Snoopy Is Safe After All
Rest easy, beagles. Another
chemical scare looks like a false alarm.
From the Wall Street Journal
The periodic scares over chemicals
in vaccines, foods and other products are typically a war on the periodic
table, and one compound that on all of the evidence deserves exoneration is
bisphenol-A, or BPA. The latest research deserves more attention before more
federal dollars are wasted.
BPA is used in the lining of metal
cans and plastics to ensure structural integrity and keep things like E.coli
out of food. It has been widely used for more than 50 years as a coating in
everything from soup cans to bike helmets. The chemical has undergone testing
in more than 4,500 studies over three decades, and the Food and Drug
Administration has twice affirmed, most recently in November, that human
exposure to low levels of BPA isn’t dangerous.
Anti-chemical activists have
nonetheless maligned BPA as a toxic substance that might act as an “endocrine
disrupter” by mimicking hormones in the body. BPA has been allegedly linked to
cancer, obesity, impotence, you name it. Many companies such as the
water-bottle maker Nalgene have stopped using it and label their products
“BPA-free.”
The latest study, published in
January by Justin Teeguarden of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and
FDA researchers, knocks down the idea that humans could be at risk of absorbing
high levels of BPA into the bloodstream. The researchers fed people tomato soup
with traceable BPA—and the body essentially neutralized 998 out of every 1,000
BPA molecules. The entire BPA sample moved through the body in 24 hours.
The fear that BPA might be absorbed
into the bloodstream caught traction thanks in part to a 2013 study in which
the authors slipped BPA solutions under the tongues of sleeping beagles and
found that the pups absorbed more BPA in their blood than other animals had in
previous studies. BPA opponents waved around the Snoopy scare as evidence that
the chemical was unsafe, calling on regulators to reconsider their all-clear
messages.
Now the question is: How many more
taxpayer-funded BPA studies are really necessary? The National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences, an arm of the National Institutes of Health, has
shelled out more than $100 million for research on BPA since 1997. Three
prominent BPA critics have received $20 million and have failed to turn up
causation between BPA and adverse health effects. Yet the studies always
conclude that more research is needed and so the grants are renewed. Nice work
if you can get it.
Scientists and politicians claim
there isn’t enough federal research funding to support all of today’s important
projects. Here’s one idea: Reallocate the money for redundant BPA studies into
something more productive.
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