BPA
sadly, lost the acsh? claim BPA is good for you
see entine on campbell soup
==
intercept
Sense About Science does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination.And the group is known to take positions that buck scientific consensus or dismiss emerging evidence of harm. When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.
iN 2002, DICK TAVERNE, an English politician and business consultant, founded Sense About Science “to expose bogus science,” he explains in his memoir, “Against the Tide.” Through his consulting work, Taverne had cultivated relationships with energy, communications, food, and pharmaceutical companies. Sense About Science’s early sponsors included some of Taverne’s former clients and companies in which he owned stock.
Taverne must have known the power of media narratives about science firsthand, because he had experience with the tobacco industry, which labored mightily to change the conversation about its product in the face of evidence that cigarettes were lethal. According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes in the 1990s. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an undated memo, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that “the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,” because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and “would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.” During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a 1994 memorandum.
It’s not hard to identify traces of this approach in Taverne’s later work. Writing in his 2005 book, “The March of Unreason,” Taverne complained that “eco-fundamentalists” and fearmongers had fomented a backlash against science and technology, which had in turn produced a “multiplication of health and safety regulations.” That yearBritish Petroleum donated 15,000 pounds to Sense About Science, and Taverne argued in the House of Lords that as much as 80 percent of global warming might be attributable to solar activity, even though that theory had been discredited two years earlier. Taverne, who stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012, did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
Sense About Science established an American affiliate in 2014, under the direction of a Brooklyn-based journalist named Trevor Butterworth. In financial documents, Sense About Science claims Sense About Science USA as a sister organization “with close ties and similar aims.” High-profile scientific publishers, as well as such reputable institutions as the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the Columbia Journalism Review, have promoted Butterworth’s services to scientists and journalists.
From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth contributed to the website of an organization called STATS, a nonprofit that promoted statistical literacy. STATS had its own connections to the tobacco industry, in this case through founder Robert Lichter,a conservative political scientist and now a communications professor at George Mason University. Lichter also co-founded and continues to run the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which Philip Morris hired in 1994 to survey news reports about tobacco as part of its strategy, outlined in a memo from March of that year, to counter “personal and public bias” in stories about cigarettes’ health risks.
[pix “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer.
Photo: Heartland Institute
Lichter, like Sense About Science’s Tracey Brown, has argued that industry money doesn’t necessarily taint the science it supports. In 2003, a congressional report charged the George W. Bush administration with stacking a government committee on childhood lead poisoning with industry scientists. Lichter appeared as an analyst on CNN and said, “Studies have found that scientists who have consulted for industry do not differ in their assessment of risks, of health risks, from scientists who have not consulted for industry.” Lichter did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment or citations to these studies.
Before STATS was dissolved in 2014, and its web site adopted by Sense About Science USA, it received regular grants from free-market sources. Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which describes its mission as promoting “economic liberties,” gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014. Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to “manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,” according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.
:{
}:
wITH THESE ROOTS, Sense About Science should not surprise anyone when it promotes anti-regulatory voices on issues like asbestos. In a 2006 brochure called “Science for Celebrities” and purporting to correct misperceptions about synthetic chemicals, Sense About Science offers John Hoskins, a toxicologist formerly of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester. Under the rubric “Toxic effects depend on dose,” Hoskins reassures us: “Away from the high doses of occupational exposure a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds their way into our bodies. Most leave quickly but some stay: asbestos and silica in our lungs, dioxins in our blood. Do they matter? No!”
More than two decades ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared asbestos a proven human carcinogen. Since then, as countries continue to mine asbestos, industry groups have argued that certain varieties, including chrysotile and crocidolite, are not so toxic. In response, several groups, including the Collegium Ramazzini, an international body of occupational and environmental health experts, have issued consensus statements warning that no form of asbestos is safe at any dose. In calling for a universal ban on all forms of asbestos in 2010, the Collegium Ramazzini observed that the asbestos industry’s attacks on evidence that “irrefutably” links its product to cancer “closely resemble those used by the tobacco industry.”
Brown maintains that Sense About Science has not disagreed with the scientific consensus on asbestos, and she notes that dose and type of exposure are the issue. But when I asked Hoskins why his position differed from the scientific consensus, he shrugged over email, “Once upon a time the consensus was that the earth is flat.” Hoskins further replied, “Unfortunately, to say that within a population low-level exposure of many chemicals must be dangerous is not borne out by reality, much to the chagrin of those who live in the fantasy world of ‘chemical-free.’ ”
Hoskins’s résumé states that he has represented the Chrysotile Institute in “discussion with the governments of several countries.” But he did not disclose this relationship to the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health journal when he co-authored two scientific papers disputing claims that chrysotile or crocidolite caused a rare cancer in exposed populations. When his industry ties came to light, the journal issued errata for both papers to disclose this competing interest. (Hoskins denies any conflict of interest, insisting that his role in authoring the papers was confined to providing information the other authors requested. Yet all but one of the other authors had also failed to disclose their asbestos interests, which now appear in the errata.)
Soon after the first paper appeared, eight public health researchers wrote a letter to the editors of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health expressing outrage that the journal would publish a paper with “gross mistakes” and “no scientific content.” A group that included many of the letter’s signatories asked the journal to consider retracting the second paper, citing “seriously misleading information.” But the journal’s editors declined to retract the papers, which remain in the technical literature, casting doubt on the scientific consensus that all forms of asbestos are hazardous to human health.
IT’S HARD TO make a case for the safety of a substance like asbestos, which most people know causes cancer. Other commercial products are easier to defend, not because they are less hazardous, but because consumers are not as familiar with the evidence questioning their safety and utility. Scientists have known since 1997 that flame retardants, for example, can cause cancer. These brominated and chlorinated chemicals are used in a wide range of consumer products, including nursing pads and car seats. For more than three decades, studies in animals and humans have linked them to cancer, developmental delays, and other serious health problems. By 2010, the evidence was so persuasive that nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries signed a statement warning that flame retardants “are a concern for persistence, bioaccumulation, long-range transport, and toxicity.” Flame retardants’ fire safety benefit not only remains unproven, the scientists asserted, but the chemicals form highly toxic byproducts when burned.
Sense About Science has long relied on dubious numbers to insist on the efficacy of these chemicals. In 2006 it published a pamphlet on “misconceptions about chemicals” in which it claimed that British laws requiring flame retardants in furniture had reduced fire deaths by 20 percent, citing a 2000 European Commission report called “Flame Retardants.” A European Commission press officer told me she knows of no such report. “The reference to the 20 percent reduction in fire deaths is repeatedly quoted in papers and publications from flame retardant industries and associations, and they always refer to ‘Flame Retardants, DG Environment Video 2000,’ which we cannot find.” On the contrary, she told me, it is simply “not possible to correlate fire deaths to non-flammability requirements.”
Who did make the claim? Flame retardant industry trade groups, including the European Flame Retardant Association and the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, run by Philip Morris’s longtime PR firm Burson-Marsteller. The U.S.-based Citizens for Fire Safety also repeated the claim until it disbanded, following revelations in 2012 that leading flame retardant producers ran the organization, not the grassroots group of “staff and volunteers committed to national fire safety” its literature asserted.
The same year, Sense About Science again called on John Hoskins, identified as an independent toxicologist, this time to fact-check a study that found potentially carcinogenic flame retardants in sofas. In his response, Hoskins wrote: “The bottom line is that danger of fire is many, many times greater than any imagined danger from chemicals used to prevent it.”
“Everything I wrote about flame retardants was taken from published works,” Hoskins told me. “Reviewers at the time found nothing to criticize and I have had no comment from the thousands of people who must have read the pieces.”
Sense About Science reprinted its guide on chemicals in 2014. “The trade-off between fire risk and toxicology is changing, and we represented that newer precautionary thinking in our most recent publications,” Brown, the group’s director, told The Intercept in an email. The new guide acknowledged “allegations of side effects” from flame retardants, including persistence in the environment and toxicity to humans and animals. But it also retained the unsupported claim that regulations requiring the chemicals saved lives. The guide even retained the text that countered concerns about traces of flame retardants found in children’s bodies by asserting that because the chemicals protected children from death or injury from fire, “To fail to expose them to such chemicals could be regarded as negligent.”
Scientists who reviewed human studies had come to a different conclusion the year before. They warned that although such links were impossible to prove conclusively, the evidence suggested that children’s exposure to flame retardants could have serious health consequences, including neurobehavioral and developmental problems. The scientists called for regulatory oversight.
:{
}:OF ALL THE controversial chemicals in the public eye, the one Trevor Butterworth, Sense About Science USA’s director, has most fervently defended is bisphenol A, a**compound used to make plastics**. BPA is found in hard plastics, the lining of canned drinks and foods, thermal receipts, and other consumer and industrial products, including cigarette filters. Manufacturers produce billions of pounds of BPA each year. Its market value is projected to reach $20 billion by 2020. And numerous studies and scientific consensus statements have linked BPA, which can interfere with hormone signaling, to developmental and reproductive disorders.
Leading reproductive biologists released a consensus statement in 2007 warning that “the wide range of adverse effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals exposed both during development and in adulthood is a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans.”
Two years later, while working for STATS, Butterworth published a 27,000-word investigation sharply questioning the validity of the scientific studies and news reports about BPA’s health effects. Butterworth’s central claim was that a handful of scientists, journalists, and environmental activist groups had ignored good science in a crusade to paint BPA as “the biological equivalent of global warming.” He singled out a widely acclaimed special report by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger called “Chemical Fallout.” These reporters, he claimed, relied on flawed studies by independent researchers and unfairly dismissed the industry-funded studies that found no harm. But the independent studies were not, in fact, flawed. Regulators just didn’t consider them useful, because, like many such academic studies, they didn’t measure toxicity but tested hypotheses about how BPA could alter living systems.
BPA trade groups have long insisted that the substance is metabolized too quickly to cause harm. Butterworth cites a 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that measured BPA concentrations in newborns to make the same case. The study, he argues, “provides important evidence that infants — even those born prematurely — are able to detoxify BPA in the same way as adults.”
The CDC study he cited was designed to gauge exposure, not metabolism. BPA has been detected in the urine of nearly every American tested. Premature babies’ fragile systems make them particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants.The researchers suspected that the use of plastic medical devices in neonatal intensive care units might expose premature infants to higher than average levels of BPA. And that’s exactly what they found: Average BPA concentrations in hospitalized premature babies were about 10 times higher than those measured in adults. The authors noted that although premature babies appear to have some ability to metabolize BPA, their detoxification pathways “are not expected to be functional at adult rates until months after birth.”
