More BPA Research

Bisphenol A, commonly abbreviated as BPA, is vile stuff—not the kind of thing a smart species knowingly introduces into its ecosystem.

And if a species were to willfully foul its nest with BPA, it would at least be wise to keep it out of direct contact with food.

That’s because BPA is an established endocrine disruptor. In June, the Endocrine Society relased a statement warning of the health threat presented by BPA. According to the statement, low-level exposure to BPA adversely affects male and female reproduction, thyroid function, metabolism, and could increase obesity.

Unhappily, our species hasn’t seen fit to ban BPA production. Instead, we’ve ginned up a robust and profitable market for it. BPA is a building block of plastic—and modern society remains highly dependent on cheap and abundant plastic.

According to a an industry source, U.S. BPA demand is growing at about a 4 percent annual pace. In Asia, the growth rate is much higher. That’s not surprising, given that BPA is commonly used in electronic gadgets, and Asia generally manufactures our electronics.

Nor have we seen fit to protect our food supply from the nasty stuff. Indeed, we literally pack food in it—BPA is a key part of the lining in cans for foodstuffs.

This week, another study has emerged showing that alarming levels of BPA leach out of can liners right into your green beans—and your baby formula. This one, by conducted by Consumers Reports, looked at 19 common supermarket products. “Almost all” of them showed measurable levels of BPA, CR found. Here’s more:

The highest levels of BPA in our tests were found in the canned green beans and canned soup. In Progresso Vegetable Soup, the levels of BPA ranged from 67 to 134 ppb. In Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup, the levels of BPA ranged from 54.5 to 102 ppb. Canned Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans Blue Lake had BPA levels ranging from 35.9 ppb to 191 ppb, the highest amount for a single sample in our test.
What does this mean? “A 165-pound adult eating one serving of canned green beans from our sample, which averaged 123.5 ppb, could ingest about 0.2 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, about 80 times higher than our experts’ recommended daily upper limit.” (Emphasis added.)

Endocrine disruption, meet political corruption
Of course, the Food and Drug Administration has a much more expansive take on how much BPA exposure a human body can endure without harm than Consumer Reports. An FDA advisory panel found last year that the agency’s “basis for setting safety standards to protect consumers was inadequate and should be re-evaluated,” reports CR. But the FDA still hasn’t adjusted its policy toward BPA, and “Industry has been waging a fight against new regulations,” Consumer Reports says.

Unhappily, the chemical industry exerts major influence over our guardian of food safety. In a superb, must-read, award-worthy special series published this year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel showed that for years, the FDA has “relied on chemical industry lobbyists to examine bisphenol A’s risks.” Sentinel journalists got hold of nine years worth of FDA emails on BPA. Get this:

In one instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s deputy director sought information from the BPA industry’s chief lobbyist to discredit a Japanese study that found it caused miscarriages in workers who were exposed to it. This was before government scientists even had a chance to review the study.
Most egregiously, the agency based its 2008 draft review declaring BPA safe on two studies funded by the chemical industry. And that’s not all: an industry trade group “wrote entire sections of that draft.”

While FDA bureaucrats play bump-and-tickle with industry chiefs to form policy on BPA regulations, NGOs have been testing consumer food products and finding significant levels of the damaging substance. The Consumer Union study was only the latest. Back in 2007, Environmental Working Group tested 97 canned products. Over half contained significant levels of BPA.

Infant formula showed particularly poorly: “1 in 3 cans of infant formula, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the government’s traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals.” In the two years since the Environmental Working Group tests, how many people have unwittingly exposed themselves—and their children—to endocrine disruption while FDA administrators cravenly kept their mouths shut? And now that yet another set of independent tests have revealed routine BPA contamination of supermarket staples, will the FDA now act?

One hopes, with the Bush Administration out of office, that the FDA will crack down on BPA use by the food industry. But the U.S. market for the stuff is controlled by extremely powerful corporations, including Bayer, Dow, and Sabic, a Saudi-owned chemical giant. Globally, BPA is an industry with $6 billion in sales. With cash like that at stake, Bayer, et al., aren’t going to merely skulk away. ““The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics—and people—the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation,” reports the Journal Sentinel.

Indeed, Big Tobacco and the BPA merchants don’t just share PR flacks: the tobacco companies put BPA in filters. According to the Journal Sentinel, “Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government’s assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.”

Seems like a smart species would demand that those entities stop producing BPA—PR blitz withstanding. But that would entail the FDA cutting ties to industry and devoting itself to public health.

BPA From Endocrine Society

WASHINGTON (June 10) - Hormone experts said on Wednesday they are becoming worried by a chemical called bisphenol A, which some politicians say they want taken out of products and which consumers are increasingly shunning.

