Now a ground-breaking study released in the journal Human Reproduction offers what its authors call “the first evidence that exposure to BPA in the workplace could have an adverse effect on male sexual dysfunction.”

BPA factory workers suffer sexual problems

The scientific team, underwritten by Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, CA., spent five years studying 634 Chinese factory workers whose bodies had been severely contaminated with BPA.

Animal studies link BPA to extraordinary array of subtle but serious chronic health problems, including impairment of the ability to think and behave normally, reproductive and cardiovascular system damage, cancer, diabetes, asthma and obesity. Evidence of BPA’s impact on human health has been more elusive – which is why the Kaiser Permanente study is making headlines around the globe.

After a year of being bombarded with BPA, the Chinese workers reported disturbing sexual problems: four times as much erectile dysfunction and seven times as many ejaculation difficulties as a control group, the Kaiser team found.

Nearly all Americans are BPA-positive

Most people don’t experience BPA exposure nearly as intense as the factory workers. But nearly all Americans test positive for low-level BPA contamination, as evidenced by body burden testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Working Group and other academic and non-profit organizations.

As Kaiser research team leader De-Kun Li, MD, Ph.D., put it, the China workers study “raises the question: Is there a safe level for BPA exposure, and what is that level?”

AMA takes up BPA battle

Many scientists specializing in hormonal and reproductive systems say there’s no such thing as a “safe” dose of BPA, a powerful endocrine-disrupting chemical. Earlier this week, the American Medical Association Board of Delegates resolved to work with the federal government to minimize the public’s exposure to BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The measure was proposed by the Endocrine Society, which, with 14,000 hormone researchers and medical specialists in more than 100 countries, recently warned that “even infinitesimally low levels of exposure [to endocrine-disrupting chemicals] –indeed, any level of exposure at all– may cause endocrine or reproductive abnormalities, particularly if exposure occurs during a critical developmental window. Surprisingly, low doses may even exert more potent effects than higher doses.”

“The AMA represents a very important constituency of physicians who have a lot of credibility and clout,” says Andrea Gore, Ph.D., a University of Texas-Austin researcher who co-authored the Endocrine Society statement. “If members of the AMA can now get behind the statement and actually affect regulations, then I think we can consider it a victory.”

It’s in the cans

Most of the BPA in Americans’ bodies is believed to come from leaching from BPA-based epoxy food can linings and polycarbonate baby and drink bottles, sippy cups and other food containers. Under pressure from EWG and other scientific and environmental health groups, the federal Food and Drug Administration is weighing proposals to ban the chemical in food packaging.

Because of FDA inaction, last October EWG president Ken Cook wrote major infant formula and canned food producers urging them to take voluntary measures to remove BPA from their can linings.

20 of 28 canned food brands contaminated

Laboratory tests commissioned by EWG in 2007 found BPA in 20 out of 28 brands of canned food and drink, including B&M, Bush’s Best, Campbell’s Condensed (soup), Campbell’s Chunky, Campbell’s SpaghettiOs, Chef Boyardee, Chicken of the Sea, Coca-Cola, Del Monte, Dole, Ensure, Green Giant, Kroger store brand, Libby’s, Nestle Carnation, Pepsi-Cola, Progresso, S&W, Slim-Fast, Swanson and Wolfgang Puck.

An EWG survey found that all four leading makers of liquid infant formula sold in North America used BPA to line their cans. These included Nestle (Good Start), Ross-Abbot (Similac and Isomil), Mead Johnson (Enfamil), and PBM (maker of store-brand formulas sold at Target, Kroger and dozens of other retailers).

Last week, Consumers Union, an advocacy organization, reported that its laboratory tests had found BPA in canned food packaged under the brand names Campbell’s Condensed, Progresso, Del Monte and Nestle.

Top environmental regulator, scientist act on BPA

The FDA’s plans are, as yet, unclear. But other top administration scientists and regulators are zeroing in on BPA. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has identified BPA as a priority for regulatory action. And Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, has recently committed $30 million in federal stimulus funds to research the many unanswered questions about BPA.

We know this much: with every day that passes, the cases against BPA hardens, like the plastics it makes.

We’re also blogging on Huffington Post. Visit us there.

Photo credit: abarndweller

During the Bush administration, the FDA contended that traces of BPA leached into food and drink from packaging were safe, even for pregnant women, infants and young children.   Despite contradictory findings from the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which last year said that BPA might damage the brains, reproductive systems and behavior of fetuses, infants and children, the FDA has refused to restrict BPA use in food packaging, provoking protests from scientists and environmental and health advocates.

Since President Obama took office, the agency’s leadership has given mixed signals, on one hand promising a “fresh look” at BPA safety but suggesting, on the other, that further studies could delay decisive regulatory action.

