Baby Bottle Red Alert

Forgive us for wondering if Joe Biden had a hand in writing the FDA's recent pronouncement on bisphenol A (BPA), because it sounds strangely similar to his gaffe during the swine flu scare that travelling on airplanes was completely safe, though he wouldn't recommend it for his family.

Like airline travel, BPA is everywhere in our lives. It's found primarily in such hard plastics as baby bottles and the interior lining of canned goods, but it is also sometimes present in CDs, dental fillings, store receipts, kitchen appliances, newspaper ink and Blackberries. It's there to help maintain the structure of objects and provides a protective coating for wires and cans. Without BPA, people would be exposed to more harmful metals and substances.

Nonetheless, BPA has suddenly become ground zero in the endless enviro war against chemicals.

In 2007, the environmental activists organized a "baby rally" where they equipped mothers and toddlers with signs reading "Don't Pollute Me." In response to the public outcry, confused and panicked retailers tossed plastic baby bottles and other BPA-containing products from their shelves. When the head of Health Canada's investigation of BPA Mark Richardson let slip in a speech to a medical group in Arizona that "exposures [to BPA] are so low as to be totally inconsequential, in my view," antichemical crusaders pressed the government to investigate Mr. Richardson's bias. He was abruptly reassigned.

In its January update the FDA notes that BPA does not pose a risk at low levels of human exposure. Yet it goes on to recommend ways to limit exposure. Antichemical crusaders are likely to drive years of opposition through that crack of suspicion.

Most of those calling for stricter regulation of BPA cite a 2008 report by the National Toxicology Program, which said the agency "has some concern for effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate glands in fetuses, infants, and children" based on low-dose, laboratory animal studies.

Yes, but keep reading. Ignored by the critics are the report's other 320 pages, which mostly exonerate BPA, including the caveat that "'low' dose findings in laboratory animals have proven to be controversial for a variety of reasons, including concern for insufficient replication by independent investigators, questions on the suitability of various experimental approaches, relevance of the specific animal model used for evaluating potential human risks and incomplete understanding or agreement on the potential adverse nature of reported effects." That's all.

Still, a common complaint is that BPA is an endocrine disruptor that binds to estrogen receptors, potentially leading to a host of hormonal and sexual changes in men. But the National Toxicology study specifically notes "there is currently no evidence that estrogen receptor signaling plays an essential role in male-typical brain and behavioral sexual differentiation" in humans.

To appease BPA's critics, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has invested $30 million in further research on BPA's health effects into nearly any hypothetical link you can think of: behavior, obesity, diabetes, reproductive disorders, asthma, heart disease, trans-generational effects and cancer of the prostate, breast and uterus.

This is a giant fishing expedition. The NTP, FDA, EPA and European Food Safety Authorities, among other government agencies, all have declared BPA harmless in low doses, with insufficient research to corroborate links to any of these health problems.

Environmentalists hope that if researchers run more tests, they'll come up with more links. Statistically, the more studies and tests that are run, the more likely that positive—and false positive—results will turn up. Thus, they ask for tests unto eternity.

Because of the public anxiety the publicity has generated over BPA, it's disconcerting that the FDA plans to seek "further public comment and external input on the science surrounding BPA" in advance of a reassessment. That means the FDA reassessment will be subject to as much political pressure as activists can produce.

If the FDA wants to further investigate BPA for health effects, then the agency should make sure that it evaluates real science. In the BPA war, that isn't easy. But that's what a public made uneasy by scare stories deserves.