Tag Archives: BPA

California is broke.  Its nearly bankrupt status leaves residents with few financial resources to deal with imaginary threats to health and safety.

Yet in the face of an economic meltdown, the state still allows special interests to dictate high cost administrative procedures.

The reasons California is suffering severe economic woes is clear:  It has the highest sales tax in the country and the 6^th largest overall tax burden.  As its voluminous environmental restrictions are based on political interests rather than sound science, they significantly hamper the ability of California’s entrepreneurs to conduct business profitably.

According to a recent California Legislative report, regulation costs Golden State businesses approximately $493B in lost output and 3.8M jobs – resulting in a tax revenue loss of $16M.

The annual regulatory burden per person is $13K.

Radical environmental groups, trial lawyers and fellow-traveling bureaucrats who have thus far collaborated to reduce the state to its current financial condition appear to have no concern for the heavy cost of their undue influence.  In fact, in the face of a recent defeat handed by California to environmental activists, they are gearing up to hand the state taxpayers yet another bill for the same complaint.

The California Development and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DART-IC) operates under the state’s Safe Water and Toxic Enforcement Act to identifying and ban harmful chemicals in water.  Like most California agencies, it generally leans left.

Yet in July 2009, DART-IC determined that Bisphenol A (BPA), a major component in plastic products was safe and refused to classify it as a toxicant under California’s strict safe drinking laws.

BPA is a resin used in sports and baby bottles, shatterproof windows, medical devices and other consumer and commercial products.  DART-IC’s decision was based on testimony as well as reports from the National Toxicology Program, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control, and investigative scientific bodies in Canada, Australia, Japan and the EU, all of which found BPA posed no threat.

Enter the media, trial lawyers and environmental extremists.

Last year the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at Virginia’s George Mason University applied statistical methodology to the BPA story and found the media ignored all of the research that pointed to BPA’s safety.

Trial lawyers are already trolling for plaintiffs.  In one Missouri case, the judge all but outright dismissed a BPA case even before trial.  As trial lawyers cannot find a single damaged consumer, there are no injury claims.  The basis of their case is “fraud and dishonest marketing.”

In the alternate universe that is the trial bar, BPA manufacturers and distributors are being sued for not adding warning labels that would say, in effect, “this product has been deemed safe by numerous government and scientific bodies but some special interest groups still don’t like it.”

Before the ink on the DART-IC determination was dry, the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), a far left environmental group, used bureaucratic chicanery to bring the issue to another arm of California’s government –asking for BPA to be declared unsafe.

Environmental extremists cannot abuse themselves of the false notion that BPA is harmful.  They’ve created a political movement around it, raised money on it, and the trial bar has contributed heavily to that effort for obvious, self-serving reasons.

But BPA does have positive effects on humans and the economy.  More than 103,000 Americans are employed directly or indirectly by the BPA industry at 1400 facilities.  Its nearly $15B in yearly sales and wages of $6.5B result in jobs and revenue from sales, property and income taxes.

The original DART-IC process cost Californians taxpayers a great deal of money.  The NRDC’s use of an alternate administrative process will cost them a great deal more.

A recent Bloomberg analysis of California’s economic status noted that Kazakhstan is a better investment risk than the Golden State.  Some economists are even equating California’s financial woes to the impending collapse of Greece.

This February, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet fully retracted a biased and unsound study published in 1998 that claimed a link between vaccines and autism.  The study started an anti-vaccine movement that caused many parents to withhold vaccines from their children.  Some children suffered and many died from preventable illnesses – based on a lie.

In a state where every nickel counts, can its government afford to spend more money – based on yet another lie – on an issue that is already settled?  Can all California consumers afford the high cost of “BPA-free” products – the NRDC’s ultimate goal?

California must make its decisions based on consumer and economic concerns as well as sound science – and just say no to pressure from special interests whose only concerns are their own.

On November 30^th, the same day the Food and Drug Administration was scheduled to issue a statement regarding the long-used plastics additive Bisphenol A (BPA), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors urged the agency with the headline “Get on with it!”  They charged that “the agency blew its own self-imposed deadline for issuing a ruling on the safety of the ubiquitous chemical,” and went on to complain that “The FDA is taking more time to have its scientists analyze studies of the chemical’s effects.”

The Milwaukee newspaper, along with the Los Angeles Times health blog, called on Congress to ban the product.  Then, on December 14, the examiner.com reported that Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand had proposed a bill outlawing the use of BPA in food container linings for infant and toddler food.  Washington, with its Senate vote on Friday, is the latest among several states that are not waiting for federal bans.