Butterworth ended his critique of what he called “the BPA is dangerous thesis” by suggesting that banning the chemical could result in greater harm: “What if some parents who turned to glass bottles for fear of … ‘leaching’ BPA drop and break them, causing injury to their babies?”
Butterworth’s arguments have reverberated across an echo chamber of free-market organizations, including Philip Morris’s product defense law firm, Koch-funded think tanks, chemical and food-packaging industry trade groups in Europe and the U.S., and an ostensibly neutral environmental health research foundation run by a chemical industry PR firm.
Reached by email for comment, Butterworth did not account for his questionable characterization of the CDC study. He said that his critique relied on the work of scientists from regulatory agencies involved in risk assessment, and that these scientists had criticized smaller studies that claimed adverse effects. He maintained that studies assessing the effects of low doses of BPA are inconsistent and unlikely to capture significant results because of methodological and statistical problems.
The year after Butterworth’s 2009 investigation, the anti-regulatory Donors Trust awarded STATS $86,000 for its “research efforts,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which belongs to the BPA Joint Trade Association, gave Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs $10,000 for “research support.” Butterworth continued to defend BPA in news outlets and in 2013 made his case on a blog for Coca-Cola, another BPA Joint Trade Association member.
That year Coca-Cola gave more than $30,000 to Butterworth’s future partner, Sense About Science, which hosted a BPA forum the next year. (Since then, Sense About Science has not received corporate donations, which “represented less than 3 percent of our income,” Brown wrote in an email.) In the forum, a Q&A on social media,Sense About Science put forward a representative of the British Plastics Federation and a toxicologist whose longstanding ties to the chemical industry the organization did not disclose. Participants were assured that BPA posed no risk to human health. Several plastic industry trade sites praised the event. One welcomed Sense About Science’s efforts, reporting that “plastic packaging was stoutly defended.”
THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY pioneered tactics to fight regulations by manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that cigarettes kill. So it should be no surprise to encounter a strategy among defenders of the e-cigarette that also centers around doubt. ...
==
https://**usrtk**.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/
January 22, 2018 by Stacy Malkan
Trevor Butterworth and his colleagues at Sense About Science/STATS have written for prominent news outlets and been quoted as independent experts on science and media.This fact sheet provides evidence that these groups and writers havelong histories of using tobacco tactics to manufacture doubt about science and push for deregulation of products important to the chemical, drug and junk food industries.
Related groups: Jon Entine/Genetic Literacy Project, Science Media Center, Cornell Alliance for Science
Overview
- This :{Monsanto document:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: describes Sense About Science as a “Tier 2 Industry Partner” in Monsanto’s PR plan to discredit the World Health Organization’s cancer panel, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The Monsanto plan proposes Sense About Science for “leads industry response and provides platform for IARC observers and industry spokesperson.”
- Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) merged with Sense About Science USA in 2014. Journalists have reported STATS is a “disinformation campaign” that tips the scales toward industry and plays a key role for the chemical industry in the “:{hardball politics of :(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{chemical regulation:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:.”
- Sense About Science, STATS and its former parent group, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, have roots in the tobacco industry PR wars and have received funding from anti-regulatory foundations, dark money channels and industries they have defended.
Intercept Exposé on Sense About Science: Reporters Be Wary
A :{November 2016 exposé in The Intercept,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: “Seeding Doubt: How Self Appointed Guardians of ‘Sound Science’ Tip the Scales Toward Industry,” details the tobacco ties and industry connections of Sense About Science.
“Sense About Science claims to champion transparency” but “does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination,” wrote Liza Gross. “When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.”
History of Defending Chemicals, Junk Food and Drugs
Sense About Science was founded as a lobby group in the UK in 2002 by Dick Taverne, an English politician and businessman with ties to the tobacco industry and other industries Sense About Science has defended.
The**US version of the group**launched in 2014 in Brooklyn under the directorship of Trevor Butterworth. From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth was an editor at STATS, which is now merged with Sense About Science USA. Over his career, Butterworth has amassed a large body of work arguing for deregulation and attacking scientists and journalists who raise concerns about products important to the chemical, junk food and drug industries — for example phthalates, BPA, vinyl plastic, fracking, lead in lipstick, formaldehyde in baby soaps, corn syrup, sugary sodas, artificial sweeteners and Oxycontin.
Butterworth is also a visiting fellow at Cornell University Alliance for Science, a communications campaign housed at Cornell University that is funded by the Gates Foundation to promote GMOs. Butterworth runs a workshop at Cornell to teach his brand of media relations to students and young scientists.
Rebecca Goldin, a professor of mathematics of George Mason University, is the Director of STATS and appears on the Sense About Science USA staff page.
STATS was previously housed at George Mason University and filed joint tax returns with the Center of Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a group that was hired by Phillip Morris in the 1990s to pick apart media reports about tobacco.STATS and CMPA have been vague about their funding. The bulk of funding for STATS appears to have come from a small group of anti-regulatory foundations that are leading funders of climate change denier groups.
:{OxyContin Defense
}:
The tactics of Butterworth, Goldin and STATS are evident in their work to defend Oxycontin; they wrote articles denying the problem of doctor-prescribed opioid addiction, criticized media coverage and argued against regulations to reign in prescriptions. See articles in Forbes(Butterworth), :{STATS:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.org (Goldin), and Scientific American, Huffington Post and Slate (former STATS Fellow Maia Szavalitz). A new analysis by Harvard researchers and CNN found that doctor opioid prescriptions are indeed a problem: “opioid manufacturers are paying physicians huge sums of money, and the more opioids a doctor prescribes, the more money he or she makes.”
Climate Science Denial
A 2002 book by STATS/CMPA founder Robert Lichter, David Murray of STATS and Joel Schwartz of the Hudson Institute denied climate science, among other science stories, and employed many “disingenuous maneuvers” to attack the media, including omitting findings that didn’t fit their agenda and using shallow statistical analyses, according to a review in Salon by David Appell. Paraphrasing the book, Appell wrote: “Are you worried about species dying out as a result of global warming? Don’t. Those scare stories are the doing of green scribblers who cherry-pick the scientific journals for alarming factoids and who work in cahoots with Volvo-driving scientists who skew their results in an effort to oppose progress and capitalism.” See below for more information about STATS’ funding from the climate change denial dark money network.
Chemical Industry Public Relations Writer
Sense About Science USA Director Trevor Butterworth played a key role in the chemical industry’s propaganda campaign to discredit health concerns about the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) when he was at STATS, according to a 2009 investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Journalists Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust described Butterworth as an example of “chemical industry public relations writers” who do not explain their allegiances. They described the stealth role he played in industry’s “unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics – and people – the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation”:
“The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth… He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.”
In companion article, Kissinger and Rust described STATS as “a major player in the public relations campaign to discredit concerns” about BPA. Although the group, “claims to be an independent media watchdog,” they wrote:
“a review of its finances and its Web site shows that STATS is funded by public policy organizations that promote deregulation. The Journal Sentinel found documents that show that its parent organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, was paid in the 1990s by Philip Morris, the tobacco company, to pick apart stories critical of smoking.”
They noted that Butterworth’s 27,000-word STATS report criticizing media coverage of BPA – which was widely featured on plastic industry websites – “echoed the approach used in the tobacco analysis.”
“Friend” of Coke
In 2014, a Coca-Cola executive described Butterworth as “our friend” to members of a Coke-funded front group, and pitched him as a person who could help fulfill their “need for good scientific journalists,” according to emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
The email exchanges involved Rhona Applebaum, then-chief science and health officer for Coca-Cola, and the leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), which was exposed by The New York Times and Associated Press as a Coca-Cola front group that worked closely with Coke executives to shift blame for obesity away from sugary drinks. Applebaum resigned her position at Coke and GEBN closed down after the scandal broke in 2015.
In a March 2014 email, Applebaum forwarded the GEBN leaders a Harvard Business Review article by Butterworth that attempts to discredit research linking sugar to weight gain, and described him as “our friend.” In a November 2014 email chain, Applebaum and the GEBN leaders discussed the need to recruit scientific institutions and get more scientists “on the circuit.” Applebaum recommended “the need for good scientific journalists as part of GEBN who focus on the evidence. Presenting for consideration Trevor Butterworth. Need that type of cross-fertilization.”
GEBN vice president Steven Blair wrote, “I agree with Rhona about Trevor. I am pretty sure he is on my list of potential members.” Applebaum replied, “He’s ready and able.”
Ally of Many Industry Groups
Butterworth’s extensive writings defending chemicals, sugar and sugar substitutes have attracted the praise of many industry groups over the years.
Trade groups that have promoted Butterworth’s work include the American Beverage Association, the American Chemistry Council, the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, the International Bottled Water Association, the International Sweeteners Association, the Plastics Industry Trade Association, the cosmetics industry trade association, the chemical industry’s policy website, the Competitive Enterprises Institute, the Cato Institute and the Center for Consumer Freedom.
The American Council on Science and Health, an industry front group that frequently promotes Butterworth’s work, has described him as “a master junk science debunker” and also “our friend.”
Butterworth is also listed as a friend of National Press Foundation. The chair of Sense About Science USA, Heather Dahl, is “immediate past chair” of the National Press Foundation, and sits on NPF’s executive committee.
Sucralose Echo Chamber
Butterworth is a prominent defender of artificial sweeteners whose safety is questionable. In 2011, Butterworth spoke at the International Sweeteners Association Conference and was featured in their press release titled, “Experts Recommend Low-Calorie Sweeteners such as Sucralose to Help Manage Weight.”
Identified as a journalist who regularly contributes to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, Butterworth said about sucralose, “The weight of considered scientific evidence, the result of careful, independent, expert scrutiny, again and again shows that there is no evidence of a risk to health.”
As an example of how the industry echo chamber works to spin reporters: In 2012, Butterworth wrote an article for Forbes attacking a study that raised concerns about sucralose by Dr. Morando Soffritti, director of the Ramazzini Institute, which he described as “something of a joke.”
In a 2016 press release, in response to another Soffritti study, the food industry front group International Food Information Council featured Butterworth’s 2012 piece and attack quotes, and they were picked up by reporters at the The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and Deseret News, all of whom identified Butterworth as a source from Forbes.
A Google search for the Ramazzini Institute turns up Butterworth’s 2012 Forbes hit piece as the first item.
