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Studies Prove BPA Can Cross Placenta To Fetuses
Totes McGotes writes "From canned food to plastic bottles, Bisphenol-A seems to be cropping up everywhere, and now two new studies show that BPA freely crosses the placenta from pregnant mother to fetus. Plus, the research found that chemical transformations occur in the fetus allowing inactive BPA to be converted to the active form."
So now that companies have stopped using BPA, what other additives should we investigate? Plastics still contain various chemicals that define the type of plastic...
I've moved to using glass for food storage. Although heavier, it's chemically safer since it's non-porous, and much easier to clean.
Studies don't "prove" anything. All they do is add a little weight to one side of an argument or another. Exactly how much weight depends on what was studied, how it relates to existing science, the methodology of the study, etc., etc., etc.
This study seems to add a little evidence to the belief that BPA is dangerous, of which there's already a lot. But only scientifically illiterate journalists and pundits (and, unfortunately, not a few opinionated doctors) look a single study and jump to big conclusion. You really need to look at the whole body of research.s
Actually, it is fixing the issue. Practically overnight an industry of BPA-free containers sprang up to service those people who wished to avoid exposure to the chemical. Media and research exists in a free market, so, it's not like we wouldn't have known any link.
Those that don't care (as in, not caring about their health, not caring since they're using the container to store stuff they don't intend to drink, etc) could still buy it and the prices the market will bare.
There's a lot of stuff the Free Market can't fix. This isn't one of them.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Assuming they are properly labeled. Unfortunately, the free market only works in a 100% informed populace that can weigh the costs and benefits of any product and have the option to choose. And the fairy tale land of perfectly informed people hasn't yet been made real. Clearly a failure of the free market and government regulation!
While BPA has alternatives, it's not always 100% clear. Many metal cans and bottles use a plastic lining that happens to contain BPA. Many "glass" products are actually layers of glass and plastic, or just plastic. With no labeling requirements on products composed of mixed materials, I couldn't make informed decisions even if I wanted to.
Finally, not related to BPA (where alternatives exist if you're willing to look hard enough for them), sometimes the free market fails to provide an alternative. I was trying to find beef stock the other day to make Swedish Meatballs. I generally prefer to avoid MSG and corn syrup in my food products. Of the ~8-10 different varieties of beef stock on the shelf at my local supermarket, all but one of them had MSG (and in large quantities) and a majority (forget the exact number) featured corn syrup (and yes, the only one without MSG had corn syrup). I ended up going with the MSG-free variety (the sodium content was roughly 1/8 that of the standard beef stock from any other brand, and 1/4 the sodium in the "low sodium" varieties), but the free market wouldn't let me avoid corn syrup as well. Nor for that matter do I know if the can itself had a lining containing BPA; even if I wanted to avoid BPA I had no way of making that decision.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Unfortunately, the industry of "BPA free" products sprang up at pretty much exactly the same time that the industry of BPA free products did. It turns out that printing new labels is much easier than actually reformulating your products.
Also, the "Contains BPA; but nobody except professional toxicologists studying the subject and hardcore supply chain wonks knows that" industries have been largely unaffected.
Pretty much as theory would predict, the areas closest to ideal markets with zero barriers to entry and equally informed participants achieved something close to a free market solution. The areas that deviated from those assumptions, whether by fraud, subterfuge, imperfect information, or existence of externalities did not.
We are simply "selecting" for people who stay well informed and actually have a decent IQ. We need to compensate for all dumbasses we are keeping alive despite their own unintentional efforts to put themselves out of the gene pool.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The opposite of Idiocracy? We definitely need more products like this!
Sterilize the stupid, kill off the uneducated, yay!
No sig today...
The article didn't say that the study proved that BPA is dangerous. It said that they proved that BPA can cross the placenta. All it takes to prove that something possible is to record a single incident of it occurring. That is definitely within the realm of what a single study can do, and assuming that these studies were performed correctly, that is exactly what they did. There are a lot of things that cannot be conclusively proven with a single piece of evidence, but the use of the word in this headline here is perfectly legitimate.