Bad Science in the MSM

Once again, I am frustrated by the mainstream media’s insistence on turning every science story into a crisis or disaster.  The Globe and Mail today has the headline:

BPA Widespread in Ocean Water and Sand

containing such gems as:

Japanese scientists testing ocean water and sea sand have found widespread contamination with high levels bisphenol A, a chemical used to make plastic that’s able to mimic the female hormone estrogen in living things.

Its presence in sea water comes from the breakdown of the plastic trash being dumped into the sea and from the use of the compound in anti-rusting paints applied to the hulls of ships. BPA is man-made and does not occur naturally in the environment.

and:

Because BPA is able to stick to substances, the highest levels detected were in sand, at a staggering 28,000 times Environment Canada’s proposed limit for water.

Many scientists have been concerned about BPA because it has a shape that allows it to fool the body’s cells into viewing it as the same thing as naturally occurring estrogen.

The problem is, this isn’t entirely true.  In a recent months, the editor of Chemical & Engineering News (subscription required), the weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society, has written the following:

1 March 2010 : The fact is that the evidence linking BPA with adverse health effects is weak. Many studies have been carried out, and the results have been contradictory. This is why FDA has acted cautiously with regard to BPA and why the chemical and food-packaging industries resist stringent regulation of it. FDA announced earlier this year that it has “some concern” about the potential health effects of BPA in infants and children, but also said that more research is needed to fully assess the safety of the chemical.

Nevertheless, the drumbeat against BPA continues. Once suspicion of any kind has been leveled against the safety of a chemical, watch out. No amount of contrary evidence will ever convince some chemophobic environmentalists that use of the chemical should continue. Ban it. Period. It’s no wonder the chemical industry shudders at the mere mention of the precautionary principle.

A front-page story in the Feb. 23 Washington Post, “Replacing BPA in Cans Gives Foodmakers Fits,” carries on in that tradition. Despite the fact that it calls BPA a “synthetic estrogen,” which it isn’t (BPA exhibits weak estrogenic activity, but it is not related to estrogen structurally), the story is, for the most part, factually accurate. Its underlying premise, however, is that exposure to BPA is dangerous. Running throughout the story is the assumption that BPA should be removed from all food containers.

No one has shown that adults exposed to BPA at the levels that leach from food container liners suffer any harm. Potential replacements for BPA don’t work as well and very likely will pose risks of their own. BPA and the polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins that are made from it are useful chemicals that are getting a bum rap from people who don’t know what they are talking about.

And previously:

20 July 2009 :  Another bad idea, in my view, is the agitation to remove the bisphenol A-based epoxy resin liners from food and beverage containers. This is one of those hysterical overreactions that give environmentalism a bad name.

The main problem, writes Senior Editor Melody Voith, “is the lack of a ready replacement for epoxy that meets the canned food industry’s needs. Epoxy liners have been used in cans since the 1950s, helping preserve everything from peas to tomatoes to soda. Existing food-grade substitutes are not popular because they cannot be used as broadly, are more expensive, or both.”

It probably makes sense to have removed BPA from baby bottles; infants are a particularly susceptible group and should receive an extra level of protection from substances that can harm them. But the science pretty strongly suggests that BPA at the levels humans are exposed to from epoxy liners in food cans is safe. Safer, probably, in a holistic sense than whatever substitute can be found.

Emphasis in blue is mine.  My opinion on this matter is that BPA is getting driven from the market based on supposition, overblown media reports and fear.  But not science.  Science doesn’t really show that this stuff is dangerous.