But as reported here, in the fall, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) had announced the award of $30 million in research grants, $14 million of which represents Obama administration stimulus money, to study BPA further.

What might account for such odd behavior?  There are enough peculiarities and strange connections to suggest that the media, the academy, and liberal political forces are working together to pursue an ideological agenda—with the help of stimulus funds.

The competing goals between normally cooperative anti-BPA forces in the environmental advocacy science community and a newspaper could stem from the fact that the newspaper invested much in a series that nonetheless earned them only the position of finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Yet, the same scientists that the newspaper relied on as authorities to make claims about BPA’s dangers find themselves recipients of government money to “study” the issue further.  The newspaper could hardly be expected to drop the topic it had invested so much in—one that has produced attention-grabbing headlines for much of the mainstream media, and windfalls for producers of “BPA-free” products.

So, on December 29 the Journal-Sentinel again expressed dismay that the FDA would miss another self-imposed deadline, the third, by year’s end, to inform consumers about the safety of BPA.  “The repeated delays have angered health advocates who consider the chemical a threat to human health,” Meg Kissinger, co-author of the original “investigative series” on BPA, wrote.

On January 5, the newspaper fired another salvo that claimed a desire to hear the FDA’s opinion, while proclaiming, “BPA is a hazard for both kids and adults.  It’s time to act.”  Quite obviously, the editors want to hear only one kind of opinion from the FDA, one that matches their own, which is based on questionable scientific research.

Such badgering seems to be having an effect on the agencies in the Obama administration.  The Wall Street Journal on January 30 noted that the FDA is sending out mixed messages regarding BPA, telling the public that it does not pose a risk at low levels of human exposure, yet recommending ways to limit exposure.

The NIEHS seems to be sending a self-contradictory message, as well. Although grants had been awarded by the end of September on the presumption that BPA required further study, Linda Birnbaum, director of the NIEHS, on December 11, 2009, told the Journal Sentinel that people should avoid ingesting the chemical, which has been used for more than 50 years in such plastic products as eyeglasses and bottles.

But Birnbaum, along with NIEHS Scientific Program Administrator Jerrold Heindel, signed the Chapel Hill Bisphenol A Expert Panel Consensus Statement, which emerged from a meeting of anti-BPA scientists and environmental activists at Chapel Hill in 2006.  (At the time Birnbaum was with the Environmental Protection Agency.)  Of the ten awardees of the Recovery Act NIH Grand Opportunities grants focusing on BPA research six scientists were signatories to this Consensus Statement.

And as the final decisions about awardees were being made, seven of those who would receive the grants put their signatures on a September 21 letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Birnbaum expressing their concern about the “review process” and objecting to the allocation of $10 million to the FDA and National Toxicology Program for studies on BPA.  Thirteen of the thirty-three signatories had been part of the Chapel Hill Consensus.

Christine Flowers, Director of Communications at NIEHS, stresses that, even though only six months had elapsed from the request for applications to the announcements of the awards, the agency’s usual rigor—thanks to extra hours put in by employees–was used in determining these stimulus funds grants.

Certainly, the fact that NIEHS officials and some awardees were at the same “consensus” meeting in 2006 raises questions about the review process.

One recipient of these stimulus funds and signatory of the September 21 letter, Frederick vom Saal, has been a long-time crusader against BPA.  Along with signatories Patricia Hunt, Csaba Leranth, and Wade V. Welshons, he is cited frequently as an expert on the dangers of BPA in articles published by the Environmental Working Group, which receives support from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Pete Myers, a main signatory of the letter and member of the organizing committee of the Chapel Hill conference, however, serves on the Board of the Environmental Working Group.  He also runs a lab that is a “sister organization” to the Advancing Green Chemistry organization, whose executive director came from the environmental and nuclear non-proliferation advocacy group, W. Alton Jones Foundation (which Myers himself previously had directed).  Birnbaum was a speaker at a 2008 conference sponsored by Advancing Green Chemistry.

According to Human Events’ Rowan Scarborough, The Environmental Working Group is a client of Fenton Communications, which “pitches for trial lawyers, collectively the largest contributors to the Democrat Party, as well as for the hard line environmental group Greenpeace; Venezuela’s socialist leader Hugo Chavez; anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan; and gay and abortion advocates.”  They also pitch for George Soros’s Open Society Institute and were behind the infamous MoveOn.org “General Betray Us” smear campaign and Obama’s Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now, and represent a manufacturer of “BPA-free” products.

Vom Saal was also the primary expert quoted in the Consumers Union article, which reinvigorated the scare about BPA last fall.  Consumers Union has received support from Soros for its “Democratic Pluralism in Media Project” and supports other leftist causes like the Democrat-sponsored health care reform bill.  It’s also significant that vom Saal’s lab conducted the experiments for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for its series on BPA that won several environmental reporting prizes and finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.

