Frederick Vom Saal, a research biologist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is doing his darndest to get the FDA to notice that BPA and other endocrine disrupting chemicals are bad for us. A number of other countries have taken note of research by Vom Saal and colleagues and have restricted or banned the substance.   But the U.S.  regulators, by and large people from a different, and older, field of science (toxicology), aren’t listening.

Vom Saal and colleagues aren’t giving up. From an article in this week’s Missourian: “One of the things that needs to change, vom Saal says, is the heart of the regulatory system. Its structure and its members are not organized to recognize new scientific discoveries….

Starting in December, 2010, the European Union required testing and classifying chemicals before they can be put into products.

“We have no law like that in the United States,” according to Vom Saal. “We are literally like a Third World country in terms of our chemical regulatory system, compared to the Europeans.

“I mean, most people think that the chemicals in the plastic you’re using or in the clothes you’re wearing or in the fabrics on the couch you’re sitting on — that they’ve been tested for whether they’re harmful or not. And the answer is no, they haven’t. There’s no law that requires that. And that’s crazy.”

For more, check out http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2012/01/31/mus-frederick-vom-saal-wants-fda-ban-bpa-endocrine-disruptors/

Dr. Joseph Mercola, a well-known advocate for health, bases his opinions on plenty of research. So what does he think about the water we drink?

First of all, most of us don’t drink enough water. We get symptoms of mild dehydration that include weight gain, high cholesterol, premature aging, heartburn and constipation.

Tap water isn’t the answer. It’s got traces of contaminants that include arsenic (obviously bad for you), aluminum (which can cause a variety of problems including learning problems in children, Parkinson’s, and liver disease), disinfection byproducts from using chlorine that are carcinogenic, flouride, and more.

Bottled water? Forty percent of it is simply tap water. Add the plastics chemicals like BPA, and you’re ingesting some stuff that’s genuinely bad for you, not to mention bad for the landfills.

Distilled water? Not good for you. Period.

Alkaline water? Useful for detoxification for a short term. Period.

Vitamin waters? They contain high-fructose corn syrup, and are just about as bad for you as soda, causing weight gain and delivering plastics chemicals from the bottle.

Filtered tap water? It’s the way to go. Carbon block filters, possibly combined with reverse osmosis or ion exchange, provide the safe water we need.

Mercola says he’s going to be launching a line of high-performing water filters.

Now, I think he ought to be promoting Multi-Pure, the best filters, certified by NSF, that are available. I am sure that whatever his line of filters will be, it won’t perform any better than Multi-Pure.

So, consider his argument! Take a look at the home water filters available, and you’ll agree that Multi-Pure does the best job and is guaranteed for life (provided you change the filters on schedule).

Source: http://www.mercola.com/article/water.htm

I hear that Consumer Reports evaluated water filters last month, including Multi-Pure’s under-sink model 750SB and a variety of others, and that Multi-Pure came out well. Since I don’t subscribe to the online version of Consumer Reports, I am not sure exactly what was said. BUT when I went to the webpage about it, I saw three reviews of Multi-Pure filters from Consumer Reports readers–all five star! I’m not surprised of course, since I comparison-shopped when I started out. Multi-Pure filters are truly built well and built to last.

Check out the Consumer Reports webpage on it:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/home-garden/kitchen/water-filters/water-filter-ratings/models/overview/multi-pure-mp750sb-99032739.htm

National Public Radio is warning consumers about eating canned soup, because of the BPA in the can linings. NPR was quoting a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The study confirms that canned food is a source of BPA exposure. But it does nothing to clear up the question of whether this sort of exposure to BPA has health consequences,” said NPR. Then NPR described the controversy over the chemical–how much is too much, and so on. BPA is found in bottled water and soda as well as canned food, because of the BPA in the packaging. The body confuses it with estrogen.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/22/142672252/eating-canned-soup-makes-bpa-levels-soar?sc=17&f=1001

Today’s newspaper contains an Associated Press article describing a link between girls’ behavior and previous consumption of BPA by their pregnant mothers.

