BPA: It's in Your Urine. But Is It Safe?

The Food and Drug Administration is concerned about the safety of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used to harden plastics that is found in plastic bottles, soda cans, and many other food containers and consumer products. BPA is so prevalent that 90 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So if it isn’t safe, a lot of us are in trouble.

Researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K. recently found a strong association between levels of BPA in human urine and heart disease. The same research team has also found an association between BPA and diabetes. Other studies have linked BPA with cancer and sexual dysfunction.

“Recent reports show subtle effects of BPA in lab animals that has raised concerns,’’ said William Corr, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services. The agency will be taking a close look at the effects of BPA in infants and young children.

The American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing companies that use plastic in their products, is not happy about the FDA’s decision, but is looking at the light side. “The HHS statement today confirms that exposure to BPA in food contact products has not been proven harmful to children or adults,” a press release said.

Now, “association” and “link” don’t necessarily mean “cause.” A statistical link between two things doesn’t always mean that one caused the other. But there is growing reason for concern.

Like everything else in Washington, the issue of BPA promises to become a partisan fight. Conservative groups already have declared concerns about BPA to be some looney liberal plot. David Green of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, “BPA is just the latest bogeyman that the environmental movement has latched onto in order to attack something they’ve hated ever since the phrase ‘Plastics my boy, Plastics’ was uttered in ‘The Graduate.’”

Yes, and where have we heard this before? For years the tobacco industry denied a link between smoking and tobacco. The first reports of a link between asbestos and mesothelioma were similarly ridiculed. Dr. Irving Selikoff, a physician who published case studies of mesothelioma patients in the 1960s, was belittled as a kook.

In December 2009 the Senate confirmed the nomination of epidemiologist David Michaels, Ph.D., to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Dr. Michaels is a well respected scientists who has personally studied of the health effects of exposure to toxic substances such as asbestos. Dr. Michaels has been trying to raise concern about BPA for some time, and to Dr. Michael’s critics, this made him an unacceptable choice for the OSHA position.

Last fall the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which headed an effort to block Dr. Michaels’ nomination, listed Michaels’ concerns about BPA as one of the factors that disqualified him. Calling BPA “a plastics hardener some consumer activists and many trial lawyers claim is unsafe,” the Chamber claimed that Canada’s equivalent of the FDA had found BPA to be safe.

In fact, Canada has placed BPA on its list of toxic substances and has expressed concerns similar to the FDA’s.

It may be that researchers will find no clear risk from BPA. But if they do, you can be assured industry will fight a ban on BPA by claiming that more research is needed. The standard way industries fight a regulation they don’t like is to pay scientists to say more research is needed.

For example, in the 1970s data emerged that showed the drug phenylpropanolamine (PPA), a decongestant, caused hemorrhagic strokes in young women. But the trade association representing pharmaceutical companies with PPA in their over-the-counter cold medicine hired scientists to cast doubt on the data to stall the FDA from banning it. For this reason, it took 20 years to ban PPA. The FDA (finally) estimated the drug had been causing between 200 and 500 strokes a year.

Maybe we should go back to glass bottles, just to be safe.