Naive reporting on BPA

This year's winner of the George Polk Award on Environmental Reporting, as well as the John  B. Oakes Awards on Environmental Reporting, is the investigative group at the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee. They, along with other reporters that include Marla Cone (then at the Los Angeles Times, now at EnvironmentalHealthNews.org), Martin Mittelstaedt (Toronto Globe and Mail), David Case (Fast Company) and Lyndsey Layton (Washington Post), have revealed deep penetration by bisphenol A producers into the regulatory processes controlling decisions on how BPA safety.  Thanks to their investigative reporting, it's all there in the public record.

None of this is reflected in Tim Lougheed's coverage of BPA in Environmental Health Perspectives. In his article, he considers why Canada has enacted a ban on BPA-based baby bottles while neither the US nor Europe have. 

He points to differences between the chemical regulatory policies of Canada and the US as key. These differences are important and real, although a key tenet for decisions on food safety of food packaging material by the US FDA, one of the US agencies that is central to decisions on BPA, is, on the face of it, as precautionary as anything in Europe or Canada. According to the FDA: "Safe or safety means that there is reasonable certainty in the minds of competent scientists that the substance is not harmful under the intended conditions of use."

The reporting cited above indicates other factors at play in the US than just philosophical and legal issues. The differences in policy decisions on this chemical reflect, at least in part, the vulnerability of decision-making to pressure from economic interests. Canada has no companies that produce bisphenol A.  Europe and the US do.  As a result, Canada's decision-making on BPA has  been less susceptible to pressures from industry.

It would be good for public health if science were to prevail, but too often it does not.