While vom Saal and signatories to the letter charged that industry-supported studies have a flawed “review process,” Trevor Butterworth at George Mason University’s STATS Center, claims that vom Saal himself is in disrepute among the international scientific community and calls the review process for the Journal-Sentinel series “incestuous.”   The “outside expert” used to evaluate vom Saal’s lab work was Patricia Hunt whose work has been championed by vom Saal.  She has also coauthored articles with vom Saal and signed the Chapel Hill Consensus statement and the letter to the FDA with vom Saal.

In a 2008 JAMA article, vom Saal and Myers charge that “The FDA and the European Food Safety Authority have chosen to ignore warnings from expert panels. . . .”  Yet the only “expert panel” they cite in the footnoted reference is their own Chapel Hill “consensus” meeting.

In addition to the “incestuous” relationship among some scientists, there seems to be an “incestuous” relationship between newspapers and environmental activists claiming to be health experts.  Consider that the “health advocates” quoted in the December 29 Journal-Sentinel article by almost-Pulitzer Prize winner Meg Kissinger are Janet Nudelman of the Breast Cancer Fund and Alex Formuzis.

The Breast Cancer Fund’s agenda, despite its name, is environmental issues.  On December 14 the deceptively named News-Medical Net cited the organization for its claim that “immediate action” is needed “to protect the public while the [FDA] agency finalizes safety review [of BPA].”   Alex Formuzis is with the Soros-supported Environmental Working Group.

Inquiring minds should be curious about these connections.

Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, leftists play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries.   One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned.  It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives — the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths.

Despite the fact that BPA has consistently been proven by the FDA to be harmless to humans — and despite the fact that the FDA is about to release a new study on the chemical in a few weeks — several media outlets (most notably the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the LA Times) have called on the FDA to rule that the chemical is dangerous — before the new study comes out.  Talk about pre-judging a case…

Let me stress that BPA has consistently been proven to be harmless in humans.  What is more, as I’ve previously noted, liberal special interests have a clear financial stake in attacking the chemical.  Lastly, it is clear that numerous businesses which produce plastics ranging from sporting equipment to shatterproof water bottles, to eyeglass lenses, to CDs stand to lose significant amounts of money, possibly causing them to layoff employees in places such as my home state of Ohio, if BPA is banned.

To be sure, if the new FDA study fairly concludes the chemical is unsafe for humans (a conclusion that would contradict numerous prior studies), I would obviously agree that these products should be pulled.  But that is precisely why this premature interference is so pernicious.  Now that the jury has effectively been tampered with, what are the odds that the new study will, in fact, be accepted as fair?  In fact, there is a very real danger we may be allowing media groups to establish science policy, without the benefit of science.

Leftists would be the first to cry foul if a criminal were presumed guilty, and they would object to the sort of “double jeopardy” which causes a product to defend itself indefinitely (or, until proven guilty).  Yet, they seem to have no problem when the target is an American industry, not a terrorist or criminal.  After all, a 2009 FDA study concluded BPA was safe.  Apparently, that wasn’t the “right” conclusion.  …If only leftists were as tough on terrorists as they are on American businesses.

Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, leftists play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries.   One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned.  It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives — the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths.

Despite the fact that BPA has consistently been proven by the FDA to be harmless to humans — and despite the fact that the FDA is about to release a new study on the chemical in a few weeks — several media outlets (most notably the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the LA Times) have called on the FDA to rule that the chemical is dangerous — before the new study comes out.  Talk about pre-judging a case…

Let me stress that BPA has consistently been proven to be harmless in humans.  What is more, as I’ve previously noted, liberal special interests have a clear financial stake in attacking the chemical.  Lastly, it is clear that numerous businesses which produce plastics ranging from sporting equipment to shatterproof water bottles, to eyeglass lenses, to CDs stand to lose significant amounts of money, possibly causing them to layoff employees in places such as my home state of Ohio, if BPA is banned.

To be sure, if the new FDA study fairly concludes the chemical is unsafe for humans (a conclusion that would contradict numerous prior studies), I would obviously agree that these products should be pulled.  But that is precisely why this premature interference is so pernicious.  Now that the jury has effectively been tampered with, what are the odds that the new study will, in fact, be accepted as fair?  In fact, there is a very real danger we may be allowing media groups to establish science policy, without the benefit of science.