Funded by Climate Change Denier Dark Money Network
While STATS claims to be nonpartisan, the bulk of funding has come from a handful of conservative, anti-regulatory foundations that have played a key role in funding organizations that try to discredit climate science.
According toThe Intercept investigation:
“Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which describes its mission as promoting ‘economic liberties,’ gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014.
Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to ‘manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,’ according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.”
In the press release about his study, Brulle identified the Scaife and Searle foundations as among “the largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial” and foundations that “promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.”
TheScaife Foundation and Searle Freedom Trust have been key funders of STATS, with Scaife providing nearly all funding for the group between 2005 to 2007,according to a Greenpeace investigation of STATS funding, and Searle stepping up with almost a million dollars in funding between 2010 and 2014.
The President and CEO of Searle Freedom Trust, Kimberly Dennis, is also chairman of the board of directors of Donors Trust, the group Mother Jones called the “dark-money ATM of the conservative movement,” and a leading funder of climate change denier and skeptic organizations. Under Dennis’s leadership, the Searle Foundation and Donors Trust sent a collective $290,000 to STATS in 2010, Greenpeace reported.
Koch Industries / George Mason University Foundation
Charles Koch, CEO of the petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries, gave over $100 million to 361 college campuses from 2005 to 2014, according to a Greenpeace analysis of IRS filings. The George Mason University Foundation, which received $45.5 million, was by far the largest beneficiary of this largesse.
Students at GMU raised concerns about Koch funding in a 2014 letter to the GMU president, noting that the university has been “criticized as being a subsidiary of Koch Industries.” In response to a public records request for information about Koch funding, the students “were told that all financial donations are funneled through the GMU Foundation, which does not have to respond to our FOIA request as a distinct private entity.”
The GMU Foundation funded STATS sister organization CMPA $220,990 in 2012, and $75,670 in 2013, according to tax records. In those years CMPA also helped finance STATS. In 2012, STATS reported a $203,611 loan from CMPA that “due to inadequate funding” has “not been reimbursed.” In 2013, STATS reported a loan from CMPA for $163,914.
Tax records for2014show no loans between the groups or donations from GMU Foundation. CMPA’s 2014 tax filingshows compensation of $97,512 for Butterworth and$173,100 for Jon Entine, a longtime public relations operative with deep ties to the chemical industry, who runs the Genetic Literacy Project, an agrichemical industry front group.
Wholly Independent?
STATS now shares a website with Sense About Science USA, and provides this note about funding:
“STATS.org is run by Sense About Science USA; it is funded grants from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the American Statistical Association. Sense About Science USA is funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and donations from members of the public. Sense About Science USA does not accept industry funding or support. Sense About Science USA is wholly independent of any university, society, or other organization.”
The website conveys a sense of grassroots support, noting that itscampaign calling for the registration of clinical drug trials has drawn 30,000 donors. “We don’t have fancy offices. Sense About Science USA is in the back of a bakery and cafe. We put our money into doing, and every little bit helps.”
Tobacco Ties
Both STATS and Sense About Science have roots in the tobacco industry PR wars.
STATS and CMPA were founded by Robert Lichter, PhD, a former Fox news commentator and professor of communications at GMU. Phillip Morris contracted with CMPA and Lichter during the 1990s, according to documents from the Tobacco Institute made available by the UCSF tobacco industry documents library.
In 1994, Phillip Morris sought CMPA’s help dealing with the “recent onslaught of attacks on the tobacco industry” in the media, according to an internal memo proposing strategies to “refocus the media’s attention on the need for objectivity.”
In an email dated February 8, 1999, Phillip Morris vice president Vic Han referred to CMPA as “a media watchdog group that we have contributed to over the last several years,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The founder of Sense About Science, Dick Taverne, also appears in the UCSF tobacco industry files. As Liza Gross explains in The Intercept:
“According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes in the 1990s.
Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an undated memo, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that ‘the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,’ because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and ‘would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.’
During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a 1994 memorandum.”
Taverne stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012. Sense About Science USA launched in 2014 in Brooklyn under the direction of Butterworth. The two groups are described as sister organizations with “close ties and similar aims.”
Exposing ‘Bogus Science’ Through the Living Marxism Network
Lord Taverne founded Sense About Science in 2002 to “expose bogus science,” according to his memoir. As Liza Gross explained in The Intercept, early sponsors of the group included some of Taverne’s former business clients and companies in which he owned stock.
As its first projects, Sense About Science organized a letter from 114 scientists lobbying the British government to “contradict false claims” about GMOs, and conducted a survey highlighting the problem of vandalism against GMO crops.
In 2000, Taverne helped create the “Code of Practice: Guidelines on Science and Health Communication,” a manifesto from the Social Institute Research Center and the Royal Institutionon the procedures journalists and scientists should use to avoid unjustified “scare stories” in the media.
The Guidelines were the foundational document for Sense About Science and its sister organization, the Science Media Centre, a group that has been called “science’s PR agency.”Partly funded by corporations, the Science Media Centre often promotes the views of scientists who downplay risk about controversial technologies and chemicals, and its earliest work involved defending GMOs using stealth tactics.
As writers George Monbiot, Zac Goldsmith, Jonathan Matthews and others have documented, both Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre originated from and are directed by a network of people connected to the Revolutionary Communist Party, which later morphed into Living Marxism, LM magazine, Spiked Magazine and the Institute of Ideas, which promote an idealized vision of technology, extreme free-market views and disdain for environmentalists.[// USA__]
As Monbiot wrote in 2003, “the scientific establishment, always politically naive, appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network.”
Further reading:
:{ :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:The Intercept: How Self-Appointed Guardians of ‘Sound Science’ Tip the Scales Toward Industry
The Atlantic: How Lobbyists are Spinning Weak Science to Defend BPA
Columbia Journalism Review: BPA, Health and Nuance: STATS report criticizes media coverage but has its own faults
Consumer Reports: Industry Reacts to Consumer Reports BPA Report
CJR: Meet the man who wants to help journalists with numbers
USRTK: Jon Entine: The Chemical Industry’s Master Messenger
The Ecologist: Why is Cornell University Hosting a GMO Propaganda Campaign?
More on funders:
Washington Post: Scaife: Funding Father of the Right
Drexel University: Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort
DeSmog Blog: Scaife Family Foundations
DeSmog Blog: Charles G. Koch; Richard Mellon Sciafe; Searle Freedom Trust; Donors Trust: Study Details Dark Money Flowing to Climate Science Denial
Associated Press: George Mason University Becomes a Favorite of Charles Koch
Huffington Post: To Charles Koch, Professors are Lobbyists
Food For Thought, Our Investigations Sense About Science, Trevor Butterworth
==
==
1219
report by the Environmental Working Group reveals that an estimated 2,000 untested chemicals, several of them known or suspected carcinogens, are legally present in conventional packaged foods sold in U.S. supermarkets. But this major public health concern is largely unrecognized by the Food and Drug Administration, which operates under a policy on food additives dating back to 1958.
By Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Independent Media Institute
A major but largely glossed over report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental and public health nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., shows that thousands of untested chemicals (an estimated 2,000, to be exact) are found in conventional packaged foods purchasable in U.S. supermarkets. And yes, all of them are legal.
The extensive collection of permissible additives includes several known or suspected carcinogens, such as synthetic sodium nitrate, found in processed meats and considered probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, and butylated hydroxyanisole, also known as BHA, a chemical listed as a cancer-causing chemical by the state of California and found in commonplace items like frozen pepperoni pizza. Other unappealing chemicals are commonly found in our food packaging, such as polypropylene, sulfuric acid andbisphenol A—all of which can have impacts on human health and the environment.
How much should consumers panic before their next supermarket trip? “It really depends on what level of risk consumers are comfortable with,” says Dawn Undurraga, a nutritionist at EWG and co-author of the study. “The more we learn about what is in conventional foods, the more evidence for concern we accumulate.” Independent laboratory tests commissioned by EWG, for example, found **glyphosate**, a probable carcinogen, in every sample of conventional oats tested.
The fact that dangerous chemicals are legal for use in our food is a major public health concern that goes largely unrecognized by the U.S. government. “Unfortunately, our current policy on food additives was written in 1958 and has been completely co-opted by food and chemical companies,” Undurraga says. “Additives that are deemed ‘Generally Recognized as Safe,’ or GRAS, by a food or chemical company or trade association are exempt from the food additive petition process where the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews the safety of the additive.”
Originally, this GRAS exemption was created to cover ingredients widely known to be safe, like vinegar, but with advancements in food science, the provision has been applied to thousands of chemicals. As a result, questionable substances have been allowed into a host of conventional foods. In 2017, EWG joined several other public health groups to file a lawsuit against the FDA in an effort to eliminate the GRAS loophole.
“Rather than close the loophole, the FDA has instead allowed companies to voluntarily notify the agency about food chemicals and to allow companies to summarize the industry science supporting their conclusions,” reads the EWG study, elucidating that many scientists who conduct these reviews have been paid by the industry. Plus, the FDA does not subsequently review underlying biological and chemical data, leaving consumers to literally do the dirty work. The FDA did not respond toTruthout’s request for comment.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to be toxicologists to be able to grab something at the grocery store that doesn’t contain questionable or dangerous ingredients,” Undurraga says. Even so, toxicology literacy won’t help in the frozen food aisle. According to Undurraga, there are absolutely no defining signs on food packaging to indicate that any of the 2,000 synthetic chemicals approved for use in food are present in that specific item.
In fact, the only way to minimize exposure to these chemicals is to purchase certified organic packaged foods and look at EWG’s Food Scores, which measure nutrition, ingredient and processing concerns in more than 80,000 common foods, from frozen vegetables and baby food to packaged nuts, berries and grains across hundreds of popular brands; and EWG’s Dirty Dozen List of Food Additives, which ranks the worst food additives common in U.S. supermarket food and where you’ll likely encounter them, like potassium bromate in packaged loaves of bread and propylparaben in packaged tortillas and muffins.
If additives don’t have you worried enough about what we’re legally permitted to consume, know that pesticides, found to be carcinogenic and also severely damaging to the environment, are still more than prevalent alongside the packaged food chemicals at your grocery store. Every year, EWG reviews the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s pesticide residue tests on conventional produce.
“Last year, nearly 70 percent of conventionally grown produce was contaminated with pesticide residues,” says Undurraga. “This is especially concerning for pregnant women and small children.”
