by Sherry Baker

 

(NaturalNews) If you live in the U.S. and eat any packaged foods at all, you are probably also consuming the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA. Now, for the first time, scientists have made a startling discovery about the chemical that could help explain the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes in this country.

 

Previous studies have found BPA causes precancerous conditions, kidney and developmental problems in animals. But new research, published in the September 17th edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), shows that humans could be walking time bombs of health problems due to "normal" exposures to BPA.

 

British researcher David Melzer, M.B., Ph.D., of Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, and colleagues measured the BPA found in the urine of 1,455 adults between the ages of 18 and 74 years, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) which was gathered in 2003 and 2004. Then they looked at thehealth status of these people whom the scientists note in the JAMA report are "representative of the adult U.S.population".

 

The results? Dr. Melzer and his team found that average BPA concentrations, adjusted for age and sex, were higher in those diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. In fact, even a slightly raised BPA concentration was associated with a 39 percent increased risk of having cardiovascular disease (angina, coronaryheart disease, or heart attack combined) and diabetes.

 

Those with the highest BPA concentration had nearly three times the odds of heart disease and 2.4 times the risk of diabetes when compared with those with the lowest levels. What's more, higher levels of BPA concentrations were also associated with abnormally elevated levels of three liver enzymes.

 

"These findings add to the evidence suggesting adverse effects of low-dose BPA in animals. Independent replication and follow-up studies are needed to confirm these findings and to provide evidence on whether the associations are causal," the authors said in a statement to the media. "Given the substantial negative effects on adult health that may be associated with increased BPA concentrations and also given the potential for reducing human exposure, our findings deserve scientific follow-up."

 

But is it too little too late? And is anyone in Washington going to listen? They certainly haven't in the past.

 

There was concern earlier this year that huge numbers of children were being exposed to BPA because it is known to leach out of hard polycarbonate plastics that are used widely in baby bottles, sippy cups and waterbottles. The Department of Health and Human Services' National Toxicology Program released a report on the safety of the chemical and warned BPA could cause health and developmental problems.

 

"Because these effects in animals occur at bisphenol A exposure levels similar to those experienced by humans, the possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed," the report concluded.

 

Predictably, this and other warnings about BPA, have been hotly contested by plastic industry leaders. "Much like the pharmaceutical industry, the plastics industry wants consumers to believe their chemicals are so safe that babies can drink them with impunity," says Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and editor of NaturalNews.com. "This flies in the face of common sense, and this new research is demonstrating why we need to be so vigilant about protecting ourselves and our children from plastic packaging."

 

Last spring, consumers bombarded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with demands to know if BPA-containing baby and food products are safe. The government agency claimed to have investigated the matter. But, despite dozens of animal studies showing the chemical is a danger to health, the FDA ruled in August there was insufficient evidence to support banning BPA from baby and food products.

 

However, a new FDA hearing is set to start today, September 16, in Rockville, Maryland, to discuss the BPA issue once again. In fact, JAMA issued a press release saying the prestigious medical journal is releasing the findings of the new human study a day early to coincide with the FDA hearing.

 

Clearly, mainstream medicine is now recognizing that the chemical contaminant is a real health concern.

 

In the JAMA editorial that accompanies the new BPA study, Frederick S. von Saal, Ph.D., of the University ofMissouri, Columbia, and John Peterson Myers, Ph.D., of Environmental Health Sciences, Charlottesville, Va., point out that BPA production has reached about 7 billion pounds per year and the chemical has caused massive planetary contamination. Why? Consider the fact that products containing BPA, like microwavable food containers, often end up in landfills and dumped into water ecosystem. Already, Canada has declared the chemical to be a major worldwide pollutant.

 

"The good news is that government action to reduce exposures may offer an effective intervention for improving health and reducing the burden of some of the most consequential human health problems. Thus, even while awaiting confirmation of the findings of Lang et al, decreasing exposure to BPA and developing alternatives to its use are the logical next steps to minimize risk to public health," Dr. von Saal and Dr. Myers state in the editorial.

