Recently, the “Milwaukee Sentinel” and “The Washington Post” reported on a leaked memo that summarized a meeting of leaders in the chemical and food industries. At the meeting, they discussed the strategies of the media offensive. To defend the chemical substance bisphenol a (BPA) from the federal government, state and local legislatures are working to reduce or eliminate its use in many chemical products, including baby bottles and food can liners.
This memo should not be a one-day story, because its content is both funny and scary, and it is provided by chemical manufacturers, at least some companies that use problematic chemicals (such as BPA) in their products. A roadmap may be provided in response to broader federal efforts to repair the current failed safety assessment and daily chemical use regulatory system in the United States.
BPA is used in the manufacture of many consumer products, including plastic baby bottles. It is also used in the lining of food, beverage and infant formula containers. Studies have shown that people come into contact with BPA by drinking polycarbonate bottles and edible containers made of BPA (such as the inner walls of soup cans). The US Centers for Disease Control found that most Americans have BPA residues in their bodies (over 90% of people tested by CDC have BPA residues in their bodies). In animal studies, low-level BPA exposure is associated with cancer of the reproductive organs, abnormal brain development, and abnormal fat metabolism. Recent studies on humans have also found evidence of similar harm. My NRDC colleague Dr. Sarah Janssen has written a lot of articles about BPA. You can find her post here, including phthalates and flame retardants.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a law that regulates the use of industrial chemicals. It should regulate BPA and reduce exposure to it. Unfortunately, the law was promulgated in 1976 and has never been updated since. It proved to be extremely weak and is widely regarded as the biggest failure of major environmental laws.
The problems of the regulation itself, and the way it is interpreted in specific court cases, are greatly limited in the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to obtain information from companies and provide information to the public, chemical substances that may have potential environmental and health impacts, or Limit the amount of human exposure to this chemical substance by regulating their commercial use.
Perhaps the best example is how powerless the Environmental Protection Agency is in managing industrial chemicals. It tried to ban most of the use of asbestos, but failed. Asbestos is one of the deadliest chemicals currently known. The EPA spent ten years documenting the asbestos hazards. However, the EPA’s regulations were passed by a conservative federal court in 1991 on the grounds that the agency’s failure to meet the burden of pollution indicated that the health risks posed by asbestos was “unreasonable”, and did not indicate that the prohibition of most methods is the most onerous. Industry. This decision basically invalidated TSCA.
