BPA = Alar Redux?
Is bisphenol-A (BPA) the next Alar, a widely used product which is demonized without justification? Yes, according to the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.

Writing for Forbes, the former bureaucrat briefly recounts some of the losses inflicted on apple growers by Alarphobia. Dr. Miller states that the "source of that chaos, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is known for that sort of alarmist junk science.

In 2008, NRDC turned their attention to BPA which has been widely used for a half-century. The environmental watchdog filed a petition with FDA to revoke any regulation which permits use of BPA. FDA gave NRDC's petition all of attention they thought it was worth and didn't respond. NRDC's suit to compel a response was thrown out last month by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2009, NRDC filed a petition with California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to have BPA listed as a hazardous substance under the state’s Proposition 65 process. According to Dr. Miller, the petition was filed "the very same day" that the Office's Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DARTIC) "rendered its judgment on whether BPA should be listed under the state's Proposition 65 toxic substance provisions. These independent science and health experts decided unanimously that BPA did not meet the threshold for listing under Proposition 65."

Unlike FDA, California's rules do not allow it to give the NGO's petition the attention it deserves. Instead, California has been "forced...to squander scarce resources on a superfluous study because a special interest group wants a do-over on a settled regulatory matter. Not only did the state’s top panel of independent experts find no particular risk in BPA, but regulatory authorities around the world, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have declared that BPA is safe as used and that it has not been shown to cause health problems in adults, children or unborn babies."

Even if California rejects, again, over-hyped and under-substantiated claims about BPA, NRDC can be expected to persevere. NRDC is not an organization that lets a lack of science stand in its way.

See Fear-Mongering, Junk Science and NRDC