They said they have gathered a growing body evidence to show the compound, also known as BPA, might damage human health. The Endocrine Society issued a scientific statement on Wednesday calling for better studies into its effects.

Studies presented at the group's annual meeting show BPA can affect the hearts of women, can permanently damage the DNA of mice, and appear to be pouring into the human body from a variety of unknown sources.

BPA, used to stiffen plastic bottles, line cans and make smooth paper receipts, belongs to a broad class of compounds called endocrine disruptors.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is examining their safety but there has not been much evidence to show that they are any threat to human health.

"We present evidence that endocrine disruptors do have effects on male and female development, prostate cancer, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease," Dr. Robert Carey of the University of Virginia, who is president of the Endocrine Society, told a news conference.

The society issued a lengthy scientific statement about the chemicals in general that admits the evidence is not yet overwhelming, but is worrying.

Dr. Hugh Taylor of Yale University in Connecticut found evidence in mice that the compounds could affect unborn pups.

"We exposed some mice to bisphenol A and then we looked at their offspring," Taylor told the news conference.

We found that even when a they had a brief exposure during pregnancy ... mice exposed to these chemicals as a fetus carried these changes throughout their lives."

The BPA did not directly change DNA through mutations, but rather through a process called epigenetics -- when chemicals attach to the DNA and change its function.

Widespread Exposure

Taylor noted studies have shown that most people have some BPA in their blood, although the effects of these levels are not clear.

Dr. Frederick Vom Saal of the University of Missouri, who has long studied endocrine disruptors, said tests on monkeys showed the body quickly clears BPA -- which may at first sound reassuring.
But he said when tests show most people have high levels, this suggests they are being repeatedly exposed to BPA.

"We are really concerned that there is a very large amount of bisphenol A that must be coming from other sources," Vom Saal said.

Dr. Scott Belcher of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and colleagues will tell the meeting they found BPA could affect the heart cells of female mice, sending them into an uneven beating pattern called an arrhythmia.

"These effects are specific on the female heart. The male heart does not respond in this way and we understand why," Belcher said. He said BPA interacts with estrogen and said the findings may help explain why young women are more likely to die when they have a heart attack than men of the same age.

U.S. government toxicologists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences expressed concern last year that BPA may hurt development of the prostate and brain.

A 2008 study by British researchers linked high levels of BPA to heart disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities.

Plastics Linked To Human Health Risks

I'm shocked - shocked I say!

WASHINGTON (Sept. 16) - With scientists at odds about the risks of a chemical found in plastic baby bottles, metal cans and other food packaging, the government on Tuesday gave consumers some tips on how to reduce their exposure to BPA even as it said the substance is safe.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee met as a major study linked bisphenol A to possible risks of heart disease and diabetes. The scientific debate could drag on for years.

"Right now, our tentative conclusion is that it's safe, so we're not recommending any change in habits," said Laura Tarantino, head of the FDA's office of food additive safety. But she acknowledged, "there are a number of things people can do to lower their exposure."

For example, consumers can avoid plastic containers imprinted with the recycling number '7,' as many of those contain BPA. Or, Tarantino said, they can avoid warming food in such containers, as heat helps to release the chemical.

More than 90 percent of Americans have traces of BPA in their bodies, but the FDA says the levels of exposure are too low to pose a health risk, even for infants and children. Other scientists, however, say BPA has been shown to affect the human body even at very low levels.

And Tuesday a study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested a new concern about BPA. Using a health survey of nearly 1,500 adults, the study found that those exposed to higher amounts of BPA were more likely to report having heart disease and diabetes. Because of the possible public health implications, the results "deserve scientific follow-up," its authors said.

The study is preliminary, far from proof that the chemical caused the health problems. Two Dartmouth College analysts of medical research said it raises questions but provides no answers about whether the ubiquitous chemical is harmful.

FDA officials said they are not dismissing such findings. "We recognize the need to resolve the concerning questions that have been raised," said Tarantino, acknowledging that more research is needed. But the FDA is also arguing that the studies with rats and mice it relied on for its assessment are more thorough than some of the human research that has raised doubts.

The agency has asked an outside scientific panel for a second opinion on BPA's safety, and the medical journal article was released to coincide with the advisers' hearing. The FDA has the power to ban or limit use of BPA in food containers and medical devices.

Past animal studies have suggested reproductive and hormone-related problems from BPA. The JAMA study is the largest to examine possible BPA effects in people and the first suggesting a direct link to heart disease, said scientists Frederick vom Saal and John Peterson Myers, both longtime critics of the chemical.