FDA officials have indicated they would detail their plans for the BPA issue later this month.   Meanwhile, several developments are intensifying the spotlight on BPA — and putting FDA on the spot:

• Thirty-three university and independent experts on BPA and other chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system have written FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg urging her not to postpone restrictions on BPA while agency scientists conduct a five-year, $10 million study of the chemical.
• The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has awarded $30 million in federal stimulus funds to fill research gaps on BPA.
• Consumer Reports, published by the non-profit Consumers Union, has made public new tests of canned foods, finding that nearly all brands tested contained BPA that had migrated from the containers. Even foods labeled “organic” and packaged in “BPA-free” cans showed low levels of BPA contamination, Consumers Union said.

BPA leaching in canned goods

The Consumers Union project augments and amplifies 2007 tests by Environmental Working Group that found BPA in more than half of 97 cans of common canned goods, including  infant formula.  BPA, made from feedstock tracing back to the petrochemical benzene, is an integral ingredient in epoxy resin, used in industrial paints and coatings, including food and beverage can linings. The chemical is also essential to the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic, found in thousands of products, from computer and cell phone casings and hard hats to water jugs and, until recently, baby bottles and sports bottles.

BPA-based synthetics are notoriously unstable.  Studies documenting widespread BPA migration into the food supply have moved an increasing number of scientists and environmentalists to press for enforceable regulatory curbs.

“If you can demonstrate that a chemical is endocrine-active,” said R. Thomas Zoeller, Ph.D. an endocrine system specialist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and lead author of the 33-scientists’ letter to FDA chief Hamburg, “then I think you need to look very serious at allowing every man, woman and child in this country to come in contact with it, period.”

More funds for basic research

On a second track,  NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., who also heads the National Toxicology Program,  using stimulus money to  fund basic research into how BPA and other chemicals that act like hormones in the body may be causing subtle changes in vital systems and gene expression, including behavioral changes, obesity, diabetes, reproductive system cancers adn other disorders, asthma, cardiovascular diseases and gene-level changes that transcend generations.

“The kind of sophisticated research that is being sponsored by NIEHS is required for us to understand endocrine disruptors in a broader way, “ Zoeller said,  “not just BPA and not just estrogen.  There are tentacles of endocrine disruptors in the environment that are acting like weak drugs,  that are being exposed to everybody on a daily basis.”

Significantly, the NIEHS stimulus awards are going to a number of researchers who have been highly critical of the FDA. Among them: Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a biologist at the University of Missouri at Columbia whose research team is credited with producing the first hard evidence that low doses of BPA caused irreversible damage to the male reproductive system.

“Even if BPA were banned in all products immediately,” said Vom Saal, “there would still be billions of pounds of this product out in the environment. There is a need for research to identify in more detail what the hazards are, what the molecular mechanisms are, particularly looking at infants. We have very little information about how much BPA is actually present in infants.”

Lynn Goldman on board at FDA

To date, the FDA has not moved aggressively, as its critics had hoped.   Last August, EWG  asked Hamburg to replace Mitchell Cheeseman, Ph.D., the agency’s lead scientist for the BPA review, on grounds that he was reported to have consulted closely with chemical industry officials and that his team continued to rely heavily on just two chemical industry studies that found BPA exposure to be relatively benign.

A course correction may be in the works.  EWG has learned that Jesse Goodman, M.D., M.P.H., the FDA’s Science Advisor, has engaged Lynn Goldman, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a pioneer in research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and a leading voice for strong environmental health policy, to act as a part-time consultant on BPA and related issues.

Industry opposition expected

Any effort by FDA to restrict BPA exposure is sure to be fought by chemical makers, who reap an estimated $6 billion yearly in global sales of BPA, and food processors hoping to avoid the expenses of developing alternative packaging and retooling assembly lines.

Advocates for a ban on BPA in food packaging argue that it constitutes a small percentage of the BPA market – and in any case, public health should take priority over corporate bottom lines, as the federal Pure Food Act intended.

Vom Saal:  FDA legal threshold met

“If you have a thousand papers and they’re showing that this estrogenic chemical impacts every system you look at adversely,” says Vom Saal, “ how can you possibly say, we’re going to tell you it’s safe?  We cannot tell the American public this chemical is safe.”

• An Australian-European research team reported in the September 2009 issue of Surgical Neurology that using a cell phone for a decade “approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same (“ipsilateral”) side of the head as that preferred for cell phone use.”
• U.S. and South Korean scientists, evaluating data from 23 worldwide studies in the October 2009 Journal of Clinical Oncology, cited “evidence linking mobile phone use to an increased risk of brain tumors, especially among users of 10 or more years.”

“Academic studies with data over 10 years are consistently finding an increased risk of tumors, exactly as we have reported,” said Environmental Working Group Senior Scientist Olga Naidenko, Ph.D..

