Bisphenol-a is a chemical developed as a synthetic estrogen in the 1930s, that wound up primarily in use as a plastics component.
Other synthetic estrogens have recently been in the mainstream news again as highly-likely carcinogens - particularly connected to breast cancers - and that might make you wonder if you want such substances leaching into your family's diet:
"In March, the Environmental Working Group announced it had found bisphenol-a leaking out of half of nearly 100 samples of canned food tested. Bisphenol-a is often applied as a coating inside food cans to extend shelf life. But what caused the biggest stir in Congress was its report that the government's health assessment was being compiled by a contractor with ties to chemical companies manufacturing bisphenol-a."
So all of these issues are tied to politics of course. Over,
Excerpts from the article;
The study of canned food - canned beans, soup, tomato sauce, tuna - found bisphenol-a in the food of 55 cans, with some of the highest exposures - 10 to 18 parts per billion - in chicken soup and infant formula.
Researchers find that feeding rats a daily dose of 20 ppb bisphenol-a alters their offspring's reproductive systems. The EPA's "safe exposure dose," set in 1998, is 50 ppb per day, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's assessment is based on fewer than 20 samples.
The aim in the United States is for exposures to harmful products to be from 1,000 to 3,000 times below levels that cause harm in laboratory animals. "There's no margin of safety for the typical person who eats one canned food product a day," Lunder said.
As a matter of common sense, do we want private contractors - with or without direct ties to manufacturers - involved our environmental-health decisions? Or is the potential for corruption simply too great?
Cross posted at http://www.organicamerican.com
read the full article at: http://www.ewg.org/...