Melamine – Now in Humans

So is it Mondays with Bisphenol?? You know what, the scary thing about this chemical is that its acute (short term, immediate) toxicity at high doses, which is the only safety testing that is ever done, does not correlate with all the subtle effects that are seen at low doses (chronic). Here’s another study where ambient level exposure to bisphenol A interferes with prostate cancer treatment by making the tumor cells androgen independent, so the standard testosterone deprivation therapy will not work any more.

Environmental Health News: New Science

A common plastic molecule to which virtually all Americans are exposed may interfere with the standard medical treatment for prostate cancer, according to new experiments with human prostate tumors implanted into mice. The doses of the plastic molecule, bisphenol A, were chosen specifically to be within the range of common human exposures. Tumor size and PSA levels were significantly greater in exposed animals just one month after treatment.

One of the principal known sources of exposure to bisphenol A in the U.S. is through its use to make a resin that lines the majority of food cans sold in markets. These new results by Wetherill et al. suggest men concerned about prostate cancer may want to reduce their consumption of canned goods and their use of polycarbonate water bottles, another common source of exposure

This is one powerful (if not actually more dangerous) chemical. it is so ubiquitous that finding a substitute is not going to be easy.

The Pump Handle alerts us to a special report on coal miners and their lungs, not for the faint of heart, but something to keep in mind when you hear the phrases “Cheap Energy” and “coal” in one sentence, it’s not so cheap for these people.

Black Lung: Dust Hasn’t Settled on Deadly Disease « The Pump Handle

Louisville-Courier Journal reporters Laura Unger and Ralph Dunlop offer us the voices and faces of miners who are suffering from coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Their special report, Black Lung: Dust Hasn’t Settled on Deadly Disease, includes an on-line version which features five compelling videos featuring 40- and 50-year old coal miners who are now suffering with the disabling lung disease. Mr. Danny Hall, 56, for example, who is still severely impaired despite receiving a lung transplant says “if I had to do over, I wouldn’t ever go into coal mining.”

FDA Finds Chinese Food Producers Shut Down – washingtonpost.com

American inspectors who arrived in China last week to investigate the two companies that exported tainted pet food ingredients found that the suspect facilities had been hastily closed down and cleaned up, federal officials said yesterday.

“There is nothing to be found. They are essentially shut down and not operating,” said Walter Batts, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration’s office of international programs.

Well, we gave them plenty of warning, did we not!

More Bisphenol A blowback, apparently, SF parents are switching to glass.

Glass baby bottles making comeback / Stores selling out after health alarms raised about plastics

Glass baby bottles, replaced decades ago by unbreakable plastic, are making such a comeback that parents can’t get their hands on them.

Online and brick-and-mortar retailers report a run on glass baby bottles in recent weeks that they say was spurred by reports that the most common type of plastic in baby bottles may leach a toxic chemical.

San Francisco resident Sean Mullins said he decided to switch his 6-month-old son, Mickey, from plastic to glass bottles last month despite manufacturers’ insistence that plastic bottles are safe.

Independent tests done for The Chronicle and reported in November found bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, in a baby bottle and several toys. Bisphenol A is also found in the lining of food cans, some anti-cavity sealants for teeth, and electronics.

Watch for plastics manufacturers to fight back, this study ought to provide some ammo.

Comparison of six samples of each of three brands of water available in both glass and polyethyelene terephthalate (PET(E)) showed that the waters bottled in glass contained approximately 57, 30, and 26 times more Pb due to leaching from the containers. Our study includes 25 brands of bottled water from Canada, and the median Pb concentration in these samples was 15.9 ng/L (n = 25), with a range from 2.1 to 268 ng/L. For comparison with the bottled waters, pristine groundwater from six artesian flows in southern Ontario, Canada, where some of the bottled waters originate, yielded a median concentration of 5.1 ng/L Pb (n = 18). In fact, all of the waters tested were well below the maximum allowable concentration established by the EU, Health Canada, and the WHO for Pb in drinking water (10000 ng/L).

It all depends on which bolded sentence you chose to emphasize! So, glass bottles do leach some lead out, but nowhere near the amount needed to cause any effects whatsoever. I guess this is all the American Chemistry Council can come up with as a problem with glass.

It’s irrefutable that glass can shatter, Hentges said. But there is “no scientific basis to conclude that BPA is something to be concerned about … at the extremely low levels that people might be exposed to from use of consumer products.”

There is plenty of scientific basis to conclude that Bisphenol A has some very subtle effects at ambient doses. But science has never stopped the American Chemistry Council!