One night not too long ago, as my wife Katherine and I settled into the kitchen to make some pasta sauce, I reached into the cupboard for a can of our favorite organic, fire-roasted tomatoes. These tomatoes were expensive, and, we'd always thought, entirely worth it.
Like many such products, the tomatoes were packed in a can that came with a full array of marketing cues: plump fruit ripening on the vine; the word "organic" splashed not just across the top of the can but emblazoned in the (now-ubiquitous) USDA organic logo below as well. Another line boasted that the can was packed in "lead-free" enamel. Clearly, the company's marketing department had figured out that -- for a certain segment of shoppers, anyway -- what is left out of a product is as important as what is put in.
On a whim, Katherine decided to put a call into the company anyway. She had been hearing that many canned fruits and vegetables were packed in cans lined with Bisphenol A, a plastic that is a known hormone disruptor. At the time, a couple of years ago, BPA had been in the news a lot: reports had been surfacing, for example, that the chemical leaked from plastic baby bottles into breast milk. Studies were emerging that consistently linked the chemical to breast cancer, testicular cancer, and a host of reproductive problems. A handful of states had become so alarmed by the chemical they had banned it outright (though, frustratingly, often only from products that wound up in baby's mouths).
When a spokesperson came back on the phone and said our beloved "organic" tomatoes had in fact been packed -- marinating, you might say -- in a can lined with BPA, Katherine and I were left pondering not just the meaning of the word "organic" but the reliability of labels generally. There was no mention of BPA on the can. Should tomatoes that were grown without pesticides still be considered "organic" if they'd been steeping in BPA? And come to think of it, when was the last time you saw mention of any ingredient for any package of the food you eat?
Should we be worried?
This week, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are reporting that consumption of a single serving of canned soup daily over five days resulted in over a 1000 percent increase in urinary BPA. The study, published in the JJournal of the American Medical Association confirms what health and consumer advocates have been saying for years: there are too many synthetic toxins in too many everyday products; there is too little known about these toxins; and there is too little information about any of it for consumers to make intelligent decisions. And as Katherine and I discovered, this is true even if you try to eat "organic." It has become almost impossible to shop your way out of our toxic world.
So what to do? Noting that the CDC has discovered 212 chemicals "coursing through Americans' bodies," Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has once again introduced a bill that would update -- for the first time in 35 years -- the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, the law overseeing chemical regulation. The law is so antiquated that the Government Accountability Office has called it "high risk." Under Lautenberg's bill, the EPA would survey the 80,000 chemicals in common use today, only 200 of which have ever been adequately tested for their impact on human health. Chemicals the EPA considers risky would be required to be tested further. Rather than assume their products are safe, in other words, companies would have to prove it. This has been the model in Europe for years.
Industry, of course, has mastered the discourse of skepticism and dismissal. At a hearing on the Lautenberg bill last week in Washington, lobbyists from the American Chemistry Council continued to maintain -- as they have for 35 years -- that existing laws are adequate. Given industry's influence in Washington, there is little reason to be optimistic about the bill's fate; if the bill fails, the regulation of toxic chemicals will be left, again, to consumer advocates, and to the states.
There has been some progress. Due to market pressure, the company that made our organic tomatoes, Muir Glen, a subsidiary of General Mills, says it has now switched to cans made without BPA. States such as Maine, Maryland, California and Oregon have succeeded in banning individual chemicals, from BPA to flame retardants, that have been shown to be both dangerous and common in people's bodies. But each regulatory effort, for each chemical, in each state, is resisted with an aggressive lobbying campaign by industry. Indeed, with 50 states and 80,000 chemicals, this is just the way industry would like regulation to proceed: one chemical, in one state, at a time. At this rate, it will be a long time before any of us can walk the aisles of a supermarket with any real confidence.
Follow McKay Jenkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@mckayjenkins
David Katz, M.D.: Of Course Food Is Addictive! Why Is Anything Else?
Dara O'Rourke: Trick or Toxic? The Chemical Industry's Newest Tricks on Your Kids' Health
Leo Galland, M.D.: Are Chemicals Making You Sick? The Hidden Health Problem of Chemical Sensitivity
Canned soup increases BPA levels - USATODAY.com
BPA levels soar after eating canned soup: Study - HealthPop - CBS ...