Sure, organic packaged food and organic produce are typically more expensive than their conventional counterparts, but you’re paying for more rigorous additive standards and investing in your long-term health and the health of the environment. Currently, fewer than 40synthetic ingredients are permitted in organic packaged foods—and this is only after each chemical has been reviewed by both independent and government experts. And yet only around 3 percent of packaged food sold in the U.S. is organic. Perhaps this is because people who shop organic are not interested in pre-packaged meals. More likely, it’s because the dangers of conventional packaged food are not well-known.
Those who want to plan their supermarket trips with a budget in mind can look to EWG’s shopper’s guide to know what to prioritize in their carts. Beyond opting for organic packaged goods when going the pre-made route, consumers can elect to buy organic versions of fruits and vegetables whose conventional counterparts have made EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which calls out those conventionally grown items found with the most pesticide residue: strawberries, spinach, kale, nectarines, apples, grapes, peaches, cherries, pears, tomatoes, celery and potatoes.
On the flip side, consumers can opt for conventional versions of the produce items that are listed on EWG’s “Clean Fifteen”—those with relatively little pesticide residue: avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, frozen sweet peas, onions, papayas, eggplants, asparagus, kiwis, cabbages, cauliflower, cantaloupes, broccoli, mushrooms and honeydew melons.
Though it’s unlikely Americans are going to stop buying conventional packaged food in the near future (or ever), pressure on the government to make packaged food actually safe to eat is necessary to enact change. And with so little information readily available about what we’re actually eating when these chemicals aren’t disclosed, keeping up with research by independent groups like the EWG remains imperative to educate consumers.
Combining their research and policy platform, EWG has launched a petition to encourage food companies like General Mills, Quaker and Kellogg’s to remove cancer-linked glyphosate from our food. And that’s just the beginning. Other consumer safety advocates, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Food Safety, both represented by Earthjustice, have challenged the FDA’s GRAS interpretation in court earlier this year.
Ignorance may bring peace of mind to grocery shoppers, but as more information about the hazards in our daily food purchases comes to light, it’s likely we’ll see more consumer pushback against dangerous practices that have become the norm.
==
==
919
First U.S. BPA Lab Study on Humans Finds Troubling Health Effects at Levels Deemed ‘Safe’
The first U.S. study of the effect on people of exposure to a hormone-disrupting chemical widely used in food packaging showed that levels the Food and Drug Administration deems "safe" can alter insulin response, a key marker for diabetes.
The groundbreaking study, published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, administered low doses of bisphenol A, or BPA, to 16 people, then tested their insulin production in response to glucose, commonly called blood sugar. When insulin and blood glucose levels were compared to the same measurements taken without exposure to BPA, researchers found that BPA significantly changed how glucose affected insulin levels. Similar insulin and glucose tests are used by doctors for diagnosing diabetes.
Keep reading...
https://www.propublica.org/article/as-trump-slashes-epa-worry-over-the-fate-of-an-agency-doing-similar-work
It has little name recognition, a budget less than 10 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s, and is part of a government institute embraced by both of the nation’s major political parties. “In light of what President Trump wants to do to the EPA, I don’t think any agency that deals with issues unpopular with the current government is going to escape,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor at University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is a branch of the National Institutes of Health based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Founded in 1966 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, it has a 2017 fiscal year budget of $771 million, far less than the EPA’s $8.2 billion and a tiny fraction of the NIH’s $32 billion.
The NIEHS studies the health effects of pesticides, chemicals and cancer-causing compounds. Some of its work is akin to the EPA’s efforts on environmental health — programs that would be eliminated or rolled back under President Trump’s proposed 31 percent cut to the EPA’s budget.
Trump’s initial 2018 budget calls for a 19 percent cut in NIH funding and an unspecified “major reorganization” of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers “to help focus resources on the highest priority research and training activities.” But it doesn’t mention the NIEHS.
It’s not like the NIEHS hasn’t found itself in political crosshairs before.
Last spring, for instance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, demanded documents from the NIEHS about its research with the Food and Drug Administration on Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in food packaging that mimics the hormone estrogen. The FDA banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups in 2012, and California regulators declared the chemical a known reproductive toxicant three years later. Chaffetz’s wide-ranging inquiry asked for a slew of documents including “all communications referring or relating to BPA between any NIEHS employee and any FDA employee since April 1, 2008.” In response, NIEHS scientists met with GOP staffers from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which Chaffetz chairs, and spent an hour briefing them on the BPA study.
==
ca will label? 816
==
http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/23/bpa-exposure-linked-male-infertility/
==
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and potential EDCs are mostly man-made, found in various materials such as pesticides, metals, additives or contaminants in food, and personal care products. EDCs have been suspected to be associated with altered reproductive function in males and females; increased incidence of breast cancer, abnormal growth patterns and neurodevelopmental delays in children, as well as changes in immune function.
Human exposure to EDCs occurs via ingestion of food, dust and water, via inhalation of gases and particles in the air and through the skin. EDCs can also be transferred from the pregnant woman to the developing fetus or child through the placenta and breast milk. Pregnant mothers and children are the most vulnerable populations to be affected by developmental exposures, and the effect of exposures to EDCs may not become evident until later in life. Research also shows that it may increase the susceptibility to non-communicable diseases.
In response to these concerns, WHO published several publications, including the latest information on the subject in the State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals 2012, which was done in collaboration with UNEP and key scientific experts. A resolution to include EDCs as an emerging issue under Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was also adopted in September 2012 by the third International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM3) in Nairobi during which WHO and UNEP jointly raised public awareness on EDC issues during a ise-event and technical briefing session (partially supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).
Short information documents for decision makers
pdf, 2.84Mb
Publications for action
===
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/4/are_any_plastics_safe_industry_tries
use tobacco doubt strat
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe
...
How best to test for estrogenic activity would become a key front in the fight over plastic safety. The American Chemistry Council joined forces with an unlikely ally, PETA, to fight large-scale chemical-safety testing on animals. At the same time, Borgert and other industry-funded scientists made the case that the other common method for testing—using cells that respond in the presence of estrogen—did not necessarily tell us how a substance would affect animals or humans. In fact, a massive, ongoing NIH-run study has found that cell-based tests track closely with animal studies, which have accurately predicted the effects of synthetic estrogens, particularly DES and BPA, on humans.
Stanton Glantz,who directs the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California-San Francisco, argues the chemical industry's real aim in challenging specific testing methods is to undermine safety testing altogether. "Like the tobacco companies, they want to set up a standard of proof that is unreachable," he says. "If they set the standard of proof, they've won the fight."...
DURING THE HEIGHT of the battle over BPA, vom Saal periodically traveled to Texas and huddled around the dining table with his old friend George Bittner, whose home overlooks a walnut grove on the outskirts of Austin. Bittner, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford, is quirky and irascible. But he has a brilliant mind for science and an interest in applying it to real-world problems—in his lab at UT-Austin, he had developed a nerve-regeneration technique that had helped crippled rats walk within days. And he had taken a keen interest in vom Saal's research on endocrine disruption. "It struck me as the most important public health issue of our time," Bittner told me when we met at his lab. "These chemicals have been correlated with so many adverse effects in animal studies, and they're so pervasive. The potential implications for human health boggle the mind."
In the late 1990s, Bittner—a squat, ruddy man with thinning red hair and Napoleon Dynamite glasses who had made a tidy sum investing in real estate and commodities—began mulling the idea of launching a private company that worked with manufacturers and public health organizations to test products for endocrine disruptors. He believed this approach could help raise awareness and break the regulatory logjam—while also reaping a profit.
In 2002, armed with a $91,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, Bittner launched a pair of companies: CertiChem, to test plastics and other products for synthetic estrogens, and PlastiPure, to find or develop nonestrogenic alternatives. Bittner then enlisted Welshons to design a special test using a line of breast cancer cells, which multiply rapidly in the presence of estrogen. It features a robotic arm, which is far more precise than a human hand in handling microscopic material.
But before long Bittner began butting heads with Welshons and vom Saal. Bittner wanted the researchers to sign over the rights to the test Welshons had developed, while they insisted it belonged to the University of Missouri. Eventually, they had a bitter falling out. Welshons and vom Saal filed a complaint with the NIH, alleging that Bittner had misrepresented data from Welshons' lab in a brochure. (Bittner maintains that he merely excluded data from contaminated samples; the institute found no evidence of wrongdoing.) Bittner, meanwhile, enlisted V. Craig Jordan, a pharmacology professor at Georgetown University with an expertise in hormones—he discovered a now-common hormone therapy that blocks the spread of breast cancer—to refine the testing protocol. By 2005, Bittner had opened a commercial lab in a leafy office park in Austin. He managed to attract some big-name clients, including Whole Foods, which hired CertiChem to advise it on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and test some of its products.
At this point, BPA was among the most studied chemicals on the planet. In November 2006, vom Saal and a top official at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences convened a group of 38 leading researchers from various disciplines to evaluate the 700-plus existing studies on the subject. The group later issued a "consensus statement" that laid out some chilling conclusions: More than 95 percent of people in developed countries were exposed to levels of BPA that are "within the range" associated with health problems in animals, from cancer and insulin-resistant diabetes to early puberty. The scientists also found that there was "great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans," especially given the steep uptick in these same disorders
At the same time, a new body of research was finding that BPA altered animals' genes in ways that caused disease. For instance, it could switch off a gene that suppresses tumor growth, allowing cancer to spread. These genetic changes were passed down across generations. "A poison kills you," vom Saal explains. "A chemical like BPA reprograms your cells and ends up causing a disease in your grandchild that kills him."....
Even as the industry crafted defensive talking points, some companies began offering BPA-free alternatives. But they often didn't bother testing them for other potentially toxic compounds or synthetic hormones. Nor did they have to: Under US law, chemicals are presumed safe until proven otherwise, and companies are rarely required to collect or disclose chemical-safety data. Michael Green, the Center for Environmental Health director who worried about his daughter's sippy cup, says this results in a "toxic shell game": Corporations that come under pressure to root out toxins often replace them with untested chemicals, which sometimes turn out to be just as hazardous. "It's an unplanned science experiment we're doing on our families," Green told me when I visited him at his Bay Area home, where Juliette, now 5, was padding around in a pink princess costume.
One of the most popular BPA-free options, especially among companies catering to families and health-conscious consumers, was Tritan, a clear, sturdy, heat-resistant plastic that Eastman rolled out in 2007. (Eastman also produces the chemical that sullied the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians in January [32].) A company founded by alternative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil launched a line of Weil Baby bottles made from Tritan, which it touted as "revolutionary" and "ultra-safe" material. Thermos began churning out Tritan sippy cups, decorated with Barbie and Batman. With more and more consumers demanding BPA-free products, Nalgene, CamelBack, Evenflo, Cuisinart, Tupperware, Rubbermaid, and many other companies also worked Tritan into their production lines.