 

Considering U.S. citizens have been waiting for years for the government to even acknowledge that BPA is a health hazard, it makes little sense to rely on the FDA to to protect us from the chemical. Instead, there are ways to take control of your and your family's exposure to BPA.

 

Avoid baby formula as much as possible.

 

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) (http://www.ewg.org/chemindex/chemicals/23297) , a non-profit organization comprised of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers who have been in the forefront of pointing out the potential health and environmental hazards of BPA, all U.S.manufacturers of formula use a BPA containing lining on the metal part of their containers. Opt for breastfeeding exclusively if possible, or use a dry formula that is mixed with filtered water.

 

Eat fresh, not canned, food.

 

The EWG has found that food and drink cans are lined with BPA-laden plastic. Canned soups and spaghettis have the highest levels.

 

Pay attention to the kind of plastics you use for food and drink.

 

The plastics that have the most BPA are those made of polycarbonate plastic -- they are usually rigid and transparent and used for toddler cups, baby bottles, food storage containers and water bottles. They are frequently marked on the bottom with the letters "PC" and the recycling number 7. Plastics with the recycling numbers 1, 2 and 4 on the bottom are better choices.

 

Choose safe bottles.

 

Using glass baby bottles is best. Metal water bottles may not be free from BPA because many are lined with a plastic coating that contains the chemical. The EWG advises using stainless steel bottles that don't have a plastic liner.

 

Don't use plastic containers to heat food in microwaves.

 

Ceramic and glass are safe alternatives.

 

However, avoiding BPA doesn't automatically protect your health. In fact, consumer health advocate Mike Adamssays the attention to the plastics issue could be seen as a distraction from the larger problem -- the danger that is often inside the BPA-laden containers. "For example, right now some of the top infant formula products sold in the United States are contaminated with hexane residues, and many infant products are made with as much as 50 percent refined sugars and corn syrup solids. Parents need to pay as much attention to what's inside the bottle as they do the bottle itself."

 

About the author

Sherry Baker is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Health, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Yoga Journal, Optometry, Atlanta, Arthritis Today, Natural Healing Newsletter, OMNI, UCLA's "Healthy Years" newsletter, Mount Sinai School of Medicine's "Focus on Health Aging" newsletter, the Cleveland Clinic's "Men's Health Advisor" newsletter and many others.

 

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By Matt McGowan

 

By nature, Fred vom Saal is not a crusader, but he doesn’t want to wait 10 years for a governmental agency to ban a chemical that his research shows harms animals. He doesn’t want to wait for thousands of people to show severe abnormalities from years of eating foods packaged in plastic.

 

Since their landmark findings in 1997 on low-dosage effects of Bisphenol A (BPA) on mice, vom Saal and Wade Welshons, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, have labored to warn the public and government agencies of the dangers associated with the prevalent chemical that is used in many plastic products, including baby bottles, food-storage containers and toys.

 

In May vom Saal presented new scientific evidence about this chemical at the Toxicology and Risk Assessment Conference, an annual conference sponsored by several governmental agencies, including theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to examine the possible dangers of toxic chemicals.

 

During the conference near Dayton, Ohio, vom Saal argued that scientific findings in more than 35 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals provide credible evidence that the chemical is harmful to every type of animal that has been studied, and this chemical is thus very likely to produce the same types of abnormalities in humans. These findings are based on independent academic research that has studied the effects of BPA.

 

“This evidence will ultimately convince federal regulatory agencies that BPA should be illegal for use in food and beverage containers,” vom Saal said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

 

Bisphenol A is an artificial estrogen, but it is bonded together in a chain of bisphenol A molecules to create the plastic called polycarbonate as well as resins that are used to line cans and as dental sealants. Each day, consumers use several plastic products that contain BPA, a chemical found in the 1930s by a Nobel-prize winning scientist to act like estrogen. In the 1950s, chemists linked BPA together to create polycarbonate material, and companies began using the chemical in plastics production. Today, BPA, one of the top 50 chemicals in production in the United States, generates billions of dollars for the plastics industry, which produces about 2.5 billion pounds of the chemical per year.