The study was released online today at the journal Pediatrics, and involves 244 Cincinnati-area mothers whose urine was tested for BPA twice during pregnancy and at childbirth. Then when the children reached age 3, the women evaluated their children’s behavior using questionnaires.

The researchers found a positive correlation between increasingly high urine levels of BPA in pregnancy and worse behavior in the daughters. For every 10-fold increase in BPA levels, girls scored at least six points worse on the questionnaires. Oddly enough, no such correlation was found for sons.

The lead author, Joe Braun, is a research fellow at Harvard’s School of Public Health. He warned that such behavior changes could have dramatic implications for the population as a whole.

But another BPA researcher, Charles McKay of the Connecticut Poison Control Center, criticized the study for not recording other factors that could also affect the results. For example, mothers with poor eating habits might the the ones with the highest levels of BPA, and perhaps they continue to eat poorly and feed their children poorly, causing behavior problems.

BPA is a plastics additive widely used in our environment in things like water and soda bottles and cans, tin can liners, cash register receipts, and on and on. The FDA is in the midst of a review of its safety.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_9e185d93-ed15-58d0-a276-72c557d98d3d.html

Two Minnesota colleges are joining a reported nationwide push among students to ban bottled water as a favor to the environment.

College of St. Benedict and Macalester College both are banning the sale and purchase of bottled water on campus. Bottled water results in landfills full of plastic bottles, not to mention causing consumers to pay for something that’s basically free, said students on the campuses in interviews with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. And then there’s the BPA issue–who wants extra estrogen in their water?

Bottled water usage peaked in 2007 at 29 gallons per capital in the U.S. By 2010 it had fallen a bit to 28.3 gallons per capita.

So what will the students and faculty on the campuses be drinking? More soda? Not at St. Benedict. This campus is installing new water fountains.

The College of St. Benedict has installed at least one “hydration station” in each building. Will it be filtered water? All told, the stations cost about $20,000. After subtracting the cost of water coolers in offices and water bottles for events, the college will make that back in about a year, a college spokesman told the Star Tribune. But the college will lose another $5,000 to $6,000 per year in profits from the sale of bottled water on the campus. It will work out. “In the long run, we are going to save money,” said Judy Purman, director of sustainability.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/local/129195988.html

Cashiers are particularly likely to get BPA exposure through the skin, handling paper receipts that are coated with the stuff as well as money that’s gotten a good dusting of it from the receipts. In fact, cashiers should wear gloves.

That’s what a researcher from New York says. Kurunthachalam Kannan, PhD, a scientist at the Wadsworth Center and professor of environmental health and toxicology at State University of New York/Albany, discussed a study he co-authored, published Aug. 15 in Environmental Science and Technology.

The chemical BPA is a synthetic estrogen found in bottled water bottles, soda bottles and cans, food cans, dental fillings, and so on. Researchers have found it causes cancer as well as other health problems, but industry has succeeded so far in not having it banned. The chemical is in a review process at the FDA currently.

The study looked at BPA levels in 156 forms of paper money from 21 countries. All of them contained BPA. But while money may contain high levels of BPA, the skin provides an absorption barrier. Small amounts were found to be absorbed through the skin, said Kannan, according to WebMD.

He recommended that people rinse their hands after handling money, and that cashiers wear gloves to limit their exposure.

Meanwhile, an industry scientist scoffs. Steven G. Hentges, PhD, of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council, pooh-poohs Kannan’s investigation.

“Finding trace levels of BPA in currency is neither surprising nor a concern,” he told WebMD.  “Human exposure to BPA from contact with paper currency is minor and orders of magnitude below science-based safe intake levels set by regulatory authorities worldwide. Furthermore, available data suggests that BPA is not readily absorbed through the skin.”

Now Kannan and colleagues are looking at BPA levels in newspaper and toilet paper.

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21744851

http://www.webmd.com/news/20110812/study-paper-money-contains-traces-of-bpa

The agency that we’ve been pestering to change its mind on BPA is the Food and Drug Administration, FDA. So far, the FDA  has moved very slowly, saying for many years it thinks BPA is safe, and now finally calling for a couple of years’ worth of review. Never mind that it lets many possibly hazardous chemicals into our environment, assuming they are innocent until proven guilty. Never mind that the FDA is full of conflicts of interest.