Eastman, a $7 billion company that was spun off from Eastman Kodak in the 1990s, assured its corporate customers that it had done extensive safety testing on Tritan. But its methods were questionable. According to internal Eastman documents, in 2008 Eastman signed a two-year contract with Sciences International, another product defense firm that had played a key role [33] in the tobacco industry's scientific misinformation campaign. On Sciences' advice, Eastman then commissioned a study that used computer modeling to predict whether a substance contains synthetic estrogens, based on its chemical structure. The model suggested that one of Tritan's ingredients—triphenyl phosphate, or TPP—was more estrogenic than BPA.
Eastman, which never disclosed these findings to its customers, later commissioned another study, this one involving breast cancer cells. Again, the initial results appeared positive for estrogenic activity. In an email to colleagues, Eastman's senior toxicologist, James Deyo, called this an "oh shit moment [34]."
...
Despite its "oh shit" findings, by 2010 Eastman began to produce marketing materials claiming that Tritan was free of all synthetic estrogens. One section of its website [36] featured the tagline "Safety is our key ingredient" along with photos of smiling children eating and drinking out of plastic containers. The site claimed "third-party research" had shown Tritan to be free of estrogenic activity, but when corporate customers tried to verify this information, Eastman grew cagey. In early 2010, Philips Avent, a top producer of baby bottles and sippy cups, inquired about having an outside lab run testing on Tritan. Eastman's senior chemist Emmett O'Brien fired off an email [37] to colleagues, saying, "We need to [do] everything possible to convince the customer NOT to do EA [estrogenic activity] testing." Philips was persuaded. But, according to testimony from Eastman executives, that same year Nestlé vetted Tritan, and found it leached synthetic estrogen. (Frédérique Henry, a spokeswoman for Nestlé, acknowledges the company tested Tritan but denies the results were positive.) Nestlé has nevertheless continued using Tritan in some of its water bottles.
Bittner and Usey, meanwhile, decided to go public. "As long as the consumer demand wasn't there, product manufacturers felt we were selling them a problem rather than a solution," Usey explains. "We saw this as the only way forward." Bittner's companies, which have received more than $8 million in NIH funding, began working with Jordan, the Georgetown professor, on a paper for publication. In the fall of 2010, Usey attended the ABC Kids Expo, a children's product extravaganza in Las Vegas, and handed out flyers with a graph showing how various products that were marketed as nonestrogenic stacked up in CertiChem's tests. The most estrogenic among them, Weil Baby bottles, were made from Tritan. (The company referred Mother Jones to a press release on its website stating that it "remains confident that Tritan is safe.")
Soon Eastman's customers began inquiring about CertiChem's findings. For the most part, Eastman convinced them to disregard Bittner's claims. At one point, O'Brien met with Whole Foods executives. They were considering replacing their polycarbonate bulk food bins with ones made from Tritan, even though Bittner had previously informed them [38] that the product was estrogenic. According to a memo O'Brien later wrote [39], when the subject came up, he responded by attacking Bittner, whom he called "shady," and his test results, which he alleged were "very questionable." The Whole Foods executives later pressed O'Brien about the other tests carried out on Tritan....
The month after Bittner's study appeared, the American Chemistry Council contacted Chris Borgert, the former tobacco industry scientist who stymied the EPA's Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. According to internal emails [41], the council and the Society of the Plastics Industry offered to pay him $15,000 to write a brief letter to the journal's editor refuting CertiChem's study, and to enlist another scientist to sign on. Their letter argued that CertiChem's findings were "unconvincing"; just because a substance behaved like estrogen in a culture dish didn't mean it would do so in animals or humans.
At the same time, Eastman laid plans to sue CertiChem and PlastiPure for false advertising. Expecting that Bittner would lash out after being served papers, the company launched a preemptive PR blitz. "By proactively promoting Tritan safety," an internal memo [42] noted, "it will put PlastiPure in a position to have to prove Eastman wrong." The company also paid a scientist named Thomas Osimitz $10,000 to author a research paper on Tritan. While Osimitz was ostensibly working independently, Deyo, the Eastman toxicologist, micromanaged the process, from designing the study to writing the introduction. Deyo's study design virtually guaranteed estrogenic activity wouldn't be found. For example, he opted to use the hormone-insensitive Charles River Sprague Dawley lab rat. Rather than testing Tritan itself, he instructed Osimitz to test only some Tritan ingredients—TPP, the one that had raised red flags in the computer-modeling study, was not included. (The European Union has since classified the compound as a suspected endocrine disruptor.)
In June 2012, Osimitz's paper—finding that Tritan was not estrogenic—appeared in Food and Chemical Toxicology, an industry-friendly journal. Its editor, A. Wallace Hayes, was previously vice president of biochemical and biobehavioral research at R.J. Reynolds, which led the attack against science linking secondhand smoke to human health problems.
Scientific journals generally require authors to disclose any conflicts of interest. But the Food and Chemical Toxicology article made no mention of Eastman's role in the study. According to internal Eastman emails [43], the company was also aiming to hire Osimitz to author a second paper, again with "no…mention of Eastman." As Deyo noted, "credibility is somewhat enhanced if it is not 'Eastman' authors."
...
Once its own data had been published, Eastman set out to bury Bittner's findings. In August 2012, the company sued CertiChem and PlastiPure [44], which it claimed were spreading false information about Tritan to generate demand for their own services. Eastman's lawyers asked the judge to bar both firms from ever claiming Tritan was estrogenic—or saying that cell-based tests could detect estrogenic activity, even though scientists routinely use them for this purpose. For decades, scientists have relied on the same breast cancer cell line Bittner's lab uses, MCF-7, to screen for estrogenic activity. According to UMass' Vandenberg, these cells have proven "remarkably good at telling us if compounds found in plastics and personal care products mimic estrogen" and their "failure rates are minuscule."
On July 15, 2013, Bittner squared off against Eastman at a federal courthouse in Austin. The company's attorneys went in hard. Specifically, they claimed running a company that tested products for estrogenic activity, as well as one that helped companies find nonestrogenic alternatives, created a conflict of interest. (Bittner counters that he's no more conflicted than a doctor who both diagnoses and treats patients.) But they didn't directly challenge the validity of Bittner's findings. Instead, they leaned on the questionable industry claim that tests based on human cells aren't sufficient to establish estrogenic activity.
Eastman's star witness, Chris Borgert, made the case that animal studies—which the industry had also fought to undermine—were a more telling indicator. But even they were not "in and of themselves" definitive. For the result to be relevant, the effects had to be demonstrated "in an animal, at least, and then on to humans." There was no mention of the ethical and legal barriers to testing on humans. And the judge barred Bittner's lawyers from mentioning Borgert's tobacco industry ties, which Eastman argued were "prejudicial." This left the jury ill-equipped to gauge his credibility.
Borgert's testimony may have done less damage than other factors. Bittner's lawyers struggled to explain the science to jurors, and Bittner grew testy on the stand. Welshons, who'd designed CertiChem's tests, testified in a deposition—just as he'd told the NIH—that Bittner had misrepresented some data in a brochure. Bittner's attorneys managed to block his testimony from being introduced. But, Bittner says, his attorneys balked at presenting key evidence, such as figures on CertiChem's NIH funding, because it might have made Welshons' testimony admissible. Bittner also maintains that his rift with vom Saal and Welshons made it difficult to recruit witnesses.
Still, several prominent scientists testified for CertiChem, including UC-Davis' Michael Denison, who coinvented a widely used test for estrogenic activity using human ovarian cells. Denison testified that he'd tested 27 samples of Tritan for estrogenic activity using this method and registered positives across the board.
But the most remarkable data might have come from none other than Wade Welshons. In the run-up to the trial, the University of Missouri scientist, who expected to prove Bittner wrong, began testing Tritan products in his lab. To his surprise, he wound up confirming CertiChem's findings. "It doesn't matter what I think of them personally," Welshons told me. "If they're right, they're right, and many of my objections no longer matter."
Welshons' findings never made it into court, however, and when the jurors returned their verdict in late July, they found against Bittner's companies [45] on counts of false advertising and unfair competition. They also concluded Tritan was not estrogenic. Their rationale, according to postverdict interviews, echoed Eastman's claims that estrogenic activity could not be established solely through cell-based tests. In his final ruling, the judge also noted that the "jury was likely unimpressed with Dr. Bittner's combative demeanor." And he upbraided both sides for failing to explain the science in terms jurors could understand. In the end, he barred Bittner's companies from ever talking about their Tritan findings, at least in a commercial setting. But he refused to stop the companies from asserting that their tests could detect synthetic estrogens.
The long legal battle has depleted CertiChem and PlastiPure's coffers—"We've laid off half of our staff," Usey told me. "It has pretty much crushed us"—and emboldened Eastman. After I began raising questions about Tritan, Rick W. Harrison, an attorney for the chemical giant, inadvertently copied me on an email [46] about Eastman's damage control strategy. "If this somehow gets picked up by mainstream media—Oprah or NY media—Eastman sends Lucian [Boldea, the vice president of Eastman's specialty plastics division] or whoever on the show prepped with the verdict, order and judgment and express surprise and indignation that these issues are still being raised after three years of litigation," he wrote. "The court/jury has spoken and spoken loudly."
The industry, meanwhile, has revived its campaign to downplay the dangers of BPA. A month after the Eastman case concluded, the American Chemistry Council relaunched its pro-BPA website, FactsAboutBPA.org [47]. The section on infant health suggests that BPA isn't harmful, even to premature babies. "They're reverting back to exactly the arguments they were making in 1998," says vom Saal. "It's as if the last 15 years didn't happen."
US regulators also have continued to ignore the mounting evidence linking BPA and similar chemicals to human disease, even as bans have cropped up around the world. Although more than 90 studies examining people with various levels of exposure suggest BPA affects humans much as it does animals, the FDA recently announced that its research "supports the safety of BPA [48]" in food containers and packaging. And the EPA program that was supposed to screen some 80,000 chemicals for endocrine disruption hasn't fully vetted a single substance. In 2010, the agency sought White House approval to add some endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are commonly found in plastic—among them BPA, phthalates, and a class of compounds known as PBDEs—to its "chemicals of concern" list because it found they "may present an unreasonable risk to human health."This would have required chemical makers to share safety-testing data with federal regulators. The proposal languished until last September, **when the EPA quietly withdrew it** [49], along with a proposed rule requiring manufacturers to disclose safety data on chemicals in their products.
