A Perfect Storm
Posted on: Saturday, 10 May 2008, 15:00 CDT
By ABRAHAM MAHSHIE
After 11 years researching bisphenol-A and sounding the alarm about the dangers of the chemical that is used in the production of polycarbonate plastic, University of Missouri Professor Frederick Vom Saal got a chance to reach a nationwide audience with an appearance on NBC's "Today" show two weeks ago.
Vom Saal made his case that the chemical poses a threat to babies, whose developing cells, he says, are particularly susceptible to the chemical that is found in many plastic bottles, pacifiers and sippy cups. After he was finished, his counterpart on the show, Sharon Kneiss of the American Chemical Council, said thousands of studies proved bisphenol-A, or BPA, was safe.
Vom Saal said that in the 10 seconds he had to respond, all he could do was reiterate his warning about the threat to babies. Later, in an interview with the Tribune, he said Kneiss' statement was misleading.
"First of all, there aren't thousands of studies," Vom Saal said. "Secondly, 90 percent of the studies out there show harm."
Kneiss, vice president of the plastics industry trade and lobbying group, could not be reached for comment about her statement. Lisa Harrison, vice president of communications for the American Chemical Council, said the organization stands by its statements on the validity of the science on BPA.
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Bisphenol-A is used in the production of polycarbonate plastic, including bottles and sippy cups and epoxy linings of canned foods, including infant formula, to add strength and resilience to products.
Vom Saal, professor of biological sciences at MU, co-authored the first study on the effects of BPA in 1997. The study showed the chemical mimicked the effects of the female hormone estrogen in lab rats. The effects - at what Vom Saal said were levels thousands of times smaller than what the federal Food and Drug Administration and plastics companies deem safe - showed abnormal cell development that led to prostate and breast cancer, early onset puberty, diabetes, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other ailments.
A few days after his appearance on the "Today" show, Vom Saal was in Canada for meetings coinciding with the Canadian Ministry of Health's announcement that baby products made with polycarbonate plastics would be banned. He said another representative from the American Chemistry Council, Steve Hentges, stood in front of him at a lunch line.
"I said to him ... `You know Sharon Kneiss told people there were thousands of studies, and that's a blatant lie. Why lie small? Why not go for the gold and tell them there are millions?' " Vom Saal recounted. " `I mean, if you're going to lie, why not make up a bigger number?' He was standing in front of me in the lunch line, and he went to the back of the line."
Vom Saal led a panel of more than 30 scientists at a November 2006 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences panel on BPA. As the lead writer of the panel, Vom Saal wrote the summary statement. "We reviewed 700 articles ... that basically said that we have a high level of confidence that this is causing harm, particularly to infants," he said.
Vom Saal explained that this occurs because although BPA can be flushed out of an adult's body within a day, it causes stem cells in babies and infants to develop abnormally. These abnormal developments, which he said have been proved in laboratory studies of mice and rats, cannot be "reprogrammed," meaning the effects are lifelong.
Vom Saal also says there is a correlation between bisphenol-A use and an increase in the incidence of obesity.
"Between 1990 and 2000, there was about a 15-fold increase in the production of bisphenol-A products," he said. "During that time, obesity went up in the United States by 50 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
"This is a chemical that causes obesity in animals," Vom Saal said. "The increase in the incidence of this is absolutely parallel to the use of this product. What do we need this stuff for? Get rid of it."
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Vom Saal said a "perfect storm" has in the past several weeks drawn national attention to BPA.
It began with the April 15 release of a draft report by the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, that said the program had "some concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children at current human exposures."
After the report, the Canadian Ministry of Health and Ministry of the Environment banned BPA's use in baby products, leading to a front-page Washington Post article and a bill in the U.S. Congress to ban the chemical.
The Food and Drug Administration also is under congressional investigation and is conducting another review of the safety of BPA, which is produced to the tune of
7 billion pounds per year.
"I imagine that part of it is politics," said Julia Taylor, an assistant professor in biological sciences at MU who has worked with Vom Saal for four years. "The chemical industry is big and powerful, and also it's a very huge question. How do you deal with something on this scale?"
Taylor currently is doing research related to prostate development in rodents exposed to BPA. She also is measuring the amount of BPA that leaches out of polycarbonate plastic containers when they are heated in dishwashers and microwaves.
"You can't avoid plastics. They are everywhere, and they are very useful compounds," she said. "I think eventually" the FDA "will have to do something just because the consumer interest is there, and we are paying attention to what Canada is doing."
Vom Saal said his study has been replicated hundreds of times, and the only papers that rebut the results come from the chemical industry. He said the report from the National Toxicology Program supports that argument that some industry studies are flawed.
"We've really known for years that the scientific argument over this was really ended," he said. "The scary thing about this chemical is that human exposure to this chemical is already as much as 1,000 times higher than the amount that can damage human cells based on hundreds of studies, and that's why the scientific consensus is really clear."
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Steve Hentges of the American Chemistry Council's Polycarbonate/ BPA Global Group doesn't believe there's such a consensus.
"What `some concern' means is there is only limited and inconclusive evidence from animal studies of these possible health effects," Hentges said, referring to the National Toxicology Program report. "What is really concluded is that more research is needed."
Hentges said the data support the continued use of products such as baby bottles. "So far, all of these evaluations, they look at the weight of evidence, they find out many of them are not robust, cannot be corroborated and they are inconsistent across studies," he said.
Hentges said that when humans consume BPA, it is converted to a nonestrogenic metabolite and usually exits the body within a day, whereas in rodents it is not metabolized and is reabsorbed, making its lifetime longer as it cycles through the body.
When asked whether a human baby's undeveloped immune system and lack of enzymes to metabolize BPA make them more susceptible to the danger, Hentges replied, "They almost certainly have metabolic capacity, and it's likely to be sufficient."
The concerns raised about the possible dangers of the chemical caused Wal-Mart to announce plans to stop selling children's products containing BPA by next year in U.S. stores.
"The reason we're focusing on babies is not that it can't cause harm in adults, but that the harm in babies is permanent," Vom Saal said.
Hentges said panels such as the one on which Vom Saal served in 2006 have a clear conflict of interest because scientists are inclined to support their past findings.
He said government agencies are free of such bias and pointed out that the FDA and the Canadian government said low doses of BPA in consumer products were no cause for alarm and discontinuing their use was not necessary.
Hentges said the Canadian government's decision to ban BPA was a political decision, not a scientific one.
"We have to separate the policy from the science," he said. "The science supports the safety of these products. Policymakers can do things that are not based on the science."
Reach Abraham Mahshie at (573) 815-1733 or amahshie@tribmail.com.
Originally published by ABRAHAM MAHSHIE of the Tribune's staff.
(c) 2008 Columbia Daily Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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