 

Vom Saal said scientists have known for many years that the polycarbonate bond created by BPA was unstable and that the chemical would eventually leach into food or beverages in contact with the plastic. The obvious concern today is that it may leach into food products, ranging from microwavable dinners to baby formula, that are packaged in polycarbonate plastic.

 

“The idea that this is a strong, durable product is an illusion,” vom Saal said. “The chemists have known that the Bisphenol A chemical is constantly leaching and coming into contact with food or water. It’s going to damage your body.”

 

Researchers also have known that supplemental estrogens are harmful to animals and people, especially during fetal development. Vom Saal, Welshons and other scientists were particularly interested in BPA because they knew blood proteins involved in protecting against effects of natural estrogens would not protect against the chemical. Thus, this artificial hormone could travel directly through the blood into cells and damage them.

 

In 1997, the MU researchers published the first scientific article detailing the effects in animals of very low environmental exposure to BPA. Vom Saal and Welshons performed a prostate and sperm count study on male mice and demonstrated that BPA caused prostate hyperplasia — excessive growth of prostate tissue, a pre-condition of cancer. Since then, other studies, both theirs and those from other academic laboratories have shown that low-level exposure to BPA caused decreased sperm production in males, accelerated rate of growth, sex reversal in frogs, early onset of puberty, chromosome damage in female ovaries and a variety of behavioral changes.

 

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Vom Saal and Welshons have shifted their research efforts toward an explanation of how and why BPA has such a powerful effect on an animal’s endocrine system and reproductive organs. They have begun the process of identifying the molecular mechanisms at work when the hormone enters an animal’s cells.

 

“There are safe alternatives,” vom Saal said of products made with BPA. “There are plastic products that do not have Bisphenol A or other toxic chemicals. They can be made safely and used safely. There is no reason to keep using a chemical that has such a high potential to cause harm.”

 

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Alok Jha, science correspondent, The Guardian, Wednesday January 30 2008

 

Hot liquids dramatically increase the amount of harmful chemicals released by plastic bottles, according to a study.

 

Scientists found that polycarbonate plastic bottles released a known environmental pollutant 55 times more quickly when filled with boiling water.

 

Polycarbonate is used to make everything from compact discs to milk bottles for babies. The plastic is made from bisphenol A, a chemical produced in large volumes across the world. But over time, the plastic leaches its raw ingredient back into the environment.

 

"There are a lot of concerns surrounding bisphenol A," said David Santillo, senior scientist at the Greenpeace research laboratory in Exeter. "It is a hormone disrupter able to mimic and interfere with hormone systems in animals."

 

In the experiment, Scott Belcher, of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, wanted to work out how bisphenol A leaked out of polycarbonates and whether the temperature of the liquid stored in the bottle affected the rate.

 

"Previous studies have shown that if you repeatedly scrub, dish-wash and boil polycarbonate baby bottles, they release bisphenol A. But we wanted to know if 'normal' use caused increased release from something that we all use, and to identify what was the most important factor that impacts release," he said.

 

Belcher took reusable water bottles and tested them for seven days with room temperature water and then boiling water, simulating normal usage during backpacking, mountaineering and other outdoor adventure activities.

 

He found that boiling water released bisphenol A from the bottles up to 55 times more quickly than the lower-temperature water.

 

The results, published in the latest edition of the journal Toxicology Letters, found that with room temperature water the rate of release from individual bottles ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 nanograms of bisphenol A an hour. After exposure to boiling water, rates increased to 8 to 32 nanograms an hour.

 

"A nanogram is a fairly small amount but, given that a lot of hormones work at levels far below that, even if it's not as potent as a natural hormone, you are in the range there which could be contributing to adverse effects," said Santillo.

