Posted for Heidi Ledford
And now the latest in the seemingly endless saga of bisphenol A (BPA): a report on a report in which the new report finds the earlier report lacking. The new report also suggests that the earlier report be revised using some of the recommendations from yet another report put together by a different governmental agency.
Welcome to the bewildering world of BPA, a chemical found in some plastic bottles and the lining of cans, the safety of which has been a matter of intense debate for years.
The US Food and Drug Administration recently released a draft safety assessment that deemed the BPA levels found in food safe. But congressmen, scientists, and activists have criticized that assessment, in part for excluding data from many academic studies.
Today, a scientific advisory committee commissioned by the FDA released a report that in part agrees with these criticisms.
The advisory panel said it disagreed with the decision to leave out a “large number” of studies from the draft safety assessment. The safety assessment focused on studies that followed ‘good laboratory practices’, a series of guidelines intended to regulate industry-sponsored studies. Critics have argued that doing so excludes most academic research. (A lengthy commentary on this issue can be found here.) The scientific advisory panel, meanwhile, urged the FDA to rely on and update the list of studies painstakingly compiled by the National Toxicology Program for its safety assessment of BPA.
The news prompted a quick response from Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa): “The FDA needs to explain the advisory panel’s rebuke,” he said in a statement.
The FDA, meanwhile, said that the panel’s findings would be discussed at a public meeting on 31 October.
The advisory panel’s critical stance may also ease conflict-of-interest allegations swirling around the panel’s chair, Martin Philbert, director of the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center. Several congressmen raised questions about Philbert’s objectivity after learning that a donor to the Risk Science Center had openly expressed his opinion that BPA is safe.
Philbert tried to defend himself in an editorial on 20 October to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Donations to the Risk Science Center do not affect research performed there, he asserted. Why, the Center previously found that dioxins are hazardous even though it had received donations from Dow Chemical, Philbert added.
Woops. Dow Chemical, you see, also makes BPA. Philbert’s attempt to defend himself only added fuel to the fire.