Letters to the Editor
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Great...
I'm pregnant and have been drinking from my nalgene bottle for months. Does this mean my daughter is already doomed to be chubby? I'm sure this is just the first of many worries about wrecking my child's life...sigh.
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You've already made up your mind
all you're looking for is an excuse to spend some money to prove it. Elsewhere in Canada they've already 'proven' that the plastic used in commonly reusable water bottles will kill you. Never mind that there's little actual data, just the suggestion that the fearful nanny state has one more rule to micromanage is enough.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4987/
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Northern Perspective
Globe and Mail article on Health Canada's opinion regarding BPA:
Bisphenol A is 'dangerous' substance, Ottawa says
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080418.wbisphenol0418/BNStory/National/home
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Electro Robot
Dibutyl phthalate is similar to bisphenol A. DBT is used to keep nail polish from chipping.
I only had to wear DBT-containing nail polish for a mere three days before I could observe the physical consequences of the change in the amount of estrogen in my system.
Since bisphenol A is similar to DBT in that they're both estrogenic, I would be willing to bet that bisphenol A is going to be proved guilty of something eventually.
By the way I think we need to be careful about these kinds of substances when they're synthesized by plants as well. A plant is a chemical factory that the government can't regulate.
It's become a big fad now to put lavender oil in bath products, lotions, air fresheners and even laundry detergents.
Lavender, it turns out, is a potent phytoestrogen that can be absorbed easily through the skin. I read recently that scientists have observed that young boys bathed in lavender products can start growing breasts. Now they're warning parents against using these products on children. Personally, I worry about releasing them into the ocean too. I don't want the fish growing boobs either.
What we don't need right now is a giant uncontrolled experiment in mass estrogen exposure. I advise against it. I think we should err on the side of caution when it comes to bisphenol A. And lavender too, for that matter.
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ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION?!?!?
WHAT KIND OF WHACKNUT IDEA IS THAT??? Full speed ahead with the unplanned multi-variable (and highly profitable!) grand biochemical experiment!
Sheesh, you liberals. You're SO conservative.
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Mi hijo tiene dos cabezas porque yo bebo agua
Pero no hay problema! Este nino puede pensar dos veces cuando nosotros piensamos solamente un vez. !Gracias a los Estados Unidos del Norte, y al Gran Conquisator Jorge del Arbusto!
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I get a kick out of the left's scientific contortions...
Since we are brow-beaten, on a daily basis, about the scientific "consensus" on greenhouse gases and climate change, why won't the left and trial lawyers accept the scientific consensus on things like silicone gel breast implants (NOT a cause of auto-immune disorders), cerebral palsy (ordinarily UNRELATED to so-called birth trauma), autism (NOT related to vaccines) and the fact that the data for a whole spreadsheet of things "rumored" to cause cancer, birth defects or other diseases DON'T support those conclusions.
Spomebody asked if we could please not have safety studies of products funded by the industries that sell those products? Fine, I say. Let's eliminate that conflict. And, at the same time, we should get our climate science from scientists and institutions who do not have a political interest in promoting global warming politics.
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It's been around for 50 years
So I'm sure Silenced is one of millions and millions of people seriously harmed by it. Couldn't be an interaction with tons of weed, could it?
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Through the Looking Glass
Adding BPA to food containers is about as bright as putting lead into our air supply via leaded gasoline. Both were/are allowed for the same reason: we permit everything to be dumped into our environment until some underfunded (and soon to be unfunded) academic "proves" that it causes substantial harm; then we wait several years to phase out the harmful substance so as to avoid "harming" those who profit from it. I guess you could say we use the precautionary principle a la Alice in Wonderland.
Also, you say, "The introduction of bisphenol A into the human environment in significant quantities tracks pretty closely, in timing, to the advent of the so-called obesity epidemic in the United States". BPA may be a factor, but quite a few more relevant things also track alongside our current obesity epidemic:
1.) Increased use of cars
2.) Loss of safe streets for children to play in
3.) Increased consumption of highly processed foods
4.) Loss of stay-at-home parents resulting in near universal use of sedentary day-care environments for our children.
5.) The end of the bicycle boom of the late '60s to early 80s.
