Bogus Anti-BPA Research By Erik Telford
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389313/bogus-anti-bpa-research-erik-telford
With your taxes, the government funds research to debunk its own agency’s assertion that BPA is safe.
Based on reading trend articles and the little stickers affixed to Nalgene water bottles, one might readily conclude that BPA, the common acronym for bisphenol A, is the contemporary danger to public health that lead was half a century ago. BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of many hard plastics and epoxy resins. When used in food packaging and containers, it helps to prevent spoilage, increases shelf life, and makes containers reusable. The popular but unfounded concern that we’ve started hearing in recent years is that it can somehow seep into our food and beverages and cause birth defects and other negative health consequences.
Based on the latest research — from the U.S. government, no less — these concerns are entirely baseless. The FDA is unequivocal in answering the question of the safety of BPA. Its website gives a single-word answer to the question of whether BPA is safe for humans: Yes. The FDA is not alone in its position. Its regulatory counterparts around the world, including in Canada, Japan, Germany, and the European Union, agree that BPA is safe.
So why the fears? Sadly, it appears that our tax dollars are largely to blame. As Mattie Duppler of the Cost of Government Center notes, data from the National Institutes of Health show that since 2000, nearly $170 million in grants has been doled out to fund research on BPA. Some of this money has been funneled through the NIH to anti-BPA causes.
The recent surge in anti-BPA sentiment becomes even more apparent when we examine where that $170 million went. From fiscal year 2000 to FY 2009, the government spent $51 million on BPA research, but that rate more than quadrupled in the following five years, when agencies spent $120 million. Incredibly, the increase in spending comes on the heels of a 2009 report from the National Toxicology Program, which found, in no uncertain terms that “there is no direct evidence that exposure of people to bisphenol A adversely affects reproduction or development.”
This is what happens when government agencies conflate fringe environmentalist politics with their proper purpose: ensuring the safety and well-being of the public. We see this misinformation in communities such as Concord, Mass., where activists have convinced the town to outlaw sales of plastic water bottles, arguing that too few bottles are recycled. We can only wonder if the day will come when the NIH starts spending millions to figure out whether it is safe to drink water in the first place.
In essence, the NIH gives grants to fund anti-BPA, anti-FDA research, which means that the government is using taxpayer dollars to attack . . . itself. And while activists at the NIH are on the warpath against the FDA’s repeated findings that BPA poses no health threat to humans, taxpayers are footing the bill. This is an especially egregious waste of our tax dollars.
The NIH must concentrate on more-pressing concerns and fulfill its responsibility to protect Americans from threats that we otherwise can’t guard ourselves against. Squandering tens of millions of tax dollars on research into chemicals that have at best debatable consequences, however, is a flagrant abuse of the public trust. It’s a prime example of why so many Americans rightfully doubt whether government agencies – the IRS, NSA, NIH, among others — have their best interests in mind.
— Erik Telford is senior vice president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
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