It looks like the plastics industry has gotten to the FDA – no surprise really, considering the amounts of money involved – and FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach now assures us that he just can’t find any evidence of danger from bisphenol A — BPA — in plastic products such as baby bottles.

It seems that "Andy" is one of those people who could be tied to a tree and have endless streams of fact paraded before him and still refuse to be confused by it.

His mind has been made up for him by the chemical industry and he will not be swayed by mere fact – even fact in the form of a report from the U.S. department of Health and Human Services which clearly states “[T]he possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed,”. We covered this report in a previous HealthBeat News article.

Nope, better to dismiss that one and go with the study that was funded by the chemical industry – after all, who would know better if those chemicals are safe than the people who make ‘em, right? Yep, the same nice folks who brought us DDT, The Bhopal disaster, and Agent Orange…

Well, we’re not buying it Andy. BPA is a nasty, toxic chemical. No amount of exposure to it is an "acceptable risk."

This stuff is ubiquitous – it is everywhere, not just in clear plastic bottles. So I for one will do my best to avoid the exposures that I can see in the hope that the exposure that I cannot know or avoid will not prove to be too toxic.

And say, why must baby bottles (and so many others) be made from BPA containing plastic anyway?

Mankind did just fine for an awfully long time with good ol’ glass…

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