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No it only TRIGGERS the obesity gene (See Autism 101)
You see the inherent obesity defect was already present (your generic fault, sorry) and the plastic merely triggers the gene. Your problem, sorry.
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Lost
This is bad news or our Losties. Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the others drink a lot of water from their various Nalgene bottles. I never liked to drink from my Nalgene because of the funny smell of that plastic.
Now I know why.
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Bisphenol A was designed originally as a synthetic estrogen
Aleksander Dianin invented the compound in the 1890s, as part of a search for synthetic estrogen analogs. Sounds like something to avoid to me.
In animal studies at 10 microg/k/d, it induces insulin resistance in rats. It can pass through the placenta from the mother's bloodstream to the fetus (http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/11/2839)
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The Bisphenol A Blues
Your readers might want to note that the Government of Canada has just listed Bisphenol A as a dangerous chemical which means that products using this substance must replace it as soon as possible. I guess we will be going back to tinny tasting canned goods since it is also used for coating cans with a bisphenol/ epoxy interior coat..One hopes that there is a replacement in the works that is safe and functional. Polycarbonate is a great plastic product but not for ingestion, it seems. About lab testing...It is a sad state of affairs that depending on who pays for the research, the results are skewed towards a wanted result? What kind of science is this, I wonder?
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@elephantman
I get a kick out of the left's scientific contortions...
I get a kick out of the kool-aid drinking right's outright denial of scientific reality, whether it's biological evolution, HIV, human contributions to climate change, or anything else that discomforts a rigid ideology.
Since we are brow-beaten, on a daily basis, about the scientific "consensus" on greenhouse gases and climate change,
There is strong consensus on human contribution to climate change. Whether you feel "brow-beaten" is irrelevant. Of course, logically, since the cost of uncontrolled climate change is potentially so high and the cost of doing something relatively low, even if the consensus were not so overwhelming, it would still be logical to accept the possibility of human contribution to climate change. I can understand why Exxon might be conflicted. I can't understand a grown man would be so illogical, merely for the sake of conforming to a defined ideological group.
why won't the left and trial lawyers accept the scientific consensus on things like silicone gel breast implants (NOT a cause of auto-immune disorders), cerebral palsy (ordinarily UNRELATED to so-called birth trauma), autism (NOT related to vaccines) and the fact that the data for a whole spreadsheet of things "rumored" to cause cancer, birth defects or other diseases DON'T support those conclusions.
Who are you accusing of not accepting the scientific consensus on those issues? I'm sure I'm part of what you (not I) call "the left". All of these issues exemplify how unbiased scientific investigation can be used correctly
Spomebody asked if we could please not have safety studies of products funded by the industries that sell those products? Fine, I say. Let's eliminate that conflict.
Well, at least we agree on one thing. At least to some degree. Of course, I encourage companies to voluntarily do internal safety studies, with the ethical (and pragmatic) objective of accurately identifying unsafe products and withdrawing them before publicly funded studies are rendered necessary. And plenty of companies do. But after-the-fact, biased, pseudo-scientific, reactive "studies" performed solely to obfuscate by inaccurately "denying" legitimate, unbiased studies, are a disgrace.
And, at the same time, we should get our climate science from scientists and institutions who do not have a political interest in promoting global warming politics.
This delusional statement, which parrots a bad Michael Crichton novel, is the exact opposite of reality. Public policy is unduly influenced by petroleum companies and others who have an obvious short term interest in biased denial of scientific reality. (It is most certainly not in the long term interests of the shareholders and executives, or their descendants, to behave this way, but it is easy to see why powerful short term incentives cloud their judgment.)
There are few or no academic scientists or institutions who have the slightest thing to gain by concluding that humans contribute to global warming. Do you suppose that they all own windmill factories? Do you think scientists want horrific catastrophes, or want to butt heads with the status quo? Do you think that academic scientists have powerful lobbies?
This is just another example of wingnut projection and denial. You have chosen to voluntarily plead the cause of someone who has an ulterior motive. (You yourself may have a few shares in oil companies, but mainly just do it out of a pathetic need for the approval of a rigidly defined ideological group.) Merely because those you champion are motivated by short term self-interest to deny reality (and their own long-term self-interest), does not mean that your opponents are guilty of the same.