Great Article on the History of Bisphenol-A

Check out this great article that explains the BPA 'controversy.'

BPA in Canned Foods

To follow up on the previous post about BPA, I want to warn everyone about canned food. BPA is used to line aluminum cans, and seems to be the source of a major amount that we ingest. According to the Environmental Working Group, no matter what brand you use or where you buy your canned food, the cans are almost certainly lined with an epoxy resin that contains BPA. If they didn't use it, the cans might rust, or you might end up with metal residues in your food. But because of the high temperatures used in the canning process, your potential exposure to BPA from canned food is much higher than your potential exposure from plastic water bottles.

The Toronto Globe and Mail conducted a study in conjunction with a Canadian TV station, and reported the results in an article on Thursday, May 29, 2008.

They found the following results:
(BISPHENOL A CONCENTRATION, PARTS PER BILLION OF WATER)

Hunt's tomato sauce: 18.21
Allen's apple juice: 17.90
Heinz tomato juice: 14.11
Labatt beer: 9.27
Campbell's chicken noodle soup: 8.61
Molson beer: 8.19
Del Monte peas and carrots: 6.76
Green Giant cream style corn: 6.52
Chef Boyardee mini been ravioli: 6.17
Heinz zoodles: 4.65
Heinz baked beans: 2.88

An article in Chemical and Engineering News reports that the food packaging industry maintains that BPA has done much to improve the health and safety of consumers..."The primary function of the internal coating is to avoid food poisoning," adds John M. Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, an industry group that represents the metal food and beverage packaging industry. Without the coating, Escherichia coli and botulism poisoning would be rampant, he says.

The Environmental Working Group indicates that one manufacturer uses non-BPA lining on some of their food cans, however. Eden Organic Beans are packed in lead free tin covered steel cans coated with a baked on oleoresinous c-enamel lining that does not contain bisphenol A (BPA). (Oleoresin is a natural mixture of an oil and a resin extracted from various plants, such as pine or balsam fir). These cans cost 13.77 percent more than the industry standard cans that do contain BPA. This costs Eden $300,000 more a year. To our knowledge Eden is the only U.S. company that uses this custom made BPA-free can. Eden's tomato products are still packaged in cans with a BPA-based lining.

For everything else, the safest choice is to use fresh, instead of canned, fruits and vegetables, and to make your soups from scratch. It will taste better and contain more nutrients, too.


Further Reading:
Environmental Working Group: Bisphenol A: Toxic Plastics Chemical in Canned Food
How Cans Are Made (well-illustrated!)

Growing Evidence of Conflict of Interest in FDA's Ruling on BPA

The Future Earth reported on August 24th about the Food & Drug Administration's questionable evaluation of the chemical bisphenol A in a draft report released earlier that month.

This evaluation, that FDA-regulated products containing BPA currently on the market are safe and that exposure levels to BPA from food contact materials, including for infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects was obtained by examining only plastics industry-funded studies. How did they justify excluding the hundreds of other studies that found the opposite to be true? The FDA claims that only those studies using GLP, or Good Laboratory Practices, qualified. GLP were regulations set in place in 1978 when it became clear that some commercial testing laboratories were conducting sloppy research. Meanwhile, government- funded research agencies were not required to adopt GLP because they were already adhering to the much more stringent regulations required to get non-commercial funding.

Now the current FDA, which is staffed with industry cronies placed by the Bush Administration to carry out the neoconservative agenda of de-regulation, has chosen to use GLP to eliminate from consideration all studies not funded by the chemical industry- the very people who manufacture the chemicals the FDA is supposed to regulate. Read more. But, using suspicious criteria to determine which studies to use is just the tip of the iceberg.

The BPA draft is under review by a subcommittee, which will present their assessment to the FDA's science board on Oct. 31st. The Washington Post reported on October 13th that there may be a conflict of interest. Charles Gelman, a retired head of a medical device manufacturing company and outspoken BPA proponent, donated $5 million to the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center. The acting director of the center is Martin Philbert, who is also the head of the subcommittee.

And this week, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that FDA documents suggest that the August report was written in consultation with the plastics industry. The newspaper reviewed the body of evidence that the task force considered. It found memos with entire sections blacked out, reviews commissioned by the American Plastics Council, an arm of the American Chemistry Council [an industry group], and reviews completed by consulting firms with clients who have financial interests in the sale of bisphenol A.

By the end of this week, criticism of the FDA on this issue has intensified. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach has been called before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation to explain the agency's decision-making relating to bisphenol A. "Specifically, why industry-funded studies provide the basis of your regulatory decisions and why the totality of the science around the chemical continues to be ignored by your science-based agency," the committee letter said.

Meanwhile, Canada placed bisphenol A on its list of toxic chemicals on October 18th. The country also banned its use in baby bottles and dedicated $1.7 million to research into the chemical. Read more.