Frederick Vom Saal on Fixing the FDA
by Phyllis Wheeler ~ February 3rd, 2012
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/