Soaring BPA Levels Found In People Who Eat Canned Foods | Fox ...
BPA: Canned soups 'increases risk of heart disease and diabetes ...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511151337.htm
It is associated with poor outcomes in birth as well as PCOS
And Thyroid Problems
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110711131614.htm
And we wonder yet again what so many Americans are overweight and listless.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110113082720.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100621143602.htm
We have the tech now to allow all the foods to be tested inexpensively on a sampling basis and then publish these results online, so everyone can get a good idea what a given food is likely to contain. This must be done by an indepentinet organization, I would think gas chromatigraph would be the best tech.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/december-2009/food/bpa/overview/bisphenol-a-ov.htm
Supposedly, the new laminated flooring is loaded with BPA! And, the cancer rate still keeps on climbing.
Why would BPA in laminate flooring matter? You don't eat food that's been sitting on your floor, do you? Or are you afraid you might develop foot cancer?
BPA in laminate flooring matters because of off-gassing, which can occur for years after it is installed. There are many other VOCs that are known to cause cancer and that off-gas as well, in products such as paint, carpet, paneling and many others. You should be very concerned.....especially if you have children!
The laminate flooring continuously gives off the carcinogen; it will always do so. Of course, then humans breathe it while it pollutes their environment. As skin is the largest organ of the human body, the individual would have to be sealed in a glass case not to absorb the BPA.
I don't care if you want BPA removed from baby items but I do have a problem with removing the BPA lining from cans. This prevents spoilage, yes it replaced lead linings and there is no replacement!
Obviously there is a replacement for BPA as a lining for cans, as indicated in the article:
"Muir Glen, a subsidiary of General Mills, says it has now switched to cans made without BPA." My only question is what did they replace it with and is it any safer than BPA?
The replacements for BPA so far have no toxicology data. So, no, they are not safer. Hence, there is no replacement for BPA.
Leave cans alone for now. Multiple countries have studied BPA in the last 2 years and have still found it safe as it is being used. Even the EU came up with that assessment.
Very sad really; since when did committing the act of living become such a deathtrap?
When God created everything He declared it "very good." Man was perfect. This meant that they were 100% suited to the environment that they lived in. They were not perfect in the sense that if they decided they wanted to fly then gravity would not have affected them. Sin entered through disobedience and then here we are advanced in technology, been to the moon and still cannot control pollution and still cannot stop fighting, still greedy, and still cannot stop being sick.
Once the imperfection of sin hit humans then they started to dirty everything. Humans are the catalyst to the harm being done to the earth.
Even the life-sustaining act of taking a drug to benefit us or keep us alive is killing us. The drugs excretated from humans is everywhere, it is murdering the soil, the oceans, the freshwater and every drug you take has a side effect sometimes creating a problem worse than the original ailment.
But what you are saying is very important: the whole purpose of this world is supposed to be a maintenance of balance. Even nature itself must have a balanced ecosystem. Animals such as humans exist on a food chain which maintains a natural balance--or is supposed to.
Human beings have, over the centuries, have become grossly out of balance--our "motorcycle maintenance" needs some serious fine tuning.
We are the victims of our own technologies. Processed foods have filled up our bodies with an unnatural does of chemicals. We drink to excess, smoke and overeat then we try to short cut back to that balance with a wheelbarrow full of drugs because the commercials, the doctors, the pharmas all tell us that we need the quick fix.
We are caught in a vicious cycle of death by ingestion-life has become an act of chemical conditioning--and that sad fact is a true great Satan.
"It is not completely fanciful to think of the ecosphere as a kind of a living organism in its own right, with all of its parts interacting in somewhat the way that cells, tissues, organs and systems interact within an organism. The interaction of body parts, called physiology is designed to preserve homeostasis ... the complex interactions that occur in the ecosphere constitutes its physiology ... The human species is presently acting as the disease organism of the ecosphere, much as typhoid or pneumonia bacteria may cause illness in our own bodies" ¹
Then it cites water and air pollution as examples. It also mentions that we all carry strontium-90, lead, asbestos and too much carbon monoxide.
¹ The World of Biology, Davis/Solomon pg 17 - ©1979