Questioning Alternatives to BPA in Plastics

As evidence mounts of the dangers of bisphenol-A, there is a rising urgency to purge the common chemical from consumer products.

Several states have imposed bans on the use of BPA in baby bottles, and many companies have voluntarily substituted alternatives for the petroleum-based plasticizer, which research has now linked with everything from cancer to attention deficit disorder to asthma.

But does a "BPA-free" label guarantee a safer product? Not necessarily, according to experts, who suggest that while consumers are being misled, regulation continues to go awry.

"Frankly, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a pediatric environmental health expert at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Overall, some 80,000 chemicals are currently on the market, with only a small portion tested for safety. Even fewer have been evaluated for specific effects, such as the BPA-induced scrambling of hormone signals, which The Huffington Post reported last week might be contributing to obesity and diabetes epidemics. The consequences of this oversight go back decades. When Congress banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the 1970s, manufacturers began employing an alternate flame retardant: polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE). It wasn't until years later that scientists learned this close chemical cousin of PCB was just as harmful, if not more so.

from the Huffington Post