By James R. Hood
ConsumerAffairs.com
November 4, 2009
Industry mouthpieces cranked up a predictable response to a Consumer Reports study that said the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) can be found in a diverse assortment of canned foods including those labeled "organic," and even in some foods packaged in "BPA-free" cans. Who's right? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to spend $30 million to find out.
"We are extremely disappointed that Consumer Reports failed to provide its readers with the full story on BPA in canned foods," said Dr. John Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, Inc. (NAMPA) said in a statement. "BPA-based epoxy coatings in metal packaging provide real, important and measurable health benefits by reducing the potential for the serious and often deadly effects from food-borne illnesses."
"This packaging enables the high temperature sterilization of food products when initially packaged and continuously protect against microbial contaminants. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records, there has not been an incidence of food-borne illness resulting from a failure of metal packaging in the U.S. in more than 30 years," Yost said.
The new government study will examine the safety of BPA and could result in recommendations for further curbs on its use. Also, the FDA is expected to release the findings from its own ongoing study of BPA sometime in the next month, officials said.
We know that many people are concerned about Bisphenol A and we want to support the best science we can to provide the answers, said Linda Birnbaum, director of the NIEHS, in a statement.
BPA has been detected in the urine of more than 90 percent of Americans and animal studies have linked it with infertility, weight gain, behavioral changes, early onset puberty, prostate and breast cancer and diabetes. The New research will focus on low-dose exposures to BPA and effects on behavior, obesity, diabetes, reproductive disorders, asthma, cardiovascular diseases and various cancers. Researchers will also see if the effects of BPA exposure can be passed from parents to their children.
Minds made up
But industry-leaning critics who rushed to attack the Consumer Reports study appear to already have their minds made up. In a strongly-worded statement, the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) called the Consumer Reports findings "false."
"Consumer Reports made so many factual errors in presenting its data on BPA in canned goods that no-one (sic) could have possibly read the actual research. Call for ban on chemical puts public at risk from deadly food borne pathogens," said Trevor Butterworth, who is the editor of the organization's Web site.
Butterworth, who has degrees in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, regularly issues broadsides against press coverage that STATS deems unworthy, unbalanced or misleading. STATS is loosely affiliated with George Mason University, a Virginia state university whose main campus is in Fairfax, just outside Washington, D.C., where STATS has its office. The president of STATS is S. Robert Lichter, a GMU communications professor who holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.
"Consumer Reports have come out with a purported investigation into the chemical Bisphenol A that shows scant familiarity with any of the risk assessments of the chemical. Given that BPA is used to prevent food spoilage in cans, and given that food spoilage can lead to bacterial infection putting people at risk from botulism, and given that there is no safe and effective alternative as yet for BPA, these errors and exaggerations and omissions are not trivial," Butterworth said.
STATS claims its goal is "to correct scientific misinformation in the media and in public policy resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge; and to act as a resource for journalists and policy makers on major scientific issues and controversies." However, its findings are nearly always presented in an adversarial, take-no-prisoners format that leaves little room for disagreement or scientific discourse.
"Consumer Reports seems to be oblivious to the extensive research on BPA carried out by the European Union, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others, all of which refutes the magazines claims about the chemical," Butterworth fumed.
Very specific
In fact, Consumer Reports was very specific in reporting what it did and did not find and noted throughout its report that there is continuing research into the effects of BPA, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners. Its report dealt largely with the concentrations of BPA found in various food products and did not claim to break new ground about the possible long-term effects of BPA ingestion.
BPA has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because of potential health effects. There are currently no federal restrictions on BPA in food packaging, although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is soon expected to announce the results of its most recent study.
Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating that serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA.
Several animal studies show adverse effects, such as abnormal reproductive development, at exposures of 2.4 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, a dose that could be reached from a person eating one or a few servings daily or an adult daily diet that includes multiple servings of canned foods containing BPA levels comparable to some of the foods the magazine tested.
In keeping with established practices that ensure an adequate margin of safety for human exposure, Consumer Reports noted that food-safety scientists generally recommend limiting daily exposure to BPA to one-thousandth of that level, or 0.0024 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, significantly lower than FDA's current safety limit.
"The findings are noteworthy because they indicate the extent of potential exposure," said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Director of Technical Policy, at Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. "Children eating multiple servings per day of canned foods with BPA levels comparable to the ones we found in some tested products could get a dose of BPA near levels that have caused adverse effects in several animal studies. The lack of any safety margin between the levels that cause harm in animals and those that people could potentially ingest from canned foods has been inadequately addressed by the FDA to date."
Consumer Reports noted that its tests convey a snapshot of the marketplace and do not provide a general conclusion about the levels of BPA in any particular brand or type of product tested and added that levels in the same product purchased at different types or places or in other brands of similar foods might differ from the test results.