The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is getting into the act now. It’s concerned that BPA is harming aquatic life. In an announcement, the agency cites several studies that have found BPA to have an impact on the growth, reproduction and development of aquatic organisms, even in tiny amounts.

BPA, you recall, is a plastics additive that’s also an estrogen, providing all of us with plenty of unwanted exposure. It’s not only in water and soda bottles and cans, but in canned foods, on cash register receipts, and in a host of other products. More and more studies are questioning its safety.

The Federal Regulation Brief for July 27 contained the following announcement from the EPA, asking for public comment.

Testing of Bisphenol A: Advance notice of proposed rulemaking, published July 26, 2011, comments by Sept. 26, 2011

Bisphenol A (BPA), a high production volume chemical, is a reproductive, developmental, and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency is requesting comments on requiring toxicity testing to determine the potential for BPA to cause adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects, in environmental organisms at low concentrations.

The EPA is also requesting comments on requiring environmental testing consisting of sampling and monitoring for BPA in surface water, ground water, drinking water, soil, sediment, sludge, and landfill leachate near expected BPA releases to determine whether environmental organisms may currently be exposed to concentrations of BPA in the environment at or above levels of concern for adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects.

This advance notice of proposed rulemaking is directed only toward the environmental presence and environmental effects of BPA. The EPA is working with the Department of Health and Human Services on potential human health issues, but is not considering any additional testing specifically in regard to human health issues at this time.

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/01/38622.htm

A new study seems to show that BPA is safe. The study, e-published June 24 in the journal Toxicology Studies, combined the efforts of researchers from the CDC, the FDA, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and has gained praise as being “carefully designed.”

In the study, 130 volunteers consumed lots of canned food containing BPA for 24 hours. The study looked for BPA in the blood during that time, and found no detectable amount.

BPA, you remember, is the false estrogen found in large amounts on cash register receipts, and also in tin can linings, bottled water and soda bottles, and elsewhere. It’s everywhere, so much so that researchers have difficulty avoiding contaminating their samples. It’s also controversial.

I am wondering what other scientists might be saying about the new results. I wonder particularly about Frederick Vom Saal, the researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia who says that even tiny amounts of the false estrogen can have big consequences in our systems. I am wondering so much that I emailed the PR people at Mizzou today and asked them to find out what Vom Saal says.

Stay tuned!

Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/trevorbutterworth/2011/07/25/majestically-scientific-federal-study-on-bpa-has-stunning-findings-so-why-is-the-media-ignoring-it/

Reader’s Digest features an article on clean water on its cover for August.  “We have the safest drinking water in the world–except for the pesticides that sometimes sneak in. And the rocket fuel. And the antibiotics…”

More than 60,000 chemicals could get into our drinking water, while the EPA patrols limits on fewer than 100 of them, says the magazine. Are old pipes in your city water system adding interesting things to the mix? The article details a lot of things to worry about.

Is bottled water a solution? Not according to Reader’s Digest, which headlined a small article “6 Reasons Bottled Is All Wet.” For one thing, it’s generally just tap water. For another, it costs a fortune to move around. They didn’t even dwell on the BPA issue, where plastic bottles introduce false estrogens into our bodies. Experts consulted all seem to be drinking tap water; Reader’s Digest suggests a home water filter. More RD advice:

1. Pick a filter or system certified by NSF International, “which sets recognized standards in this field.”

2. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for installation and use.

3. Replace filters on schedule. Otherwise you invite bacteria growth.

According to Reader’s Digest, you can consider a carbon filter in a pitcher, an under-sink model that includes reverse-osmosis technology, or a whole-house system.

Good news! Multi-Pure fits the bill on all of these with a proven, reliable set of filters, NSF-certified, to meet the level of filtering you want.

Source: Reader’s Digest, August 2011, pp. 102-113.