Last strike for BPA? Plastic ingredient could cause diabetes
I’ve been tracking the fight over bisphenol A (BPA) for some time now. This controversial chemical ingredient is nearly unavoidable in today’s society and shows up in every conceivable form of plastic that’s used for containing food and liquid – including baby bottles. BPA is added to plastics to make them hard and shatterproof and is suspected of releasing toxic and hormone-disrupting chemicals into the liquids and foods that it comes in contact with.
And now it appears that there’s yet another downside to BPA, and this one could be the biggie that could really doom the future use of the ingredient. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has linked BPA to diabetes and heart disease in adults.
The study examined nearly 1,500 American adults and found that those with higher concentrations of BPA in their urine were more likely to have heart disease and diabetes. And that’s not all: the study also estimates that Americans have a higher daily BPA exposure than is recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The evidence against BPA continues to mount, and the concerns are spreading from a handful of grassroots alarm sounders like myself to the wider healthcare community. In the same issue that this new study was published, JAMA ran an editorial that chided the U.S. and European governments for not regulating BPA.
Remember: as recently as this past April, I told you that the FDA had ruled AGAINST an effort to label BPA as a dangerous substance. Currently, Canada is the only country that has BPA-limited regulations in place.
Is this the end of BPA in U.S. consumer goods? Don’t be too sure. Because even in the wake of this research, the FDA announced that as of now, it “is not recommending anyone discontinue using products that contain BPA while the agency continues its safety assessment process.” Sure just keep using the stuff. We’ll let you know later if it’s going to kill you. God forbid the FDA recommend that the public take a prudent course and discontinue (heck, even cut down) on the use of BPA products.
Of course, thanks to the fact that BPA is – almost literally – everywhere, discontinuing or even cutting down on the use of products that contain BPA could prove to be exceptionally difficult.
Unfortunately, there are others in the healthcare industry who, unlike Dr. Spangler and JAMA’s editorial board, are less concerned about the potential dangers of BPA. Dr. Danial Edmundowicz, director of Cardiovascular Medicine at UPMC Passavant Hospital in Pittsburgh said, “I think the BPAs in a container of butter pose less risk than the butter itself.”
With that attitude, is it any wonder that consumers like Poquette feel like they’re on their own?
What do you think? Should the FDA ban the use of BPA in consumer goods? Click here to participate in the Weekly Poll.
Jolly green giant hypocrites: Tree huggers leave the biggest carbon footprint
I’m not the only one who comes down hard on the tree-hugging hypocrites of the silly “green” movement. According to research published in the UK’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper, the “greenies” who are most likely to recycle their garbage, start compost heaps in their yard, and go to great lengths to make their homes more energy efficient are THE SAME people who are most likely to take frequent, long-haul flights abroad.
Oh, and just in case you need me to spell it out for you, those long trips by jet airplanes spew many times the amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere than the feeble home-made “greening” efforts could ever hope to off-set.
Stuart Barr, the leader of this hilarious research out of Exeter University concluded that, “Green living is largely something of a myth. There is a middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year.”
Some of these “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrites even said they DESERVED to fly as much as they want as a – get this – reward for their planet-conscious behavior!
These people are parodies of themselves. I have no intention of taking political, social, or ethical direction from hypocrites such as these – and neither should you.
