Last night on Bill Moyers’ Journal, a report about Bisphenol A (BPA) by the PBS investigative journalism outfit Exposé was aired, complete with a kickin’ eighties guitar intro that makes you feel like you’re right there chasing down the bad guys with Crockett and Tubbs. The bad guys in question aren’t peddlers of narcotics but of every day household goods made of plastic containing BPA and their products are all perfectly legal in spite of a growing number of studies suggesting links between the chemical in question and a number of endocrinological maladies.

The story on Moyer’s show recapitulated the efforts of science journalists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007 to sift through the research on BPA and determine where the evidence actually pointed. What they found is disturbingly familiar:

Of the 258 studies reviewed by the Journal Sentinel, 168 studies looked at low-dose effects of bisphenol A.

The vast majority – 132 studies- found health problems at low doses, including hyperactivity, diabetes and genital deformities. All but one of those studies were conducted by non-industry scientists. Nearly three-fourthsof the studies that found the chemical had no harmful effects were funded by industry.

Shockingly, the lion’s share of “scientific” inquiry concluding that bisphenol A is perfectly safe has been funded by the very industries that depend on the chemical for their products. Now, the question remains, given the significant quantity of data in hundreds of studies about it, how did the National Toxicology Program panel on BPA assess the risks of the chemical in its report that year?

The panel said it considered more than 700 studies by university scientists, government researchers and industry-funded chemists. It picked the work it felt was best and threw out the rest.

The Journal Sentinel found that panel members gave more weight to industry-funded studies and more leeway to industry-funded researchers.

• The panel rejected academic studies that found harm – citing inadequate methods. But the panel accepted industry-funded studies using the same methods that concluded the chemical does not pose risks.

• The panel missed dozens of studies publicly available that the Journal Sentinel found online using a medical research Internet search engine. The studies the panel considered were chosen, in part, by a consultant with links to firms that made bisphenol A.

• More and more university researchers and foreign governments are finding that bisphenol A can do serious damage in small doses. But the panel rejected studies mostly submitted by university and international government scientists that looked at the impact at these levels.

• The panel accepted a Korean study translated by the chemical industry’s trade group that found bisphenol A to be safe. It also accepted two studies that were not subjected to any peer review – the gold standard of scientific credibility. Both studies were funded by General Electric Co., which made bisphenol A until it sold its plastics division earlier this year.

[...]

Panel chairman Robert Chapin, a toxicologist who works for Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical giant, defended his group’s work.

“We didn’t flippin’ care who does the study,” said Chapin, who worked as a government scientist for 18 years before joining Pfizer.

If the studies followed good laboratory practices and were backed with strong data, they were accepted, Chapin said.

Of course, pressure has mounted since then and NTP has revised its conclusions in a report published last month, as Americanus has previously reported. Still, the industrial-regulatory nexus of faux enforcement and revolving doors is growing quite tiresome, especially in a case where people’s health and perhaps even lives are at stake.

This morning’s New York Times cites a Canadian government source stating that a “toxic” label will be appended (bureaucratically speaking) to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical widely used in plastics and a suspected hormonal disruptor.  As we mentioned yesterday, America’s National Toxicology Program recently issued a report raising concerns about the chemical compound’s health impacts.   But, unlike our northern neighbors, the U.S. doesn’t consider “likely endocrine disruptor” sufficient grounds to regulate a substance contained in plastic baby bottles.  Once a cohort of babies has been tracked over the course of their lives and the suspected developmental pathologies associated are with BPA demonstrated with a high degree of statistical confidence, then we can do something.  (Be on the look out for a ban between 2040 and 2050.)

What I found most interesting about the Times piece was a statement from a researcher who remains skeptical of the findings:

But [Michael D. Shelby] said that research strongly suggested that polycarbonate food and beverage containers and food cans were the main source of human exposure to B.P.A. When asked if people should stop using them, Dr. Shelby replied: “That becomes kind of a personal choice. These are certainly two things people can get around.”

Ah, yes, here we come to the “rational choice” fallacy that underlies so much of modern economic theory.  Why regulate a potentially hazardous substance in consumer products when the consumer his or herself, properly informed of the issue, can make a choice not to buy the product?  Aside from the fact that this assumes that every consumer who purchases plastic products is well versed enough in the science of hormonal development to judge the risks of using said items, when was the last time you bought something with a label reading: “Contains bisphenol A?”  Perhaps I missed that on my Nalgene bottle.

I’m not saying that the average consumer is an incompetent fool who must be guided at every turn by a nurturing “nanny state.”  However, given the complexity of these issues and the amount of time it would take to keep oneself abreast of all the hazards and problems of all the products on the market today, it is entirely unrealistic to believe that consumer choice is the answer problems of product safety.  Certainly it would be ideal if people could know all the facts and choose for themselves in every case, but it’s not going to happen.  That being said, I would venture to assert that in some cases, government regulation, rather than markets, may be the efficient solution where consumer safety is concerned.

A new report by the National Toxicology Program has raised concerns about a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) that is ubiquitous in plastic products. (You can download the full report here.)  According to the report, the chemical poses risks to neural and behavioral development of very young children, both pre- and post-natal.  There is also a potential link to breast cancer and prostate cancer in humans, a correlation that has long been demonstrated in laboratory animals.

The Washington Post explains the significance of this by noting that this is first time the federal government has raised concerns about BPA, which can be detected in the urine of 93% of Americans over 6 years of age.  The NTB will host a conference on the issue in May and seek peer review for its preliminary findings.

Even if some risk is confirmed, don’t look for any action to restrict the use of BPA on the government’s part.  U.S. regulatory agencies usually have a single response when it comes to questions of possible health risks of consumer products: “prove it.”  And, since it is notoriously difficult to prove a causal relationship between suspected toxicants and the illnesses with which they are associated, they mostly flow freely through the environment…and our urinary tracts.

In fact, another type of suspected developmental toxicants found in many children’s toys, phthalates, have been banned in both the state of California and the European Union, but remain unrestricted by the federal government.  This despite the risks entailed and the knowledge that cost-effective alternatives to the chemical exist.  This leads to an interesting situation where Chinese manufacturers have dual assembly lines for the same product: one making a phthalate free version for export to the E.U. and another making products for lax U.S. regulatory market.  (Think about that the next time you want to rage against Chinese “toxic toys.”)

So it seems we have a choice.  Either we can take precautionary steps to restrict such chemicals now and pay a marginally higher price for some products or we can wait until all the evidence is in, which may take forty years of long-term study with millions of consumers exposed to toxins all the while.  I don’t know about you, but I’d pay an extra couple of bucks for a non-carcinogenic compact disc…