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Researchers, FDA differ over possible dangers of certain baby products
by DENNIS GEISINGER
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Health concerns over certain chemical compounds in plastic products like baby bottles are tied in to a bill currently in the MN Legislature.
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Minnesota has moved onto a growing list of overnment bodies mounting campaigns to ban certain compounds in plastics that are common to a variety of children’s products such as baby bottles, teethers, sippy cups and toys.
“When it comes to children and our protection of children we have to pay attention to what’s going on,” said State Sen. Sandy Rummel who introduced a bill this year to ban the use of Bisphenol A (BPA) and another plastics additive, phthalates, from baby products. Her bill was tabled in the Senate, but its companion bill in the House, authored by Rep. Karen Clark (DFL-Minneapolis), is still alive in conference committee.
BPA is a building block of polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins. As early as 1936, British chemists reported finding that, ingested by humans, BPA functions like a weak estrogen, actually morphing into a synthetic hormone. Researchers have found that over time, BPA can leach from products made with polycarbonates, products that include—besides baby goods—food can linings and dental sealants. According to the local health advocacy group, Healthy Legacy, “the science on this hormone-disrupting chemical has become compelling over the past 20 years, with low-dose exposure linked to breast and prostate cancer, obesity, insulin resistance and hyperactivity.
“We might want to encourage later legislation to address the negative health effects of BPA on adults, but we really wanted to focus on young children right now,” said Healthy Legacy lobbyist Kathleen Schuler.
The urgency indicated by efforts to remove BPA and phthalates from baby products comes from test results that indicate not only increased exposure by mouthing and chewing, but data showing the compounds can leach more rapidly when heated, as when baby bottles are warmed. If levels of BPA become high enough, they can disrupt normal development. Phthalates, which belong to a group of chemicals added to polycarbonates to make them more soft and flexible, can have a similar disruptive effect. According to a Science News article appearing in 1999, at least 95 percent and upwards of all baby bottles on the market at that time were made of polycarbonate, a trend which has not reversed.
“BPA is a pretty indispensable compound,” said Rob Krebs, media contact for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the American plastic and chemical industry’s trade association.
If enacted this session, Minnesota HF 2100 would ban the use of BPA and phthalates in products designed or intended for use by children under 3 years of age beginning Jan. 1, 2009. The legislation would also prohibit manufacturers from replacing these substances with chemicals that have been identified as human carcinogens. The state Pollution Control Agency would act as a multi-state clearinghouse to identify children’s products containing BPA and phthalates.
According to Healthy Legacy coordinator Lindsay Dahl, similar bills are still alive and working through state legislatures in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. The Canadian government has entered a 60-day public comment period on whether to ban the import, sale and advertising of polycarbonate baby bottles, which contain BPA.
“BPA is no longer in any live bill in Minnesota,” said an April 25 e-mail from Tiffany Harrington, Director of Public Affairs for the ACC. Harrington’s comment was a direct contradiction of information obtained by Southside Pride from both the State House and Senate.
“The bill banning BPA is still very much alive,” said Jake Johnson, Rep. Clark’s legislative aide in a phone interview on April 25. Healthy Legacy has scheduled a Mothers Day Week press event for May 6 on the Capitol’s south lawn that will feature a giant (BPA- and phthalates-free) rubber duck.
“We hope we’ll be able to celebrate a scheduled date for a vote on the bill,” Healthy Legacy’s Dahl told Southside Pride on May 1.
The ACC, which counted 25,000 plastics industry jobs and plastics shipments totaling $6.3 billion in Minnesota in 2006, opposes any ban on BPA, saying in a letter dated April 17 to the FDA, “recent media reports have raised concerns about the safety and use of polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, unnecessarily confusing and frightening the public.”
Currently, the federal Food and Drug Administration approves the use of BPA, but has begun a review of its policy after release of a National Toxicology Program (NTP) report on April 16 that expressed “some concern” that exposure to BPA in utero causes neural and behavioral effects, and “minimal concern” that the same exposure causes effects on the prostate or accelerations in puberty. The NTP’s expert panel had “negligible concern” that in utero exposure produces birth defects and malformations, or adverse reproductive effects after exposure in the general population.
“The FDA’s safety standard remains conspicuously out of date,” said Sarah Vogel in her April 16 Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University’s Dept. of Sociomedical Sciences’ Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine.
“Maintaining such a standard only serves the interests of the chemical and plastics industry, and leaves unprotected the long-term health of the developing young,” Vogel said. “If we want to prevent chronic disease and protect the public’s health, lawmakers across the U.S. and the world should support the removal of bisphenol A from our food, water, air, and bodies,” Vogel said.
“For the little ones, we should take action right now,” said Minnesota Sen. Rummel.
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