EPA Declares Plastic Denigrated By Liberals To Be Entirely Safe
A while back I posted on a controversy over Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is a chemical used to manufacture plastics used in things like baby bottles and toys. At the time I noted that the hysteria over BPA being created by some was driven by the same faulty science that led to bans on DDT (which has subsequently led to the deaths of millions from insect-born diseases like malaria).
Today comes news that the EPA has reviewed the use of BPA and found the chemical to be harmless.
The case against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used to prevent food contamination in canned goods, has just gotten a whole lot weaker. Environmental activists and a small number of scientists have long protested that small amounts of BPA ingested through food and drink are the biological equivalent of global warming or akin to giving a baby a contraceptive pill. Activists have charged that risk assessments by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies have relied exclusively on flawed industry-funded studies to cover up the risk to the public, while “independent” studies have demonstrated these risks.
But regulatory agencies around the world have rejected many of these independent studies, noting that they are either methodologically flawed or irrelevant for the purposes of assessing risks in humans. Multigenerational studies with large samples, high statistical rigor, and strong experimental design have failed to confirm any risk, and these studies have been either independent, or funded by industry but designed and supervised by independent scientists (such as those employed by the European Union).
Now, a second independent study by the Environmental Protection Agency, published in the leading toxicological journal, Toxicological Sciences, has failed to find evidence of the low-dose hypothesis claimed by environmental activists and widely reported in the media.
So, much like in the debates over global warming, actual science trumps hysteria and political maneuvering.
For a group of people who like to call themselves progressives, these liberals sure do often find themselves on the opposite side of actual progress.