 

He added that Belcher's research should renew calls to develop alternative materials for baby milk bottles.

 

"Newborn babies are at a very sensitive stage of their development and the last thing you want to be doing is dosing them with a very potent hormone disruptor," he said. "If there are ways of avoiding that, the time has come for the public to know about those."

 

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by Mike Adams

 

(NaturalNews) In a move that surprised no one, the FDA has aligned itself with the chemical industry and declared that Bisphenol-A, a plastics chemical previously linked to neural defects, is safe enough for babies to drink! Echoing the profit-minded desires of the chemical companies that manufacture plastic products, the FDA said in a draft report that the chemical poses no harm to adults or infants when consumed at typical exposure levels.

 

This is no surprise to anyone who has watched the FDA for very long: The agency's decisions are almost unanimously in favor of private industry and almost never seek to protect the public from exposure to dangerous chemicals, pharmaceuticals or food ingredients. The FDA, it could be reasonably stated, has flatly abandoned the public and sold out to the very industries it is supposed to regulate.

 

Several months ago, The National Toxicology Program (part of the National Institutes of Health) issued a report that warned Bisphenol-A could cause neural problems and behavioral problems in infants and children. That report contributed to a wave of concern that resulted in the following:

 

• Toys 'R Us removed plastic baby bottles from store shelves, resorting to BPA-free bottles.

• The BornFree company (www.NewBornFree.com) experienced a surge in sales of its BPA-free baby bottles.

• The Nalgene company completely abandoned the use of Bisphenol-A in its plastics, rolling out a BPA-free product line.

• Wal-Mart announced it would stop carrying many products containing Bisphenol-A.

• The State of California proposed legislation that would have banned food and beverage products containing Bisphenol-A. Under pressure from the chemical industry, however, that legislation failed to pass.

 

Nobody knows if Bisphenol-A is safe for children

 

Even the FDA had to admit, in its draft report, that "complete certainty of absolute harmlessness is scientifically impossible to establish." In other words, they don't know if it's harmless to children. Yet interestingly, they've decided to give it their stamp of approval anyway, potentially exposing tens of millions of children to a chemical that may cause neural development problems.

 

This does not seem to concern the FDA. Or at least it does not seem to outweigh the influence and pressure from the plastics industry, which is of course claiming the chemical is absolutely harmless. Is this yet another example of the FDA selling out to industry? On the surface, it certainly seems so.

 

Even the Environmental Working Group (www.EWG.org) strongly criticized the FDA's report, saying "We have long since lost faith in FDA's ability to be an impartial authority on FDA's safety. Time and again, FDA has sided with special interests instead of the public interest on this chemical."

 

Protecting industry, not consumers

 

The FDA, you see, has a long and well-documented history of erring on the side of disaster. Rather than taking the default position that a possibly harmful chemical with unknown exposure levels should be restricted from the food supply until further research is done, the FDA does the opposite: It declares the chemical to be safe until evidence proves it to be dangerous.

 

This is a reckless strategy that will only lead to disaster for the health of the population. It is my belief that all synthetic chemicals should be assumed dangerous unless proven safe, and they should only be allowed in the food supply (via food packaging, beverage bottles, etc.) if they are proven safe with overwhelming scientific evidence.

 

FDA decisions are based on fiction, not fact

 

So how much scientific evidence does the FDA have right now, demonstrating Bisphenol-A to be safe on human babies? None. All they have is a LACK of evidence showing the chemical to be dangerous. And that's not sufficient scientific support upon which decisions about toxic chemical exposure should be made.

 

The Environmental Working Group issued a statement strongly criticizing the FDA's assessment of Bisphenol-A safety.

