“We need male leadership at this college,” she told the five students on the tour, all male. “If you can provide leadership, please come here.”

The FDA has issued a statement saying it is looking into BPA safety, after enduring years of clamor on the subject from critics.

Drinking water contaminations have affected water piped to more than 49 million Americans since 2004, according to an exhaustive study just completed by The New York Times. And while the government is aware of the violations, it has rarely fined or punished the violators.

The issue: underperformance by men. Bovinet identifies the situation as something much larger and more important than the Civil Rights Commission’s concern about equal treatment in higher education admission. The US is in the midst of the creation of a “matriarchal economy,” he says. Women influence the purchase of 80 percent of all goods and services.

PCE is a commonly used solvent and frequent contaminant of drinking water supplies. So, should you worry about it?

The answer is yes, according to a study published in the open access journal Environmental Health in September. The study tracked the infants of pregnant women exposed to the chemical inadvertently by PCE coating inside water piping used on Cape Cod between 1969 and 1983.

But complete disclosure is rare. An EWG study released at the hearing checked 188 bottled water brands and found that less than 2 percent disclose all three basic facts about their water, on the label or in a Web site. Those facts are the water’s source, how it was purified, and what contaminants remain.

For the first time in its 93-year-history, the organization issued a scientific statement a few days ago and declared its itention to engage in lobbying. The subject of both the statement and the lobbying is their hope to “decrease human exposure” to BPA and other endocrine-disrupting agents.

The study found these contaminants in the blood of all five participants: flame retardants, Teflon chemicals, synthetic fragrances, the plastics ingredient bisphenol A (BPA) and the rocket fuel component perchlorate.

Participants tested postive for 35 to 60 percent of the 75 chemicals on the list. Each also showed a high level of at least one controversial unregulated chemical.

Previous studies had demonstrated adverse health effects from BPA. But none had demonstrated whether polycarbonate bottles might be an important contributor to the amount of BPA in the body, said Carwile. Meanwhile, the FDA is saying that BPA in products is safe. Because of this situation, states (Minnesota) and cities (Chicago) are starting to ban BPA in household products, said the article.

I examined it. It is painted white on the outside. On the inside you can see the bare shiny silvery metal. Aluminum? I weighed it in my hand, comparing it to a smaller bottle I knew to be stainless steel. The larger white bottle was lighter than the smaller stainless steel bottle. So I decided it must be aluminum.