
They pulled it off with hair and skin and all, and left the area bleeding.
Following publication of the first major epidemiologic study of Bisphenol A, by Lang, Galloway and Scarlett, et al., in their September 17 issue, JAMA devoted the lead editorial to Bisphenol A and Risk of Metabolic Disorders by Drs. Frederick S. vom Saal and John Peterson Myers.

We have known for some years that BPA had some particularly nasty effects on animals. The human study by Lang, et al, reported a significant relationship between urine concentrations of BPA and cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver-enzyme abnormalities in the US population. They said BPA causes adverse effects on the brain, reproductive system and metabolic processes, including alterations in insulin homeostasis and liver enzymes, and cardiovascular function.

So far, the US-FDA and the European Food Safety Authority have chosen to ignore the warnings. The JAMA editorial takes this stonewalling head-on: “One factor that may be contributing to the refusal of regulatory agencies to take action on BPA in the face of overwhelming evidence of harm … is an aggressive disinformation campaign using techniques ("manufactured doubt") first developed by the lead, vinyl, and tobacco industries to challenge the reliability of findings published by independent scientists.”
How does the FDA get away with ongoing fraud, JAMA asks, and then answers. “More recent findings from independent scientists were rejected by the FDA, apparently because those investigators did not follow the outdated testing guidelines for environmental chemicals, whereas studies using the outdated, insensitive assays (predominantly involving studies funded by the chemical industry) are given more weight in arriving at the conclusion that BPA is not harmful at current exposure levels.”

While the US government drags its heels at the behest of the chemical companies, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Melbourne and other cities have banned plastic shopping bags.

So, going forward into the chaos and collapse of our consumer culture, and a time when putting up produce from home gardens will once again be normal, it bears underscoring a point made in The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide: “There is no stored food that is worth enough to risk chemical contamination by non-food chemicals and their potential hazard to human health.” Store food in metal or glass. Keep your leftovers in glass, wood, or ceramic containers. Don’t use old yogurt or butter tubs, or Tupperware®. Don’t cook in plastic. Don’t eat off plastic. Don’t drink from plastic.
And especially, don’t force your kids to, either.
For more, see Elizabeth Kolbert's interview with this leading endocrinologist.
4 comments:
Excellent info Al. One thing ... those dark blue active links are *really hard* to read ....
- Brandon (wild dog)
I don't know where those dark blue ones are coming from. They are not links I put into the story, and if you click on them, they simply disappear. I changed the active and visited link colors just for good measure, and they should be easier to read now.
I persevered and managed to read this right through as there's some really useful info here. Thank you. Normally, however, I would have clicked out as soon as I saw the page because white on black is SO much harder on older eyes than black on white.
My guess would be that those dark links are either an attempt by Google to be helpful - they've recently started up the 'page previews' routine, I understand - or a browser artifact.
I am not entirely certain what Elderwoman means, as the blog displays as a plain black against a fairly mild green. Perhaps I'm just late to the party here.
Regardless, an interesting post. Plastics are one of those things that people want to believe are purely advantageous, after all - and the chemical companies like to ensure we know it, with ads showing prematurely born infants kept alive and healthy by advanced mostly-plastic incubation units.
The largest problem, I would think, is how much of the modern industrial society is reliant on plastic constructs - to make things lighter while retaining strength, or because the plastic has a built-in obsolescence limit due to their naturally short shelf life, or even just because it is, in the end, cheaper - for now, at least.
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