Still, they said more rigorous studies are needed to confirm the results.

Vom Saal is a biological sciences professor at University of Missouri who has served as an expert witness and consultant on BPA litigation. Myers is chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, a Charlottesville, Va., nonprofit group. They wrote an editorial accompanying the JAMA study.

BPA is used in hardened plastics and in a wide range of consumer goods, including the lining of metal cans, eyeglass lenses and compact discs. Many scientists believe it can act like the hormone estrogen, and animal studies have linked it with breast, prostate and reproductive system problems and some cancers.

Researchers from Britain and the University of Iowa examined a U.S. government health survey of 1,455 American adults who gave urine samples in 2003-04 and reported whether they had any of several common diseases.

Participants were divided into four groups based on BPA urine amounts; more than 90 percent had detectable BPA in their urine.

A total of 79 had heart attacks, chest pain or other types of cardiovascular disease and 136 had diabetes. There were more than twice as many people with heart disease or diabetes in the highest BPA group than in the lowest BPA group. The study showed no connection between BPA and other ailments, including cancer.

No one in the study had BPA urine amounts showing higher than recommended exposure levels, said co-author Dr. David Melzer, a University of Exeter researcher.

Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice said the study presents no clear information about what might have caused participants' heart disease and diabetes.

"Measuring who has disease and high BPA levels at a single point in time cannot tell you which comes first," Schwartz said.

The study authors acknowledge that it's impossible to rule out that people who already have heart disease or diabetes are somehow more vulnerable to having BPA show up in their urine.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, said the study is flawed, has substantial limitations and proves nothing.

But Dr. Ana Soto of Tufts University said the study raises enough concerns to warrant government action to limit BPA exposure.

"We shouldn't wait until further studies are done in order to act in protecting humans," said Soto, who has called for more restrictions in the past.

An earlier lab experiment with human fat tissue found that BPA can interfere with a hormone involved in protecting against diabetes, heart disease and obesity. That study appeared online last month in Environmental Health Perspectives, a monthly journal published by the National Institutes of Health.

One of the FDA's outside advisers was skeptical of the JAMA study. "For diabetes, I really don't see it," said Dr. Garret FitzGerald of the University of Pennsylvania.

Toxicology experts from another government agency have studied BPA and recently completed their own report. They found no strong evidence of health hazards from BPA, but unlike the FDA, said there was "some concern" about possible effects on the brain in fetuses, infants and children.

Several states are considering restricting BPA use, some manufacturers have begun promoting BPA-free baby bottles, and some stores are phasing out baby products containing the chemical. The European Union has said BPA-containing products are safe, but Canada's government has proposed banning the sale of baby bottles with BPA as a precaution.

The FDA advisory panel is expected to make its recommendations to the FDA late next month.
Government toxicologists report: http://tinyurl.com/5jq2uv

More info

About a third of the way down

Maine Newspaper On BPA
BPA was originally used as a synthetic hormone. Today it is mostly used to make polycarbonate plastic, which is used in hard plastic products, including baby bottles and some of popular water bottles. Remarkably, BPA is also used to make coatings that line food cans.

Autism Theory That Doesn't Include Vaccinations

Many people are blaming the countless childhood vaccinations for autism. While I have no doubt there is a connection for some cases, I am not convinced it is the root of this evil. I'm more inclined to blame Modern Autism on the chemical warefare being waged against our bodies in the name of convenience and safety.

Chemicals And Fat
http://www.autismfries.com/
The human brain is composed primarily of fat, specifically Omega-3 fatty acids which are commonly referred to as "good fat".

Many chemicals in our daily lives are found to be fat soluble. This means they are stored in our body's fat throughout our lives and even transferred to the baby as it develops in the womb. More is transferred through breast feeding, skin contact, and inhalation. This is a recipe for disaster.

This chemical deluge could also account for the almost exponential increases in ADD/ADHD as well as modern autism (is there a link between the two syndromes?). Our culture relies almost entirely on chemicals over natural substances for convenience and through the brainwashing of companies stating they are for our safety and well-being. If this chemical/ADD/ADHD/Modern Autism link is real, it is safe to assume there is a cumulative affect (through the fat soluble/stored chemicals). This is why the fat soluble transfer is the most troublesome.

Fire Retardents
www.thegreenguide.com/doc/26/home A century and a half since Thoreau built his little cabin on Walden Pond, our poet's ethic of simplicity and harmony with nature has been displaced by the typical American dream house: a multi-thousand-square-foot suburban palace with a three-car garage. If we took Thoreau on a tour, he'd be surprised to learn that today's building products and furnishings emit gaseous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as the known carcinogens formaldehyde and benzene, and trigger respiratory, allergic and neurological reactions. He'd see bulldozers mow down trees to make room for a house--built with scarce hardwoods from far-flung places--and construction crews filling dumpsters with enough scrap wood to build another Walden cottage.

