A Perfect Storm
Posted on: Saturday, 10 May 2008, 15:00 CDT
By ABRAHAM MAHSHIE
After 11 years researching bisphenol-A and sounding the alarm about
the dangers of the chemical that is used in the production of
polycarbonate plastic, University of Missouri Professor Frederick Vom
Saal got a chance to reach a nationwide audience with an appearance
on NBC's "Today" show two weeks ago.
Vom Saal made his case that the chemical poses a threat to babies,
whose developing cells, he says, are particularly susceptible to the
chemical that is found in many plastic bottles, pacifiers and sippy
cups. After he was finished, his counterpart on the show, Sharon
Kneiss of the American Chemical Council, said thousands of studies
proved bisphenol-A, or BPA, was safe.
Vom Saal said that in the 10 seconds he had to respond, all he could
do was reiterate his warning about the threat to babies. Later, in an
interview with the Tribune, he said Kneiss' statement was misleading.
"First of all, there aren't thousands of studies," Vom Saal
said. "Secondly, 90 percent of the studies out there show harm."
Kneiss, vice president of the plastics industry trade and lobbying
group, could not be reached for comment about her statement. Lisa
Harrison, vice president of communications for the American Chemical
Council, said the organization stands by its statements on the
validity of the science on BPA.
-
Bisphenol-A is used in the production of polycarbonate plastic,
including bottles and sippy cups and epoxy linings of canned foods,
including infant formula, to add strength and resilience to products.
Vom Saal, professor of biological sciences at MU, co-authored the
first study on the effects of BPA in 1997. The study showed the
chemical mimicked the effects of the female hormone estrogen in lab
rats. The effects - at what Vom Saal said were levels thousands of
times smaller than what the federal Food and Drug Administration and
plastics companies deem safe - showed abnormal cell development that
led to prostate and breast cancer, early onset puberty, diabetes,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other ailments.
A few days after his appearance on the "Today" show, Vom Saal was in
Canada for meetings coinciding with the Canadian Ministry of Health's
announcement that baby products made with polycarbonate plastics
would be banned. He said another representative from the American
Chemistry Council, Steve Hentges, stood in front of him at a lunch
line.
"I said to him ... `You know Sharon Kneiss told people there were
thousands of studies, and that's a blatant lie. Why lie small? Why
not go for the gold and tell them there are millions?' " Vom Saal
recounted. " `I mean, if you're going to lie, why not make up a
bigger number?' He was standing in front of me in the lunch line, and
he went to the back of the line."
Vom Saal led a panel of more than 30 scientists at a November 2006
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences panel on BPA. As
the lead writer of the panel, Vom Saal wrote the summary
statement. "We reviewed 700 articles ... that basically said that we
have a high level of confidence that this is causing harm,
particularly to infants," he said.
Vom Saal explained that this occurs because although BPA can be
flushed out of an adult's body within a day, it causes stem cells in
babies and infants to develop abnormally. These abnormal
developments, which he said have been proved in laboratory studies of
mice and rats, cannot be "reprogrammed,
lifelong.
Vom Saal also says there is a correlation between bisphenol-A use and
an increase in the incidence of obesity.
"Between 1990 and 2000, there was about a 15-fold increase in the
production of bisphenol-A products," he said. "During that time,
obesity went up in the United States by 50 percent, according to the
Centers for Disease Control.
"This is a chemical that causes obesity in animals," Vom Saal
said. "The increase in the incidence of this is absolutely parallel
to the use of this product. What do we need this stuff for? Get rid
of it."
-
Vom Saal said a "perfect storm" has in the past several weeks drawn
national attention to BPA.
It began with the April 15 release of a draft report by the National
Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, that
said the program had "some concern for neural and behavioral effects
in fetuses, infants and children at current human exposures."
After the report, the Canadian Ministry of Health and Ministry of the
Environment banned BPA's use in baby products, leading to a front-
page Washington Post article and a bill in the U.S. Congress to ban
the chemical.
The Food and Drug Administration also is under congressional
investigation and is conducting another review of the safety of BPA,
which is produced to the tune of
7 billion pounds per year.
"I imagine that part of it is politics," said Julia Taylor, an
assistant professor in biological sciences at MU who has worked with
Vom Saal for four years. "The chemical industry is big and powerful,
and also it's a very huge question. How do you deal with something on
this scale?"
Taylor currently is doing research related to prostate development in
rodents exposed to BPA. She also is measuring the amount of BPA that
leaches out of polycarbonate plastic containers when they are heated
in dishwashers and microwaves.
"You can't avoid plastics. They are everywhere, and they are very
useful compounds," she said. "I think eventually" the FDA "will have
to do something just because the consumer interest is there, and we
are paying attention to what Canada is doing."
Vom Saal said his study has been replicated hundreds of times, and
the only papers that rebut the results come from the chemical
industry. He said the report from the National Toxicology Program
supports that argument that some industry studies are flawed.
"We've really known for years that the scientific argument over this
was really ended," he said. "The scary thing about this chemical is
that human exposure to this chemical is already as much as 1,000
times higher than the amount that can damage human cells based on
hundreds of studies, and that's why the scientific consensus is
really clear."
-
Steve Hentges of the American Chemistry Council's Polycarbonate/ BPA
Global Group doesn't believe there's such a consensus.
"What `some concern' means is there is only limited and inconclusive
evidence from animal studies of these possible health effects,"
Hentges said, referring to the National Toxicology Program
report. "What is really concluded is that more research is needed."
Hentges said the data support the continued use of products such as
baby bottles. "So far, all of these evaluations, they look at the
weight of evidence, they find out many of them are not robust, cannot
be corroborated and they are inconsistent across studies," he said.
Hentges said that when humans consume BPA, it is converted to a
nonestrogenic metabolite and usually exits the body within a day,
whereas in rodents it is not metabolized and is reabsorbed, making
its lifetime longer as it cycles through the body.
When asked whether a human baby's undeveloped immune system and lack
of enzymes to metabolize BPA make them more susceptible to the
danger, Hentges replied, "They almost certainly have metabolic
capacity, and it's likely to be sufficient."
The concerns raised about the possible dangers of the chemical caused
Wal-Mart to announce plans to stop selling children's products
containing BPA by next year in U.S. stores.
"The reason we're focusing on babies is not that it can't cause harm
in adults, but that the harm in babies is permanent," Vom Saal said.
Hentges said panels such as the one on which Vom Saal served in 2006
have a clear conflict of interest because scientists are inclined to
support their past findings.
He said government agencies are free of such bias and pointed out
that the FDA and the Canadian government said low doses of BPA in
consumer products were no cause for alarm and discontinuing their use
was not necessary.
Hentges said the Canadian government's decision to ban BPA was a
political decision, not a scientific one.
"We have to separate the policy from the science," he said. "The
science supports the safety of these products. Policymakers can do
things that are not based on the science."
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Reach Abraham Mahshie at (573) 815-1733 or amahshie@tribmail.
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Originally published by ABRAHAM MAHSHIE of the Tribune's staff.
(c) 2008 Columbia Daily Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and
Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Columbia Daily Tribune
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