 

1. The FDA limited its assessment to studies that conformed to rigid, 50-year old study designs that feed animals high amounts of BPA and analyze the animals for overt signs of poisoning and toxicity. FDA admits in their assessment that the studies they use to set the safety level do not adequately address the impacts of early life exposure to the developing brain, behavior and the reproductive system. Notably, the only studies that conformed to these 50-year old study designs, were those funded by industry.

 

2. By adhering to what it euphemistically calls studies that follow "good laboratory practices," the FDA ignores more than 100 studies, including many funded by the National Toxicology Program, showing toxic effects of BPA at very low doses.

 

3. FDA's so called 2,000-fold margin of safety evaporates if current exposures are compared to any of the low dose studies, particularly the 12 studies the National Toxicology Program highlights in their April 14, 2008 BPA assessment as raising concerns for the safety of infant exposure to BPA.

 

4. FDA's exposure calculations underestimate infant ingestion. They calculate formula intake for the average infant instead of focusing on babies who eat the most, thus underestimating risks for half of all infants. They also assume that liquid formula has 2.5 parts per billion (ppb) BPA, even though their own testing of just 14 liquid formulas found up to 5 times more than this (13 ppb). These errors contradict the accepted risk assessment practice of focusing on risks to the most highly exposed population. FDA claims that its analysis was comprehensive, but in reality it underestimates risks to the most vulnerable infants by a wide margin.

 

So once again, we have the FDA putting the public in harm's way, betraying the public trust and siding with the chemical industry on a decision that deserves a whole lot more scrutiny. Are plastics really dangerous for your health? I suspect they are, but regardless of what I think, the FDA needs to err on the side of caution, not on the side of industry.

 

Eating hamburgers is a thousand times worse for your health

 

Regardless of the question on plastics, I do have to say, for the record, that people tend to focus their fears and concerns on the wrong things when it comes to health. I've seen people drinking water out of glass bottles and thinking it's really good for their health, but they're eating hamburgers and french fries at the same time! I can assure you that eating hamburgers is a whole lot more dangerous for your health than drinking a microscopic amount of BPA from a plastic bottle.

 

I even drink out of plastic when I'm traveling, and I'm not the least bit concerned about it. For a healthy person, a little exposure to plastic isn't going to kill you. (For infants and babies, of course, it's a different story.) Taking FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, may indeed kill you. And eating fast food, junk food and processed food will kill you in the long run, too. But drinking a few molecules of BPA from your plastic bottle is, in my opinion, of relatively little concern compared to all the other ways consumers are drowning themselves in poison.

 

Most people need to stop worrying about plastic and start focusing on the toxic foods they're eating and the toxic personal care products they're putting on their skin! One barbequed steak contains a million times the cancer-causing residue of a plastic bottle (estimated). Regular use of conventional skin creams, in my opinion, is also a million times more toxic than drinking from plastic water bottles. Plastic residue isn't killing even close to the number of people as processed food, dangerous medications and toxic personal care products.

 

People drink soda out of aluminum cans and don't think twice about it. They microwave their foods and destroy their nutrients without a hint of awareness. They eat processed meats laced with cancer-causing nitrites and haven't a clue. They swallow extremely dangerous medications that double, triple or quadruple their risks of heart attacks, strokes and liver damage.

 

So why do people get so riled up over plastic bottles? Because it's in the mainstream consciousness! But in my opinion, it's nowhere near as important as talking about food additives, food irradiation, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, MSG, aspartame, the milling of grains and dozens of other far more dangerous things in the food supply. And that's not to even mention what's in the cosmetics and personal care products, which is some of the most toxic stuff you'll ever find.

 

I can tell you this: If you drink nothing but superfoods out of plastic bottles, you will still experience outstanding health.

 

But if you drink junk beverages and liquid sugars out of GLASS bottles, you will destroy your health.

 

The bottle itself is not nearly as important as what's IN the bottle. Remember that the next time you get excited over BPA. Concerns over health need to be properly prioritized, and drinking water out of plastic bottle is, in my view, very low on the list of health concerns we should be paying attention to.

 

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