Moving on, many chemicals that are used in the US are banned in most of the world - primarily fire retardents used on furniture and carpeting. The use of these chemicals is questionable anyway, since studies through fire safety organizations prove they do not inhibit the spread of fire, particularly when compared to untreated natural fibers (cotton, wool, silk, wood) - CNN ran a story in fall of 2007 regarding this. I'm still searching for it.

Many of these fire retardents are also used in the manufacture of childrens clothing.

Pthalates and BPA
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/mvoice/070502voices.html
BPA was originally used as a synthetic hormone. Today it is mostly used to make polycarbonate plastic, which is used in hard plastic products, including baby bottles and some of popular water bottles. Remarkably, BPA is also used to make coatings that line food cans.

More info - http://kermitsteam.blogspot.com/2007/08/chemical-bpa.html

There is mounting evidence of phthalates, found in baby hygiene products, causing hormonal disruption. Also, BPA is found in the plastics of baby bottles, water bottles, canned goods and hard plastic toys babies so love to teeth has questions being raised regarding hormonal disruption and brain development.

Disposable Diapers
http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/diapers/diaper-asthma.html
Harsh perfumes and chemical emissions have long been known to induce asthma-like symptoms in children and adults. Now, researchers have found that disposable diapers might be a trigger for asthma. A study published in the October, 1999 issue of the Archives of Environmental Health found that laboratory mice exposed to various brands of disposable diapers suffered increased eye, nose, and throat irritation, including bronchoconstriction similar to that of an asthma attack. Six leading cotton and disposable diaper brands were tested; cloth diapers were not found to cause respiratory problems among the lab mice.

http://diapersafari.com/diaperinfo/whyclothdiapers/
BABIES POORLY DEVELOPED OUTER SKIN LAYER ABSORBS ABOUT 48 CHEMICALS if you use disposable diapers & wipes and standard baby products. This can be greatly reduced by using cloth diapers and natural baby products.
Very few people discuss the use of disposable diapers when it comes to the developmental safety of infants and toddlers. Considering your baby will wear between 5000 and 6500 diapers 24/7/365, it's worth taking a look.

A Child's Brain
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/famsci/fs609w.htm
By the time a child is 3 years old, a baby's brain has formed about 1,000 trillion connections — about twice as many as adults have. A baby's brain is superdense and will stay that way throughout the first decade of life. Beginning at about age 11, a child's brain gets rid of extra connections in a process calling "pruning," gradually making order out of a thick tangle of "wires."

http://www.autismfries.com/
From birth to 24 months is the time period when most of the neural connections in the brain are made. This is when the brain is wired. Anything that interferes with the wiring of the brain will cause a "developmental disorder". Autism basically means that a brain which would otherwise be normal failed at some point AFTER childbirth in developing all the normal neural connections.

How can a child's brain not be affected by this deluge?

What Can You Do?
Dress your baby in only natural fibers - unbleached cotton is obviously the best choice, but that can be boring. You make the decision on how "natural" to be.
Make your baby's clothes. It's time consuming, but they won't have the fire retardents soaked into every thread.

Use cloth diapers. You can buy a bolt of good cotton flannel to make your own, or use a diaper service. The choice is yours.

Use glass feeding bottles when not breast feeding. If you breast feed, consider converting to a plastic-free environment during your pregnancy and time you are breast feeding your baby. Cover your funiture with cotton sheets, dress in only natural fibers, use no perfumes, use unscented everything to reduce your chemical exposure.

Air new furniture in a hot location for a few days to accelerate the out-gasing process. If you live in a new home - take a day or tow away and super heat the interior - with the furnace for 24-48 hours. Then air and clean every surface to remove the chemicals that were super out-gased.

Only let your baby lie on cotton blankets or quilts. This will avoid contact with chemical laden upholstery fabrics, regardless of your home or out socializing.

When bathing your baby, use natural soaps. Castille soap - made with olive oil, is a great choice. But again, you choose. The soap will work just fine for shampoo for at least the first year. There is no need for perfumed soaps/detergents or shampoos on your baby.

If you use a moisturizer on your baby, consider a natural oil like cocoa butter, olive oil, etc. I personally don't advocate soy oil due to the genetic engineering and phyto-estrogens natural occuring in the beans.

Wash all clothes/diapers/bedding with the mildest unscented detergent available. Double rinse to assure all residue is gone.