More on bisphenol A

Back in August, Mindy posted on her unhappy discovery that her water bottle might be exposing her to levels of bisphenol A.  She included links to an LA Times article and a release by the Natural Resources Defense Council.  

The weekend brought two more newspaper articles on bisphenol A.  The first is an in-depth report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"In the first analysis of its kind by a newspaper, the Journal Sentinel reviewed 258 scientific studies of the chemical bisphenol A, a compound detected in the urine of 93% of Americans recently tested. An overwhelming majority of these studies show that the chemical is harmful - causing breast cancer, testicular cancer, diabetes, hyperactivity, obesity, low sperm counts, miscarriage and a host of other reproductive failures in laboratory animals….Studies paid for by the chemical industry are much less likely to find damaging effects or disease."

An article in the Arizona Daily Star shows the issue through the more conventional ‘A says, B says’ lens, and notes that lens has trapped several other chemicals as well:

"Dozens of studies — almost all of them in animals, not humans — have linked these chemicals to smaller-than-normal heads and shrunken penises in infants, obesity, diabetes, asthma, decreasing male-to-female birth ratios, undescended testicles, hyperthyroidism and decreased sperm counts….In each case, companies that manufacture these products counter that they are safe and that studies showing ill effects are too limited, scientifically unsound or improperly designed."  

To its credit, the Star article doesn’t ultimately throw up its hands and call the question unsolvable – though some of the ‘ordinary people’ quoted in it do.  In the meantime, the evidence keeps piling up against bisphenol A, and it seems to us past time for the regulators to act.