Bisphenol-A - time for AVA to review?

Bisphenol-A has now been banned from all baby bottles in Europe. This stems from the increasing concern about the safety of the chemical that is found in hard plastic bottles.

There have been bans in Canada and Australia, and a few US states. The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) had issued a report in 2008 expressing 'some concern' about "effects on development of the prostate gland and brain and for behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children". earlier this year, the FDA came round to the position that there was also "some concern" on their part.

Meanwhile our AVA has been silent about this problem.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) - What are we to make of it?

I have posted on bisphenol-A before, back at in the beginning of 2009 in response to a letter writer in the Straits Times. Then, I commented that it was probably just hysteria because we probably consume greater amounts of estrogenic substances than whatever can be found as a result of BPA.

[Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a chemical found in hard plastic bottles.]

But recent presentations at the recent Endocrine Society ENDO09 meeting are threatening to rewrite this thinking.

Dr VandeVoort and his co-workers from the University of California, Davies reported that if female rhesus monkeys are treated with a single oral dose of BPA that is 8 times higher than the estimated 'safe' human dose, the serum concentrations of BPA are less than what has been ordinarily found in humans. In addition, when Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri-Columbia and colleagues administered 4,000 times estimated typical daily human consumption to 11 rhesus monkeys, BPA blood residues in the spiked monkeys ended up only one-eighth as high as seen in a German study of pregnant women. Both these studies implied that human consumtion of BPA is higher than what has previously been estimated. Dr vom Saal estimates that typical human daily consumption may be as high as 1000 micrograms per kg body weight per day.

In yet another study (in press) Dr Michels reports that students drinking from plastic bottles over a one week period showed 69% higher BPA levels in the urine compared to if they drank from steel containers. (FDA safe upper limit is only 50 micrograms per kg body weight per day

So what do we make of it?

I must admit that the data is making me change my mind about the safety of BPA. What is particuarly worrying is that the plastic industry isn't taking this lying down and appears to be poised with some rather aggressive and scary counter-intelligence efforts.

The AVA is supposed to regulate the chemicals in our environment. I hope it has been following some of these developments. It has to constantly review its position about BPA.

A particular difficulty for us I think is the fact that one of our major long term industrial partners here in Singapore is Mitsui Chemicals. Through its local subsidiary Mitsui Bisphenol Singapore Pte Ltd (MBS), it is a major producer of BPA.

I hope the AVA is adequately china-walled against industrial/economic considerations to be able to do the right thing by us.

Latest on Bisphenol A - the ball is back in AVA's court

The BBC carried a report yesterday that US baby bottle manufacturers are removing the controversial chemical Bisphenol A, but they will continue selling Bisphenol A bottles in the UK.The Food Standards Agency insists BPA in UK plastic products is "well below the levels considered harmful".

The UK will come under increasing pressure to follow suit. What will our AVA do?

See previous posts on this issue:
http://gigomole.blogspot.com/search/label/bisphenol

Regulatory oversight - any conflict of interest for AVA with respect to bisphenol-A?

My main concern with bisphenol-A really lie in the conflict of interest difficulty it poses for the AVA (Agrifood-Vet Authority). Here is a situation where the AVA has to steer a difficult path between protection of consumer safety and promotion of industrial and economic interests.

What am I talking about? Well, Singapore is actually an important bisphenol manufacturer. The Japanese company Mitsui Chemicals has been an industrial partner since the 1960's and has to date invested about S$1 billion, contributing to the success of Jurong island etc.

http://www.mitsuichem.com/release/2008/080814e_05.htm
http://www.sedb.com/edb/sg/en_uk/index/news/articles/mitsui_chemicals_establishes.html
http://www.edb.gov.sg/edb/sg/en_uk/index/news/articles/mitsui_chemicals_receives.html

It is fortunate in this instance, that the problem with bisphenol-A is probably more hysteria than reality, but it represents a good example of how the present regulatory set up makes it difficult for regulators to keep their eye on the ball. Should bisphenol-A be eventually be shown to be toxic, how would the AVA act against Mitsui Chemicals? Can it bite the hand of an important industrial partner that has been feeding Singapore's economic growth for the last 40 years?

I think the public needs to know how regulatory agencies are 'china-walled' to minimize conflicts of interest such as these, and whether the wall is adequately sound.

Bisphenol-A: Hysteria developing?

Bisphenol-A

In today's Straits Times Forum there is a letter written by a Ms Sai Siew Min entitled "Is the AVA Up To Date?". The letter addresses the writer's concern about the presence of bisphenol-A in baby bottles. Hmmmmm......

Bisphenol-A is a funny small molecule that has two arms, and is used in the manufacture of hard plastic bottles. The concern is that there is some data in animal studies that bisphenol-A at low levels can act as 'endocrine disruptors'. Bisphenol-A has some estrogenic properties, and can leach out from those hard plastic bottles, so mothers and mothers-to-be are legitimately concerned about the effects this may have on their babies.

There are quite a lot of reviews written recently about this that summarize the state of ignorance quite well:
Wikipedia
NIEHS-NIH
AVA

Truth be told, I have had a look at the data and I am not so convinced. It's one thing to look at endocrine changes in lab animals, and another thing to exprapolate those effects to the real world. Much of the data is kinda iffy anyway. My feeling is that AVA doesn't really have much to act upon other than a lot of emotive rants from various interest groups.

Also if you look at bisphenol-A, the effects are largely due to its estrogenic properties....and there are a lot of estrogenic substances all over the place, in our diet etc. Bisphenol-A isn't the only chemical that does this. Our diet contains naturally occuring estrogens such as bioflavonoids (fruits, veges, soya beans)...inodole-carbinols (cruciferous veges) to name some. An article here from the Texas A&M Univeristy and funded by the NIEHS estimates that the contribution of industrial estrogens probably amount to only about "0.0000025% of the daily intake of estrogenic flavonoids in the diet". The presence of these dietary estrogenic flavonoids have in fact, often been touted as being the reason for the 'health giving' properties of many fruits and vegetables.

Hysteria in the making...yeah, probably.