Leftists would be the first to cry foul if a criminal were presumed guilty, and they would object to the sort of “double jeopardy” which causes a product to defend itself indefinitely (or, until proven guilty).  Yet, they seem to have no problem when the target is an American industry, not a terrorist or criminal.  After all, a 2009 FDA study concluded BPA was safe.  Apparently, that wasn’t the “right” conclusion.  …If only leftists were as tough on terrorists as they are on American businesses.

The duplicity surrounding news coverage of bisphenol A, a common and long-used chemical component of plastic, is evidenced by the media’s penchant for lavish coverage of specious claims of danger and a paucity of interest in peer-reviewed research showing no harm from the chemical.  This double standard extends to taxpayer funding of BPA research and raises questions about the pending research.

A particularly curious tale begins with a September 21 letter to Margaret Hamburg, the new Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director Linda Birnbaum who, among others, was copied on the correspondence.  The letter was penned by Thomas Zoeller, a member of the 2007 Chapel Hill Consensus that advanced theories of danger associated with BPA, and 32 additional signatories.  The letter opens by stating that its signatories are “a group of independent (mostly university) researchers with extensive experience working with endocrine disrupting compounds and in particular bisphenol A (BPA)” but then gives a curious warning to Commissioner Hamburg regarding plans for $10 million in BPA studies by FDA.

“We find it troubling that the FDA is proposing to spend such a large amount of money on such a well-researched chemical,” the letter notes.  It goes on to claim that plans to further research BPA are “disturbing” and that “there is sufficient research and independent review available for the agency to make a decision as to whether, as the law dictates, there is ‘reasonable certainty’ that this chemical is ‘not harmful.’”

At first blush, one might be inclined to give credit to these researchers for their noble stance in defense of government frugality with taxpayer money.  But a cursory understanding of many of the signatories’ past efforts raises an intriguing issue.  Close to half of the signatories had been part of the Chapel Hill Consensus, and some of those have had questions raised about their research methods and the incestuous nature of their scientific work.

The curiosities of the September 21 letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg are compounded by an October 28 news release from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences announcing 10 grants funded by federal economic stimulus money to pay for two years of additional research on BPA.

The NIEHS news release explains, “While recent assessments by authorities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan agree that current food contact uses of BPA are safe, these assessments have identified the need to address data gaps.  For these reasons, NIEHS prioritized BPA research as a Signature initiative in the grants program undertaken with stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

The language of the NIEHS announcement is standard government boilerplate, but its meaning becomes almost surreal when a review of grant money recipients reveals that seven of the ten grants are to be awarded to signatories of the September 21 letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg.  Although the press release referred to an October 6 meeting of researchers receiving stimulus funds, no mention is made in their letter to Hamburg about having applied for any NIEHS grant money or whether any of the signatories had been informed that they were to receive such grants.  They only mention that “the NIEHS has initiated a $7 million program (GO grants) to address several key data gaps.”

According to an analysis by Trevor Butterworth of the George Mason University Statistical Assessment Service, some of the recipients of the stimulus funds and participants in the Chapel Hill Consensus seem to have an “incestuous” relationship.  The scientists who signed the September 21 FDA letter had claimed “there are already over 900 peer-reviewed studies in the published literature,” but the NIEHS press release states, “The innovative two-year grants [of $14 million] provided through the Recovery Act will support human and animal studies that address many of the research gaps identified by expert scientific panels, and provide a better understanding of how this chemical may impact human health.”  Which is correct?

The letter signers wrote, “We are deeply troubled that the agency would announce these research plans in light of its decision to release a reassessment of BPA by November 30^th.  This disconnect between research and reassessment raises concerns about whether the FDA is striving to resolve the critical public health issues raised by widespread exposure to BPA, or is avoiding making a decision because of the pending research, the results of which will not be available for review for many years.”  But will the expected announcement of a “reassessment” declare the dangers of BPA just as an expensive two-year study gets underway?

In justifying the money allocated to the study of BPA, Birnbaum, in the press release was quoted as saying, “’We know that many people are concerned about bisphenol A and we want to support the best science we can to provide answers.’”  This brings up the legitimate and larger question of whether these “concerns” can be adequately addressed by taxpayer research grants to those who raised the concerns in the first place.  And is this going to be “the best science,” when we know that serious questions have been raised about the incestuous nature of some of these scientists?  Is this research going to be done to fit the headlines generated by some of these same scientists?

It took a computer hacker to reveal the less-than-scientific consensus on global warming.  We need a full disclosure on how the “consensus” was arrived at Chapel Hill and how the decision was made to use funds intended to stimulate the economy to continue to fund what seems to be less than objective scientific research.  We need to be sure that we are not paying for the fox to guard the henhouse.

