We Should Have Banned Bisphenol A Twenty Years Ago

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We Should Have Banned Bisphenol A Twenty Years Ago

By Rowe EmailApril 22, 2008 | 12:29:04 AM

Over the last twenty years, scientists have built a mountain of

evidence that Bisphenol A, the key ingredient in polycarbonate

plastic, should scare the daylights out of us. It should have been

banned a long time ago, as a precautionary measure, but regulators

were asleep at the switch -- allowing the chemical industry to run

roughshod over them.

We don't know for sure that the chemical causes cancer, developmental

disorders, or reproductive damage in humans, but there are more than

enough alarming data to justify a ban. When respected scientists

publish paper after paper indicating that a chemical is toxic, it's

best to err on the side of caution and keep it out of our homes.

Unfortunately, a mix of deception and apathy has left us exposed for

decades.

Last year, a highly-biased government panel pulled a snow job that

would make the Tobacco Industry proud: They claimed that Bisphenol A

is not a cause for concern two weeks after scientists issued a damning

report about the chemical. Their trickery bought the chemical industry

months of slack, until the Canadian government announced that it may

ban plastics made from the questionable substance. Soon later,

Wal-Mart announced that it would no longer stock polycarbonate baby

bottles and Nalgene Outdoor Products said the same about their

trademark water bottles.

But why did it take twenty years for retailers and regulators to

react? There are three key reasons:\

Humans are terrible at reacting to subtle threats. We fear the

unknown, the immediate, but not things which harm us slowly in subtle

ways. It's tremendously hard to prove that something is indeed toxic

to humans, because scientists can't ethically dose people with lots of

Bisphenol A and see what happens. Of course, in this case, there was

also a healthy dose of deception on the part of the chemical industry

and incompetence or corruption within our regulatory agencies -- no

one was looking out for us.

Bisphenol A will not be the last chemical to get yanked from the

market years after scientists raised serious concerns. My guess:

sodium benzoate will be next. What chemicals worry you?

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/its-time-to-pan.html