...
...
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We are with Mariah Blake, staff reporter for Mother Jones magazine. "The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics: And the Big Tobacco-Style Campaign to Bury It" is her new piece. What is the campaign to bury the information, Mariah Blake?
MARIAH BLAKE: Well, there are multiple facets to the campaign, but the primary—the primary objective is to cast doubt on the scientific evidence linking these chemicals to human health problems. So—and there are various ways this is done. In the case of BPA, for example, the industry funded studies, which were biased studies that found that this—that the chemical was not harmful to health. And there’s a sort of network there. They published them in certain journals that, in many cases, had links to the tobacco industry. They relied on scientists that, in many cases, had helped to discredit the science linking smoking and secondhand smoke to disease. So, in many ways, this is—they didn’t only borrow strategies and tactics from Big Tobacco; they are actually relying on the same cadre of experts that Big Tobacco relied on to bury—to bury the truth about smoking.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a video made by the plastics industry featuring the vice president of Eastman’sspecialty plastics division, Lucian Boldea, speaking in the video made by the company. A pregnant woman is one of the people shown buying plastic products as Boldea speaks.
....
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about George Bittner.
MARIAH BLAKE: OK. George Bittner is a neuroscientist at the University of Texas, and he has launched an independent lab called CertiChem—it also has a sister company called PlastiPure—and it tests products for estrogenic activity. And he—working with a prominent Georgetown professor, he and his staff tested, I think it was, 455 commercially available plastics that are on the market and published a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives, which is the premier NIH journal, which found that virtually all commercially available plastics have estrogenic activity. And among the plastics he tested were Tritan products, several Tritan products. And this publication, this finding, prompted a pretty big backlash from the industry. So he ended up being targeted by the industry as a result and, in fact, was sued by Eastman, which is—many of the documents that formed the basis of my story were released as a result of that lawsuit.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from a memo that Eastman’s senior chemist, Emmett O’Brien, wrote after customers began asking about George Bittner’s tests that showed that Tritan may still be estrogenic. O’Brien describes a meeting with Whole Foods executives who were considering replacing their polycarbonate bulk food bins with ones made from Tritan. He wrote, quote, "We called Bittner a mad scientist. They didn’t know his name actually. They asked twice, by two independent people, what we thought of them. I hemmed and hawed (ducked and dodged) saying I prefer not to comment, but we joked and pushed and flat out said the guy was 'shady' — with this non-stereotypical crowd it was a good term." O’Brien added, "They asked if they could do their own tests — I mentioned the cost is very high and they were quick to chime in that the tests take very long." Can you respond to that, Mariah Blake?
MARIAH BLAKE: I think you chose the most telling possible quote. So this was effective—this was the strategy they used. Firstly, they worked to discredit Bittner, and they did this through a campaign of personal character assassination and by calling his business practices into question. And secondly, they worked to discredit the science. So, one of the things that Eastman did was they claimed that the test that Bittner is using, which relies on a specialized line of breast cancer cells, had been rejected by the EPA, when in fact it hadn’t. The EPA is considering using this very line of breast cancer cells for its own screening program for what they call endocrine-disrupting chemicals. BPA is one of those.
So, the other thing they did was they commissioned their own research, so they paid labs to perform research which found that Tritan was not estrogenic. And—but if you look at—if you look at the research closely, you’ll see that it is—the studies are essentially designed in a way that guarantee that estrogenic activity will not be found. So, for instance, they use a type of rat; it’s called a Charles River Sprague Dawley rat. This rat is known to be insensitive to estrogen, so it can withstand doses, according to one Japanese study, a hundred times higher than a human female can withstand, with—and show absolutely no effect. They also used doses that are below what is known as the no-observable-effect level, so the doses that are known not to cause an effect. And they then published their own study in a scientific journal, which is—has numerous tobacco industry ties, finding that Tritan was in fact not estrogenic. So, that is essentially how they responded to the finding that their product contained these chemicals that are potentially harmful to human health: They attempted to cover it up.
AMY GOODMAN: Your report cites some leaked minutes from a 2009 meeting of the BPA Joint Trade Association, whose members include the American Chemical—the American Chemistry Council, Coca-Cola, Del Monte. During the meeting, they explored messaging strategies that included using what they called, quote, "fear tactics." For example, "Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?" The attendees agreed that the "holy grail" spokesperson was a, quote, "pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits ofBPA." Mariah?
MARIAH BLAKE: Yes, and this is one of the most disturbing things I discovered during the course of reporting this, is that in their efforts to portray plastics as safe, they oftentimes target the groups who are most vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals. So, prenatal exposure and exposure during early childhood is potentially the most harmful, and oftentimes the marketing of these products targets pregnant women, targets families with children. And also, Eastman, for example, in their efforts to portray their products as safe, also targeted these specific groups.
===
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE http://www.nationalreview.com
Politics, culture, and American life — from the family perspective.
BPA Found Safe . . . By Researcher Who Doesn’t Want to Admit It
I’ve written on this site several times before about bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in everyday products like baby bottles, storage containers, and in the lining of canned food and the bad science surrounding efforts to ban it. Now science writer Jon Entine has a must-read article in *Forbes* that confirms long-held suspicions about the motivations of activists opposed to the use of BPA.
Entine explains that University of California-San Diego researcher Michael Baker hyped the results of his BPA research in a press release – a press release that Baker himself now renounces (how convenient for him to backtrack after his specious press release generated dozens of terrifying headlines).
Baker actually admitted his error to Entine, saying “I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused by some.”
Oopsie.
Just a tiny little mistake that causes moms like me to gnaw off their fingernails at the thought that we might be poisoning our children with chemicals. But that’s okay; regular moms and dads (already struggling with high food and fuel costs) can just run out and support the cottage industry that has sprouted up in the wake of these terrifying headlines — the BPA-free industry. Parents won’t mind that these products are much more expensive. After all, isn’t your baby’s health worth it? Surely parents aren’t already cash-strapped with the truck-load of diapers they purchase on a monthly basis along with the toys, books, and other baby items one simply must supply a child with these days.
Of course, what parents won’t hear about is Baker’s mea culpabecause if there’s one thing parents can count on from today’s science writers it is an absolute dearth of Entine-esque journalism when it comes to BPA. Baker’s study might not have generated such dramatic headlines if these journalists had revealed, as Entine does, that Baker has zero prior expertise in studying BPA or that his study didn’t include humans or even animals but rather was a computer simulation. Even more stunning, Entine discovered that Baker was unaware of the quite impressive body of researchthat shows BPA is safe.
In fact, thousands of studies conducted have shown BPA to be perfectly safe, yet those with an evangelical interest in continuing the hand-wringing about BPA cling desperately to any shred of information, no matter how far-fetched, supporting their position. And now, the very researchers who study BPA can’t be counted on to stick by their own findings that BPA is safe.
Don’t expect anti-BPA activists to be bowed by this latest blow to their religious crusade. Their ideology might still be intact but the science is proving them wrong. That’s a good thing for parents who have grown weary of these alarmist claims and who just want to keep their kids safe without spending a fortune.
forbes op-ed by entine; http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/10/31/bisphenol-a-bpa-found-not-harmful-yet-again-so-why-did-so-many-reporters-and-ngos-botch-coverage-yet-again/print/
Op/Ed
|
10/31/2012 @ 10:42PM |5,970 views
Bisphenol A (BPA) Found Not Harmful, Yet Again -- So Why Did So Many Reporters and NGOs Botch Coverage, Yet Again?
Science reporting on “endocrine disrupting” chemicals hits new low. Is the resistance to evidence-based science clinical? Jon Entineof the Genetic Literacy Project reports.
One of the most disturbing trends in science reporting is what The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin calls “single-study syndrome”— the increasing tendency of reporters and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to trumpet research that supports a pre-determined perspective, no matter how tenuous—or dubious—a study might be.
That tendency was in sharp display recently after the publication of a study on Bisphenol A by University of California structural biologist Michael Baker in the online journal PLOS ONE. The chemical—a ubiquitous additive found in common plastic products and used as an ingredient in epoxy liners in cans that prevent spoilage and botulism—has been in the crosshairs of a small but determined group of university researchers, activist NGOs and journalists.
Critics of BPA believe it causes a range of disorders, particularly in pregnant women, developing fetuses and infants. They call it an “endocrine disruptor,” a term that gradually crept into mainstream use to describe synthetic chemicals that “mediate” hormonal activity, as do many natural substances, such as soy. BPA, they claim, is one chemical in a rogue’s gallery that includes the common weed killer atrazine, plasticizer phthalates and chemicals used to produce resins and detergents.
As often happens when a new study on BPA or “endocrine disruption” is published, a chorus of what seems like coordinated reactions materializes on the web. Within hours of the release of the Baker study, cyberspace exploded. The University of California-San Diego Health System’s news release, breathlessly titled, “BPA’s Real Threat May Be After It Has Metabolized,” was picked up verbatim by thousands of websites. It sparked uncritical stories by Chemical & Engineering News, Yahoo!, numerous other reputable news outlets and hundreds of speculative pieces by chemical-fearing NGOs with headlines ranging from “BPA is Bad to the Bone, Now We Know Why,” to “BPA Can be passed from moms to kids at birth” and “New studies add fuel to concerns over BPA.
BPA antagonistes
The news reports shared a common theme—asserting or at least suggesting that the Baker study was a smoking gun and perhaps the final scientific word that activists have been awaiting to confirm their long-held belief that BPA is harmful and should be banned or sharply restricted. The irony is that the Baker study, when analyzed, does not support that view. Rather, it provides additional confirmation of the unlikelihood that BPA or many other so-called “endocrine disrupting” chemicals pose serious health threats.
The bizarre journalistic reaction to the Baker study underscores a distressing turn in “science reporting”—a disconnection between what agenda-seeking NGOs and their partners in the popular media report versus what the empirical evidence suggests. BPA antagonists range from chemophobic “natural” activist groups (Healthy Children Healthy World, Joseph Mercola) and advocacy media organizations (Mother Jones, Grist) to popular environmental organizations (Environmental Working Group, Natural Resources Defense Council). They share a worldview with some high-profile journalists—most notoriously the columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. Kristof has made “endocrine disrupting” chemicals one of his signature issues—much to the embarrassment of top-flight science journalists. This loose but very real coalition also includes reporters at many otherwise reputable news organizations who are not necessarily locked into a view about BPA or chemicals in general but, based on their reporting, appear to have only a superficial understanding of scientific risk.
