It also quoted the Environmental Working Group spokesperson. “The next decision the FDA should make is to remove ‘responsible for protecting the public health’ from its mission statement,” said Jane Houlihan, senior vice president for research of the Environmental Working Group. “It’s false advertising. Allowing a chemical as toxic as BPA, and linked to so many serious health problems, to remain in food means the agency has veered dangerously off course.”

Read more: http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/health-concerns-remain-after-fda-declines-to-act-1b4srcl-146362125.html

BPA, you remember, is the false estrogen chemical used to stiffen clear plastics such as soda and water bottles, and line cans such as soda cans and virtually all other food cans, as well as liberally coating the store receipts that we are all handed these days. Six billion pounds of the stuff are produced yearly, and so it’s in our environment. But should it be?

The article describes the science of toxicology, founded by a 16th century Swiss physician. This science attempts to find the dilution point at which a toxic substance becomes nontoxic.  Problem is, a hormone like BPA/estrogen is designed to cause bodily changes from very tiny amounts in our bloodstream, and so the toxicology model doesn’t work, according to contemporary biologists like U. of Missouri’s Frederick Vom Saal. But toxicology is what the FDA is using, anyway.

And is a chemical guilty until proven innocent, or innocent until proven guilty?  The FDA says it’s innocent until proven guilty. But should it be that way? Is the government protecting the population?

Finally there’s the problem of the overworked and underfunded FDA, heavily influenced by the manufacturers whose money keeps it going.  Are they likely to rule in favor of the people providing their money, or of the people they are supposed to protect? And what do they have time to do, anyway?

It all boiled down the FDA declaring at the end of last month that it wasn’t going to ban BPA in food packaging, at least not right now. Meanwhile, Campbell’s and Heinz are working to remove BPA from food cans.

Consumers can at least vote with their pocketbooks, and stay away from bottled water and soda and food in cans.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2110902,00.html

The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group, criticized the ruling. “Pregnant women and new parents should no longer think FDA has their backs,” said Jane Houlihan, Senior Vice President for Research at EWG.

Billions of pounds of BPA are manufactured each year. It finds its way into plastic water bottles, food can linings, store receipts printed on thermal paper, dentist materials, and so on. Biologists say even a tiny amount of the synthetic estrogen can have adverse effects, while toxicologists assume the body has a much higher tolerance for it.

Source:

http://www.ewg.org/release/fda-okays-toxic-plastic-chemical-food-infant-formula

http://todayhealth.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/09/10626512-5-great-reasons-to-kick-your-soda-habit

Volunteers in the study ate soup daily for five days, and BPA levels in their urine was monitored. Those with the canned soup demonstrated a 1,200% increase in urinary BPA over those eating fresh soup.

“We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body. This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use,” said Jenny Carwile, the lead author of the study, according to the Harvard press release.

Source: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2011-releases/canned-soup-bpa.html

BPA is, of course, the synthetic estrogen that the U.S. government has permitted, despite reports of a variety of bad health effects linked to it.

The French ban will take effect Jan. 1, 2014. To prepare for it, the U.S. Department of Agriculture commissioned a report, which was the basis for FoodProductionDaily.com’s article. The ban will affect the majority of manufactured, frozen, and fresh products, said the report. The report also apparently noted that industry is working on finding a substitute for BPA to be used in packaging.

Meanwhile, the U.S. FDA has set itself a deadline of March 31, 2012, to decide whether to ban BPA in the United States, said the article.

Source: http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Packaging/French-BPA-ban-will-jeopardise-US-exports-USDA

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/

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

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

“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