I like this Butterworth. I have written too often about BPA–I think politicians should be reminded that pretending to save people is the charlatan’s pose.
Endocrine disruption is the supposed toxic effect. That’s nonsense, but it scares the beejesus out of mommies who are worried about their effeminate sons.
Studies by safety agencies in the US and Europe show no toxic effects from BPA, which is used to make plastic soft and pliable and more usable and doesn’t deserve this persecution–it’s great stuff–important for medical things, like IV lines and plastic items of all kinds.
Thanks ACSH, nice to have someone helping on exposing junky science. and panicky policy makers.
http://acsh.org/2014/04/whacko-wednesday-two-asinine-chemical-scares/
the only reason that I purchase BPA free products is that there is no other product available… and I have some great storage containers for my bits and pieces!!
In other words, as a normal every day person I never understood the fuss. There are some plastics that are of concern if they are re-used for food storage. These are the plastics used for containers that carry fast food. They could be used for storage of other items but nothing else. The Tupperware and similar plastics should never have been considered to be a problem. Ditto for plastics used as utensils. The BPA scare is nonsense.
Too many scares and our chemicals get mixed up. Bis-A is a precursor to epoxy resins, hard and rigid. Phthalates make PVC soft and pliable – and better. Both are accused of being endocrine disrupters. I recall that, and someone correct me if I am wrong, researchers at Tulane University were the “creators” of this effect, endocrine disruption. Quickly, no other lab was able to duplicate the study and in about a year the authors of the study asked that it be withdrawn from publication. It was phony but the EPA ran with it and have been peddling this nonsense for years. Tell a lie big enough and long enough and people will eventually believe it.
There used to be a time when things manufactured outside the Iron Curtain made a shocking impression on people residing within. The quality and robustness of plastics was one of the benchmarks by which the achievements of the victorious union of workers and farmers were measured against those of the rotten capitalists. The gap was so enormous it was hard to comprehend; it was only commensurate with a similar gap in the respective semiconductor technologies. Engineers were often asked, “Why can’t you make something as good?”. The typical answer was, “We can; it’s just that we don’t have good plasticisers.”
The gap kept growing until the day the union of workers and farmers ceded the competition and started worrying about the environment.