According to these critics, chemicals like BPA can be blamed for everything from cancer to obesity, retarded neurological development, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infertility and other disorders related to sexual development. These are catastrophic allegations, which if supported by the evidence warrant immediate and decisive restrictions. But in the case of BPA, the very opposite is happening. Since 2007, there have been more than a dozen comprehensive reviews of BPA by independent government scientists around the world, including in Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States, and each has concluded that the current uses of the chemical are safe.
Among the more high profile reports, the European Food Safety Authority in summer 2010, a joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization/WHO expert panel on BPA in November 2010, and a special Advisory Committee of the German Society of Toxicology in spring 2011 independently concluded that the collective body of evidence demonstrates that BPA does not pose serious neurological dangers or cause cancer in humans, and has not even been shown to be an “endocrine disruptor,” although it does have modest but not necessarily harmful endocrine effects.
In fact, the same week the Baker study was released—and ballyhooed by activist bloggers and journalists as decisive new evidence—Health Canada and that country’s Bureau of Chemical Safety upheld its prior scientific finding that found BPA poses no serious threat. “Based on the overall weight of evidence,” reads the report, “the findings of the previous assessment remain unchanged and Health Canada’s Food Directorate continues to conclude that current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children.”
Is BPA bioactive?
The most common and seemingly damning allegation against BPA, and one that shows up repeatedly in media reports, is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found traces of the chemical in the urine of more than 90% of adults and children. That sounds frightening. But is it cause for concern? How scientists and journalists frame this often-stated fact is a good barometer of their understanding of risk analysis—whether they genuinely wrestle with complex science or are mouthpieces, intentionally or not, for a predetermined, chemophobic perspective.
The CDC has repeatedly stated that while biomonitoring “can … help scientists plan and conduct research on exposure and health effects,” the presence of a chemical in urine—whether BPA, atrazine, a phthalate or some other chemical targeted by advocacy groups—is not necessarily a sign that it’s harmful. Because advanced biomonitoring technology can detect vanishingly low concentrations of chemicals, “[f]inding a measurable amount of BPA in the urine does not mean that the levels of BPA cause an adverse health effect,” the CDC has written.
Regulators and most scientists believe the central focus of research should be to determine whether a bioactive form of a chemical makes it through the liver into our bloodstream, where it could effect our health. Years ago, that issue had been in doubt, which is why many scientists were initially agnostic over the question of BPA’s potential health impact. But by 2010 the FDA,reflecting the emerging scientific consensus, concluded, “[O]ral BPA administration results in rapid metabolism of BPA to an inactive [and therefore harmless] form.”
Such declaratory statements, echoed by every major international agency before and since, have not mollified the determined proponents of the endocrine disruption hypothesis. They remain convinced that Paracelsus’ famous declaration—“the dose makes the poison”—which has been the defining standard in toxicology, risk assessment and regulatory oversight—is simplistic and outdated. They believe in what’s called the non-monotonic response: A class of substances, BPA included, can interact with cellular hormone receptors in such a way that lower doses can pose higher risks.
Indeed, studies have shown that low doses of certain chemicals can induce non-monotonic effects. There are more than 600 studies to date according to a survey published last March in *Endocrine Reviews*. But independent scientists who have reviewed these studies, time and again, have come away unconvinced these effects consistently or even generally suggest harm. For the most part, they see biological activity—lots of statistical noise with contradictory indications of harm. And in the overwhelming majority of cases in which effects have been seen, rodents were administered the chemical by injection, bypassing the oral route, which is how humans typically encounter these substances. Regulators view these studies as marginally relevant to assess human health.
What’s an “endocrine disrupting” chemical?
Four years ago, in light of their unwavering and highly publicized concerns over BPA, the organized group of scientists who embrace the endocrine disruption hypothesis demanded, and were granted, yet another round of independent, government-financed peer review studies. The Obama Administration authorized under the stimulus package more than 30 million dollars for new research. The first set of studies began to appear in 2010. As the evidence began to come in and much to the discouragement of a shrinking group of true believers, the mainstream scientific consensus began to shift away from their position.
Originally open to considering that BPA might be harmful, L. Earl Gray Jr., senior scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Research Triangle center in North Carolina, and his colleagues addressed whether endocrine effects translate into “endocrine disruption.” Their government-funded study, published in 2010, covered a wide range of BPA doses. It found extremely weak effects at low and high exposure levels. Even at four thousand times higher than the maximum exposure of humans in the general population, there were no discernible effects. Gray and his co-authors concluded that BPA has an extremely mild estrogenic impact but should not be called an “endocrine disruptor.”
This comprehensive EPA study—which should have considerable doubt over the low-dose, hypothesis—set off a new round of contretemps. Egged on by the university researchers behind the endocrine disruption hypothesis, Consumer Reports, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel other nonscientific media, and activist blogs led by the NRDC and EWG, dismissed these results, accusing the EPA of using a strain of rat that is extremely insensitive to estrogen. Articles abounded ringing the “endocrine disruption” alarm bell.
The government responded by funding yet more studies to address these concerns. To specifically assess whether BPA could be transmitted to a fetus following its absorption in a mother, a research team led by Daniel Doerge, a chemist with the Division of Biochemical Toxicology at the Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Arkansas, performed a series of studies on rats supposedly more sensitive to estrogen. Even after rodents were fed 100 to 1000 times more BPA than people are exposed to in their daily diets, the scientists could not detect the active form of BPA in the fetus 8 hours after the mother’s exposure. They concluded that the potentially toxic chemical is rendered inactive as it passes through the liver.
Doerge and his team followed with studies of primates, and concluded the same thing: Oral BPA administration results in rapid metabolism of BPA to an inactive form. There is complete glucuronidation of the BPA.
But what about in humans? Many mainstream scientists believe the final nail in the coffin of the BPA scare saga came in 2011 with what is now known as the Teeguarden study. The FDA’s Doerge joined a team of researchers led by Justin Teeguarden, a senior scientist at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of the nation’s premier research centers, to assess how humans process BPA. The study was entirely funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and conducted in collaboration with CDC and FDA researchers. Rather than using animals and injecting them with BPA—humans generally come in contact with the chemical through food contact packaging—the researchers focused on human volunteers exposed to high levels of the substance by having them eat canned food and beverages from plastic bottles.
Their conclusion: Despite the presence of the chemical in urine, human blood concentrations of BPA are infinitesimally low—undetectable in most cases and thousands of times lower than any level that is likely to cause harm to humans. As Wolfgang Dekant, a professor of toxicology at the University of Wurzburg, who co-authored the European Union’s 2006 risk assessment of BPA (which found that the chemical did not pose a health hazard) has noted, Teeguarden’s study confirmed the earlier work undertaken for the European Food Safety Authority and FDA, which concluded that the human digestive system efficiently metabolizes the chemical after which its detoxified form is harmlessly excreted.
The most definitive rebuke by the government of the endocrine disruptor hypothesis—the persistent and central argument pushed by BPA’s determined band of critics—came last March in a dispassionately written but scathing 15-page response by the FDA rejecting a petition by the NRDC demanding that BPA be banned. On its Consumer Update website, the FDA also announced that its scientists had further determined that exposure for infants to BPA through foods is much less than had been previously believed, reaffirming that the trace amounts of the chemical that enter the body are rapidly metabolized and eliminated.
Unbowed, the NRDC and like-minded anti-BPA activists dismissed the findings and renewed what appears more and more like a desperate attempt to salvage a chemical witch-hunt.
The Baker study
Why is there such a disconnect between what activists and even many mainstream journalists choose to believe versus what independent scientists and regulators from around the world with no horse in this race have concluded based on reviews of literally thousands of studies?
The response to the recent Baker study is illustrative of what might be called an ‘evidence denial complex’. The overblown reaction can be traced to the initial news release. Its hyperbolic headline and text, approved by Baker, detailed the results of his computer modeling study of what happens when the liver breaks down BPA into metabolites. He reaffirmed findings that a BPA metabolite binds to a hormone receptor. “MBP is one [of perhaps several] metabolite that causes disruption of estrogen signaling in humans and other animals,” Baker is quoted as saying.
The news release suggested that his study is one more critical piece of evidence confirming “alarming associations between BPA and myriad adverse health and developmental effects, from cancer and neurological disorders to physiological defects and, perhaps, cases of childhood obesity.” In other words, as the release would have it, BPA is extre
mely dangerous but BPA metabolites are even worse!
Bingo, the UC-San Diego Health System press office and perhaps professor Baker got just what they wanted. The release ricocheted through cyberspace accompanied by alarmist headlines. Intriguingly not one media report mentioned the concurrently released Canadian government study contradicting Baker’s conclusions or included any reference to the spate of recent independent reviews that have found BPA safe as used.
Rather, one story after another hyped the Baker research and tied it to unrelated studies of BPA that also made questionable claims. The reporting by California Watch, which promotes itself as an independent investigative news organization, offers a distressing example of this botched coverage. Its environmental reporting and its specific focus on BPA is supervised by a former reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which established itself years ago as a echo chamber for the coalition of scientists who uncritically embrace the endocrine-disruption hypothesis.
In its article, California Watch quoted Baker as saying that BPA does “nasty stuff” and that he believes researchers should be studying how its metabolite works in the body to determine if it is a health threat. The article then referenced a separate, unrelated study of Latino women who work and live in the agricultural Salinas Valley, where they are exposed to pesticides and other chemicals as a daily work hazard. California Watch asserted that the Latino study “also ties BPA to disrupted hormone function.”
In fact, the Latino study provided no support of the endocrine disruption theory: “The association between the average of the two BPA measurements and maternal thyroid hormone levels was not statistically significant,” it concluded. In other words, California Watch linked one poorly explained study—the Baker research—to a misleadingly reported study in another journal in an attempt to hype its predetermined belief that BPA and other chemicals are dangerous. That’s shoddy journalism.
I contacted Baker to get his take on the brouhaha. He confessed he had no prior expertise in studying BPA and had been unaware of the groundbreaking work by Teeguarden, Doerge, Dekant and others. However, he said that he and the University of San Diego Health Systems writer were aware of the slew of popular and research reports damning BPA as dangerous, which shaped the tone and wording of the release.
