Is your plastic bottle safe?
Posted: Thursday, September 04, 2008 5:13 PM by Daily Nightly Editor
By Robert Bazell, NBC News Chief science correspondent
Reference guide: Is your plastic bottle safe?
On this afternoon’s Nightly News conference call – which today linked people at the Republican National Convention (among other places) with headquarters in New York, -- Alex Wallace, the executive producer of the broadcast asked me a simple question.
“How can one federal agency be telling us a chemical is safe when another is saying it might be dangerous?”
We are doing a report tonight on the latest results on the possible danger of a chemical that is very common in our environment. Most of the research up to now has been in mice and rats. This latest study was done in monkeys and indicated possible brain damage at low amounts.
The chemical is BPA or bisphenol A. It is found in millions of plastic bottles and other containers. It is back in the news and will be for a while. BPA has been known for decades to mimic the female hormone estrogen. It has also been known that tiny amounts of it can leak into the liquids the containers hold. As a result almost all Americans have tiny amounts of BPA in their bodies. Some animal studies, including the one we cover tonight, indicate it could be a hazard But is it really dangerous to human health? There is no definite answer yet.
But this week the National Toxicology Program, an interagency group set up to advise the government on questions about possibly dangerous chemicals in our environment issued a final report on BPA.
That agency concluded there "some concern for effects on the brain, behavior and the prostate gland in fetuses, infants and children at current exposure levels"
But that agency has no regulatory power. Only Food and Drug Administration can decide whether to ban BPA in some products.
A few weeks ago the FDA staff issued a preliminary report that containers with the chemical "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." That comes from a staff report in preparation for an a public hearing on the matter September 16.
So responding to Alex Wallace’s excellent question. Different federal agencies have different people who can look at the same scientific data and reach different conclusions. After its public hearing, the FDA Commissioner could choose to ignore the report from his staff and recommend banning BPA in baby bottles as Health Canada has done or he can chose to do nothing
The problem is the experiment that will finally demonstrate whether there is an effect on human health does not begin until early next year. It will involve thousands of children monitored carefully. But there may be no result for years.
