting anyway? Mood and memory? Is it making you fat? Is it making girls mean?
Big deal.
How much you want to bet that changes now that China has discovered male workers exposed to BPA had a high incidence of erectile dysfunction.
The Chinese study, in the British journal Human Reproduction, leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Just how high was the exposure of these workers? Are exposures of American chemical industry workers comparable? What level of BPA exposure causes harm, and at what level of exposure do we find what types of harm?
There’s going to be a boom market in medical studies aimed at answering these questions.
BPA has been in common use for over 30 years. It’s probably in you right now, probably more of it than you think.
The chemical industry is going to fight any attempt to limit its use or (later) to take legal responsibility for the consequences. Here is how the American Chemistry Council has responded to the most recent news:
- The Chinese study has limited relevance to consumers.
- Last year’s study by Consumer Reports is inconsistent with what regulators say.
- Other studies have limitations and unclear conclusions.
- Exposure levels in baby bottles are very, very low.
Wash, rinse, repeat. And don’t forget to put out a Web site that claims to be unbiased but is in fact an industry front.
Asbestos makers could be isolated from the rest of the industry and allowed to run down. The makers of BPA are a who’s who of America’s chemical industry. Bayer, Dow, GE, Sunoco. BPA is part of the green energy push.
But if it’s going to make our little soldiers go limp, I’m sure we can find a way to get rid of it.
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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| 11/12/09