Is the Baker study a new piece of the puzzle that could in fact rattle the new scientific consensus that BPA is biologically inactive as humans encounter it? Did the activists get this right? Or was the public yet again a victim of ‘single study syndrome’? After all, if Baker is right and if BPA metabolites and the “culprit,” then the Teeguarden study might be beside the point. Is this research the anti-BPA movement’s smoking gun?
I posed the question directly to Dr. Teeguarden, as California Watch or any reputable journalist covering this story should have done before writing an article on endocrine disruption or BPA. Like other scientists I talked with, he was complimentary of the basic design of the Baker study, calling it a “good example of structural modeling of receptors for screening for biological activity.”
But that’s where the praise ended. In fact, as Teeguarden and Dr. Gray both noted, it broke no new scientific ground. In 2004, Japanese scientist Shin’ichi Yoshihara had found that a BPA metabolite has a higher likelihood to bind with the estrogen receptor. Using computer simulation, Baker simply and elegantly offered a model of how that might work.
But Baker’s study did not touch on the central question: Could BPA or its metabolite effect humans? What’s the implication for human health? On this point, all of the half dozen scientists I talked with, including Baker, were unanimous. There’s nothing new here to suggest that BPA is active or effects humans.
In his study, Yoshihara had pointed out that the BPA metabolite MBP has never been detected in the human body or in active cells. “[M]etabolic activation to MBP may not be significant, at least in usual circumstances,” he and his colleagues had concluded—which is exactly what Doerge, Teeguarden and other scientists have since confirmed.
What about the tiny fraction of BPA that is not rendered harmless and therefore could, theoretically, be turned into a metabolite that might be highly estrogenic? It’s just too small a quantity to have any effect, all the scientists told me.
Baker speculated in the article and to me that perhaps MBP “could become a problem” if it is found at 0.5 nM levels in blood. However, as Teeguarden has noted, extensive blood data repeatedly demonstrates that BPA concentrations are far tinier. Teeguarden got technical in an email, but his comments are worth quoting—maybe serious science journalists will actually take this information to heart:
The extensively documented, rapid, virtually complete metabolism of BPA in humans to compounds without estrogenic activity would seem to preclude the presence of MBP in sufficient amounts for biological activity. If we accept the speculation that MBP is formed during metabolism in humans, we might look to the elimination data to bound how much that could be. That number is likely to be 0-13%. Call it 10% so the math is easy. If blood BPA is 10 pM, and MBP is 10%…MBP is on the order of 1 pM at peak. Flip it around. If MBP was present at 0.5 nM [as Baker hypothesized], it would be 100x the mass of BPA in the system, which cannot be.
“There is just no evidence that it’s a relevant metabolite in vivo,” the EPA’s Gray added in a conversation. “To make any claims about its potential harm is just pure speculation. There is no evidence.”
“I think the University [of California-San Diego Health System] communications group did what communication groups often do: they looked to sell some press,” added Teeguarden. “Baker’s work is a solid example of structural modeling. The BPA stuff is unnecessary and secondary at best.”
Baker, who reviewed this story before publication, now says that the California Watch report that quoted him as suggesting BPA is harmful is wrong and out of context. “That’s not what I believe,” he told me. “I’m not an expert on BPA, by any means. It’s possible, that the metabolite that I studied would not have any effect on humans and I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused by some.”
What will regulators conclude and how will reporters report
There remains a very large divide between the views of regulators who rely on risk assessment and the academic scientists who look for endocrine effects regardless of whether those effects can cause harm. University researchers have one high-profile supporter in Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Sciences. In an April editorial in the NIEHS-published journal *Environmental Health Perspectives*, Birnbaum argued that “it is time to start the conversation” about incorporating low doses and non-monotonic relationships into regulatory decisions.”
No prominent regulatory scientist has followed her lead. Why? Because no evidence has yet been presented that suggests that BPA, atrazine, phthalates or related chemicals are biologically active enough to harm the human endocrine system.
In making a decision whether to ban or restrict a chemical, regulators do not simply count positive and negative studies as if they are votes. In their assessment of the safety of BPA and other “endocrine disrupting” chemicals, the FDA and other oversight agencies review all the studies to evaluate what the data demonstrates with respect to safety. They look for meaningful patterns; otherwise they could blunder and react to statistical noise, and potentially ban a relatively safe chemical that would be replaced by something less well tested—one that could create actual harm. They then make weight-of-evidence determinations. They have consistently concluded that the data generated so far by university scientists who embrace the endocrine disruption hypothesis are not as reliable, relevant or consistent as the data produced by independent government ingestion studies.
“There is non-monotonicity, but the question is, is it toxicologically relevant?” asked Jason Aungst, a supervisory toxicologist with the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Silver Spring, Maryland, in a recent article in *Nature*. He and Earl Gray have argued that the low-dose health effects supposedly identified in studies contradict one another and have not been conclusively linked to health problems.
Some chemicals do cause serious effects, such as organ deformities, at low-dosages, but they are uniformly monotonic and can be identified under current regulatory testing protocols, Gray told Nature in a recent article. “You could never say that non-monotonicity doesn’t happen, but as far as its relevance to risk assessment, we really haven’t seen it in the high-quality studies,” he said.
The NIEHS and the National Center for Toxicological Research will be releasing a slew of state-of-the-art oral ingestion studies over the next 18 months testing, yet again, the non-monotonic thesis. The preliminary results began trickling out at toxicology meetings over the summer. To date, they consistently reaffirm prior studies that BPA has no harmful estrogenic effect except at high doses—thousands of times beyond what humans consume.
Richard Sharpe, head of the Centre for Reproductive Biology at the Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh and an internationally recognized pioneer on endocrine disruption, was originally drawn to the thesis but changed his views in the face of the accumulating evidence. Writing in Toxicological Sciences, in an article titled “Is It Time to End Concerns over the Estrogenic Effects of Bisphenol A?” Sharpe wrote:
Fundamental, repetitive work on Bisphenol A has sucked in tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars from government bodies and industry which, at a time when research money is thin on the ground, looks increasingly like an investment with a nil return. . . . If this opinion piece [in Toxicological Sciences] does nothing else, I hope that it will remind us all of the central importance to be attached to the repeatability of experiments and how we should react when a study proves to be unrepeatable
In theory, this latest round of studies demanded by scientists supporting the endocrine disruption theory should settle the science once and for all. But that’s unlikely. Sensing the regulatory winds are not blowing their way, the increasingly isolated group of scientists who have built their reputations on the dubious endocrine disruption theory are taking their case out of the lab and into the streets.
The undisputed leader of the anti-BPA faction is Frederick vom Saal, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri. In a paper to be published in the journal Green Chemistry in January, vom Saal and his supporters argue that there is little more that can be determined from new studies. Rather, legislators should bypass the international regulatory system altogether and just ban chemicals based on concern alone. In other words, they argue, the US should abandon classic risk analysis, which is the basis of regulatory science around the world, and adopt the slippery slope of the precautionary principle—regulation based on hazard and fear rather than on empirical evidence.
Their appeal is brazenly political, and some politicians are listening and responsive. Just last March, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) filed three separate petitions asking FDA to ban the use of BPA in infant formula and toddler food packaging (where it’s no longer used), in reusable food and beverage containers and in canned food, where its use is indispensible and there are no substitutes. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has a similar measure before the upper chamber.
Why, after such a massive accumulation of evidence do activist NGOs, many reporters and even some scientists continue to reject the emerging, evidence-based scientific consensus? “At this point,” one prominent government scientist told me, “with all the recent studies in hand, calling BPA harmful and dangerous, that’s just mass hysteria.” Clinicians call this apophenia—a neurological condition in which people insist they see meaningful patterns or connections in contradictory or random data.
“There are people who believe in the low dose effect of BPA and will always believe its disruptive effect, regardless of the evidence,” Dr. Gray told me. The ‘BPA-is-harmful’ crowd appears impervious to peer reviewed studies,” he added. “That’s a religious position. But as scientists and regulators, we have to go where the data takes us.”
More on science literacy at the Genetic Literacy Project.
Jon Entine, founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University, and a senior fellow at the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS).
This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/10/31/bisphenol-a-bpa-found-not-harmful-yet-again-so-why-did-so-many-reporters-and-ngos-botch-coverage-yet-again/**
We as scientists need to understand that resources are limited. We have become a country that not only cannot pay our debts yet we keep passing laws to not only raise the debt ceiling. And we still keep funding things that only make the 25% across the board cutback inevitable. Then where will science be?
\n\nAs a scientifically relevant example of this waste consider not the story at hand, but the broader example of political manipulation that has led to wasted funding, that of the BPA (bisphenol A) story. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel over the course of the past several years has published editorial after editorial lambasting BPA raising this purely scientific issue to a fever pitch in the minds of a concerned public. Recently the Sentinel even found itself basking in a National Journalism Award for public service reporting from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
But chiefly due to non-scientific, popular press purely political agitation by this news organization, the FDA, EPA, and several states have recently taken or considered inappropriate actions to restrict this substance. Unfortunately the public sees only these scare words thrown at BPA by this reactionary press attack and the cooperating political stooges running the FDA and the EPA. The true nature of the Sentinel?s and this administration?s
misinformation paid to a non-existent BPA story is far better understood by reading a short recent Toxicological Highlight (editorial) from Toxicological Sciences. The article entitled ?Is It Time to End Concerns over the Estrogenic Effects of Bisphenol A?? (TOXICOLOGICAL SCIENCES 114(1), 1?4 (2010)) is available online to most scientists.
This Journal is the premier publication in the field of toxicology (the science of poisons).It represents the voice of the most prominent national and international organization in the field, the Society of Toxicology (SOT), which is composed of many thousands of scientists, who have continuously cast substantial doubt on BPA posing any risk at the doses encountered by humans. \n\nSo let us take a closer look at the real scientific story that you don?t read about in the popular, slanted press.
In this editorial of sorts Richard M. Sharp (Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, Centre for Reproductive Biology, The Queen?s Medical Research Institute) lambasts this type ambulance chasing journalism providing a short review of this non-issue. In it he notes in his conclusion that ?fundamental, repetitive work on bisphenol A has sucked in tens, probably hundreds, of millions of dollars from government bodies and industry which, at a time when research money is thin on the ground, looks increasingly like an investment with a nil return. All it has done is to show that there is a huge price to pay when initial studies are adhered to as being correct when the second phase of scientific peer review, namely, the inability of other laboratories to repeat the initial studies, says otherwise. If this short opinion piece does nothing else, I hope that it will remind us all of the central importance to be attached to the repeatability of experiments and how we should react when a study proves to be unrepeatable.?\n\n\n\n\n
anon post