It’s a chemical that has been used in everyday plastic products like eyeglasses, medical equipment, bottles, and food can linings for over fifty years.  But the compound Bisphenol A (BPA) has been the target of scare campaigns over the last few years.  On one hand critics contend that BPA at low doses can affect endocrine systems and reproduction, and cause birth or developmental effects, as well as cancer.  On the other hand, a search of the literature finds no single case of illness or death related to BPA.

Most recently, BPA came under attack November 2 when Consumers Union, the parent organization of the respected Consumer Reports, sent out a press release announcing the results of its lab tests that purportedly showed high levels of the suspect compound in 19 food products.  The authors of the Consumers Report article did not claim that they had found any harmful effects in anyone, just that BPA had been detected.

The Consumers Union press release inspired panic-inducing headlines.  ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News, and the New York Times dutifully announced the “results” with alarm.  In a separate commentary, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff compared the danger of BPA to those he has faced as a reporter of “threats from warlords, bandits and tarantulas.”

By comparison, the journal Toxicological Sciences (October 2009) published the results of a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which noted that the National Toxicology Program “rated the potential effects of low doses of BPA as an area of ‘some concern,’ whereas most effects were rated as of ‘negligible’ or ‘minimal’ concern.”  But this study, as well as numerous others that demonstrate BPA’s safety, does not make headlines.

At George Mason University’s STATS center, Trevor Butterworth has an entire archive of articles disputing claims and test results raising the alarm about BPA.  He cites an international array of scientists who have repeatedly refuted the claims of such tests.  Of the latest test funded by Consumers Union, Butterworth quotes Wolfgang Dekant, Professor of Toxicology at the University of Wurzburg, who has done testing on BPA for the European Union.  Dekant said he was  “’incredulous’” at the claims made by Consumers Union; the test, he says, was “’highly biased.’”

The Consumers Union’s release is the latest salvo in media campaigns against BPA, despite the fact, as Butterworth writes, that Consumers Union has not released the name of the lab conducting the experiments.  Yet absent this critically important piece of information, the authors of the Consumers Union report claim that current federal guidelines of 50 micrograms is based on outdated research from the 1980s and assert that “a 165-pound adult eating one serving from our sample, which averaged 123.5 ppb, could ingest about 0.2 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, about 80 times higher than our experts’ recommended daily upper limit” [at 0.0024 micrograms].

Who are these experts?  An examination of the two scientists cited in the article reveals that they are part of a network of left-leaning researchers with political agendas.  A key participant is Pete Myers, described in the article as “chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit group based in Charlottesville, Va.”  According to Environmental Health News, Myers is not only chief scientist but founder and CEO of the group, which he created after serving as director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation and co-authoring Our Stolen Future, about endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment.  The introduction to this work, considered an environmental polemic by detractors, was written by then Vice President Al Gore.  A search, however, did not reveal a website for Environmental Health Sciences, nor a 990 tax return.

The other scientist cited in the Consumer Reports article is Frederick vom Saal, “a professor of developmental biology at the University of Missouri at Columbia and a leading researcher on BPA.”  A disclosure accompanying an article for the Journal of the Medical Association (JAMA), noted that vom Sall has served as “expert witness for the defendant in a trial in 2004 regarding the health effects of bisphenol,” served as a “consultant for in-preparation litigation regarding BPA,” and serves as “chief executive officer of XenoAnalytical LLC, which uses a variety of analytical techniques to measure estrogenic activity and BPA in tissues and leachates from products.”

The media and vom Saal are also well acquainted.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which in 2008 won several “environmental reporting” prizes, utilized vom Saal’s own laboratory to conduct experiments for the newspaper.  Butterworth notes the bias of the panel awarding the Columbia University’s John B. Oakes award; it featured members of National Public Radio and environmental groups.  Further, it turns out that an “outside expert” called on to evaluate the results, Patricia Hunt, has coauthored articles on BPA with vom Saal.  He, in turn, has championed her research.  Vom Saal and Hunt were also signatories of the “Chapel Hill Consensus,” a meeting in 2007 where 50 seemingly like-minded scientists who had been studying BPA gathered at the University of North Carolina to decide on the dangers of BPA.  This “Consensus” statement shows a network of many scientists who hold similar opinions on BPA and whose names sometimes appear together in work on “green” issues.

The circular relationships between researchers, activist organizations, and media outlets serve to create a continuous flow of questionable information about BPA.  Yet, many of those involved in such eye-brow raising research are set to accelerate anti-BPA research, thanks to stimulus funds from American taxpayers.

NEXT: How Stimulus Spending Fuels the BPA Scare