Industry defense of BPA taken from tobacco playbook

Are the chemical industry’s efforts to defend bisphenol A as harmless taken from the playbook of the tobacco and asbestos industries? In The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A, an article published by FastCompany.com, writer David Case unmasks how industry-influenced science has warped government regulation of BPA, a synthetic sex hormone used widely in consumer products from baby bottles and water bottles to the linings of food and drink cans, dental sealants, adhesives, CDs, and DVDs.

Case addresses the central scientific issue around BPA, which is whether the amount of BPA found in humans is enough to trigger health effects, including infertility, cancer, heart disease and obesity.

To some degree, the BPA controversy is a story about a scientific dispute.  But even more, it’s about a battle to protect a multibillion-dollar market from regulation.

BPA is found in 93 percent of Americans ages 6 and up, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control.  

Two problems clearly emerge. First, the government continues to regulate chemicals based on the assumption that “the dose makes the poison,” thus overlooking the significant effects that low-dose exposure to chemicals has on the endocrine system, which controls human development. 

Second, science funded by industry and peddled by “product defense consultants,” with close ties to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, has controlled the agenda and prevented government regulation of BPA.

Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted – 14 in all – has found no such effects

Case’s BPA article reads like a scientific who-dunnit but there’s no telling how it will end.  Was it the Harvard research center with conflicts of interest?  Or the Washington DC public relations group with ties to the tobacco industry?  What will happen when the dust clears from the Congressional investigations into “science for sale” at product defense firms? It would be easier to stay tuned for the next chapter if the stakes for our health and the health of the next generation weren’t so high.