The signers, representing 40,000 researchers and clinicians, want federal regulators to use to better and broader assessments of new chemicals.  Prompting the letter is the controversy over BPA, the plastics additive that is being blamed for a host of ills in the population, including erectile dysfunction, delayed puberty for boys, early puberty for girls, and higher rates of diabetes, along with cancer. BPA is commonly found in soda and water bottles, store receipts, and tin can linings.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulators in charge of permitting new chemicals, often lack information about the hazards of chemicals produced in high volumes, charged the scientists. “The need for swifter and sounder testing and review procedures cannot be overstated,” the letter states.

Rather than using outdated toxicology, the regulators need to be relying on scientists who have studied the effect of substances on the body. “We need geneticists, we need developmental and reproductive biologists and we need the clinical people on board to actually help interpret and evaluate some of the science,” said Patricia Hunt, a professor in the Washington State University School of Molecular Biosciences and corresponding author of the letter. “As things stand now, things get rapidly into the marketplace and the testing of them is tending to lag behind.”

Hunt said the letter was driven in particular by growing concerns about chemicals like the plasticizer bisphenol A, or BPA, subject of more than 300 studies finding adverse health effects in animals. Because such chemicals look like hormones to our body, they’re like strangers getting behind the wheels of our cars, Hunt said.

“Hormones control everything—our basic metabolism, our reproduction,” she said. “We call them endocrine disruptors. They’re like endocrine bombs to a certain extent because they can disrupt all these normal functions.”

Hunt’s testimony last year helped make Washington the fifth state to outlaw BPA in children’s food containers and drinking cups.

The organizations signing the Science letter are: the American Society of Human Genetics, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Endocrine Society, the Genetics Society of America, the Society for Developmental Biology, the Society for Pediatric Urology, the Society for the Study of Reproduction, and the Society for Gynecologic Investigation.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/wsu-scf030111.php

BPA is a synthetic estrogen favored by plastics manufacturers to make clear plastic malleable enough to form soda and water bottles. It’s also widely used in tin can liners.  But the health hazards are many, as detailed elsewhere in this blog. Finally the FDA has decided to run some studies of its own of the risk of BPA at low doses, especially to fetuses and young children.

I am very glad to hear this!  I expect you are too.  I’m also happy that I’ve got a great source of cleaner water at my kitchen sink, in the form of water from my Multi-Pure under-sink filter.  We bottle it in stainless steel bottles and take it with us. It tastes great, contains the minerals we need, and bypasses bottled water.