[Pharmwaste] FW: When Studies Collide - Rethinking the evidence on BPA

[Tenace, Laurie]

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From: DeBiasi,Deborah [mailto:Deborah.DeBiasi at deq.virginia.gov] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 4:47 PM
To: pharmwaste at lists.dep.state.fl.us
Subject: When Studies Collide - Rethinking the evidence on BPA

http://www.newsweek.com/id/202791

When Studies Collide  -  Rethinking the evidence on BPA.
Sharon Begley

NEWSWEEK    From the magazine issue dated Jun 29, 2009  

Research shows. Studies have found. Scientists conclude. Each of those
phrases can be completed, accurately, with any one of the following:
That it's possible to use ESP to see the location of someone far away.
That exposure to lead at everyday levels does no harm to the developing
brain. That hormone replacement protects women against heart disease. My
point is not that science is always tentative and that scientists are
fallible, though both are certainly true (since all three of the above
are wrong), but that almost anyone with an agenda can find research to
support it.

Keep that in mind this summer when the Food and Drug Administration
issues its report on bisphenol A, the chemical building block of
polycarbonate, the hard plastic used for some baby bottles and water
bottles, and of the epoxy resins that line food cans. In her first
appearance before Congress as FDA commissioner, Margaret Hamburg told a
House panel this month that the agency is reconsidering its decades-old
position-reiterated last year-that BPA at current levels of exposure
poses no harm to human health. You can be sure that if FDA deviates from
that conclusion, the plastics industry will deploy the three phrases
above, completing them with "-that BPA is perfectly safe."

Whether that's true can be answered only by empirical data. But not all
empirical data are created equal. BPA studies that a spokesman for the
American Chemistry Council described as "definitive," for instance, have
come in for criticism on three fundamental grounds, not including that
they were partly funded by industry (I don't reflexively assume that
industry-sponsored research is suspect; whether a study is good or not
depends on how it was conducted). First, research in 2002 used a strain
of rat that is extremely insensitive to estrogen; it doesn't even show
hormonal effects if it's given 100 times the dose of estrogen in human
birth-control pills. Since BPA acts like an estrogen, finding no effect
in this insensitive rat is about as illuminating as not finding an
effect of rain on a waterproof watch. That doesn't tell you that water
can't harm machinery. Second, a 2008 study found that prostates in mice
not exposed to BPA-these were the control animals-were 70 percent larger
than normal. That's a problem: other studies have shown that BPA
enlarges the prostate by about 35 percent. If you're looking for a
prostate effect by comparing BPA-exposed mice to mice with mysteriously
abnormal prostates, it's no wonder BPA gets exonerated. Finally, another
2008 study compared BPA to estradiol, a form of estrogen. But estradiol
had never been used to provide such a baseline, so concluding that BPA
is less potent than estradiol-as industry does-is like saying one
temperature is higher than another when you don't even know if the
thermometer works.

Evidence on the other side is both stronger and more convincing. I can
regale you until I'm out of space with studies showing that in monkeys,
levels of BPA at the upper end of what the U.S. government calls safe
harm synapses responsible for learning and memory; that people with the
highest levels of BPA are most likely to have type 2 diabetes or heart
disease; that BPA given to pregnant lab animals permanently alters the
expression of genes responsible for uterine development and damages the
reproductive system of their fetuses. More telling than individual
studies is the weight and quality of the cumulative evidence. Based on
that, the FDA's Scientific Advisory Board last year rebuked the agency
for failing to consider all credible evidence when it called BPA safe
for use in food containers, and the Endocrine Society issued its first
"scientific statement," concluding this month that for chemicals like
BPA, "the concern is real."

That concern is likely to rise as the FDA takes account of new data
showing that people are exposed to more BPA than it assumed when it
concluded that exposure to BPA is within the margin of safety. In a
study presented at the Endocrine Society, scientists led by biologist
Fred vom Saal of the University of Missouri found that monkeys fed 400
times the amount of BPA that the government assumes people ingest had
lower levels in their blood than the average American. For BPA levels in
people to be higher than in monkeys that practically gorged on the
stuff, we must be ingesting way more than the FDA thinks. Where are the
higher amounts coming from? In addition to hard plastic and epoxy can
linings, it turns out, newspaper ink and carbonless copy paper-the stuff
of credit-card receipts and all sorts of business and medical
documents-contain high amounts of BPA. Recycled, they wind up in food
containers such as pizza boxes, along with the BPA. It's never a good
thing if people are exposed to more of a chemical than safety agencies
thought, and if studies giving that chemical a clean bill of health are
so troubled. As common sense (never mind research) shows.

Begley is NEWSWEEK's Science Editor.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/202791



Deborah L. DeBiasi 
Email:   Deborah.DeBiasi at deq.virginia.gov (NEW!)
WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov 
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality 
Office of Water Permit Programs 
Industrial Pretreatment/Toxics Management Program 
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