EWG study echoed

Naidenko, lead author of EWG’s September 2009 report, Cell Phone Radiation: Science Review on Cancer Risks and Children’s Health, says both new studies bolster EWG findings that over the long term, people should take steps to minimize exposure to cell phone emissions, especially their children’s use of the devices.

“Now that four-fifths of the American population are using cell phones,” Naidenko said, “the U.S. government should take a hard look at these findings and update its last-century standards.”

Industry studies found lower risks

Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the University of California-Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, and an author of the U.S.-South Korean analysis, said he and his colleagues had observed a “very disconcerting” pattern: “a large discrepancy” between rigorously-designed studies, generally those conducted by financially independent research institutions and “low-quality” studies funded mostly by the cell phone industry.

Industry-financed studies, Moskowitz said, tended to conclude that cell phone use was harmless, or actually beneficial.  “It almost seems like they’ve stacked the deck to not find an effect” from cell phone radiation, Moskowitz told Environmental Working Group in an interview last week.

The industry-backed studies “do find some inflated risks in terms of long term users,” Moskowitz said,  “but they dismiss [these findings] as not significant.”

By contrast, he said, “the higher quality studies have produced “very systematic and consistent evidence that there are [health] effects, and they see stronger effects where you’d most expect to see them — with longer exposure and on the same side of the brain where the phone is used.”

Conflicts of interest questioned

Because of reservations about potential conflicts of interest, the team, led by researcher-physician Seung-Kwon Myung of the South Korean National Cancer Center, who conducted the initial research while a visiting scholar at U.C.-Berkeley, took the unusual step of analyzing studies according to financial backing.   “We feel the need to mention the funding sources for each research group,” the research paper noted, “because it is possible that these may have influenced the respective study designs and results.”

Scientists urge global cell phone regulation reviews

The Australian-European study, led by Vini Khurana, Ph.D., of the Canberra Hospital Department of Neurosurgery and the Australian National University, reviewed 11 international studies of epidemiological data concerning long-term cell phone users.  The scientists found significant associations between glioma, an often malignant brain tumor and acoustic neuroma, a usually benign tumor, but not another generally benign brain tumor called a meningioma.

Although more study should be done, the scientists said, enough is known about the dangers of cell phone radiation to warrant “reassessment by governments worldwide of cell phone and also mast radiation exposure standards and the usage and deployment of this technology.”   They added:

“If the epidemiologic data continue to be confirmed, then in the absence of appropriate
and timely intervention and given the increasing global dependence on cell phone technology especially among the young generation, it is likely that neurosurgeons will see increasing numbers of primary brain tumors, both benign and malignant.”

Cautions for youthful cell phone

Moskowitz agreed.  “You certainly don’t want to be exposing your adolescents, children or babies to unnecessary risks when there are simple things you can do to protect them,” he said.

He advocated encouraging young cell users to send text-messages, because holding a phone 10 inches from the head reduces radiation exposure by a factor of 400.  As well, he said, children and adults alike should not keep their phones in pants pockets or in belt holsters because the devices are emitting radiation whenever they’re switched on.

None of this is the last word on cell phone radiation.  Other studies are in the works, including a nine-year, multi-national research project under the aegis of the World Health Organization and a series of studies backed by the U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program.    Many more academic and government studies are underway.  There’s no guarantee that any of these efforts will provide definitive answers.

So in the meantime, consumers are smart to take sensible, practical precautions, for themselves, and especially for their children.

The rest was almost history.

Erin Brockovich’s find led to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, whose compressor station, California state investigators determined , had polluted the soil and groundwater with millions of gallons of wastewater contaminated with toxic hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium-6. In 1996, the giant utility settled with 600 Hinkley residents for $333 million, a U.S. record.

But moviegoers who watched Julia Roberts’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Brockovich’s triumph might be surprised to learn that California authorities are only now getting around to setting a “safe” maximum for chromium-6 in tap water, estimated to affect 20 million to 33 million Californians. On Oct. 19, state officials set up shop in Oakland to hear Bay area citizens voice their views.

Front and center were Environmental Working Group and other environmentalists, including Brockovich.

“Wow, it’s been 18 years since I started working to fight this poison, and we’re finally looking at trying to set standards,” Brockovich said, according to The Oakland Tribune. “It’s high time we had stricter standards, better regulation and definitely more enforcement.”

Renee Sharp, director of EWG’s California office, told a press conference that a major reason for the long delay was “industry skullduggery.” A 2005 EWG investigation, entitled Chrome-Plated Fraud, documented how a consulting firm in the pay of Pacific Gas and Electric had distorted a key study to minimize the danger of chromium-6 contamination in food and water. The altered study influenced a blue-ribbon panel to advise California authorities against attempting to regulate chromium-6 in tap water.

After EWG exposed the consultant’s actions and conflicts of interest, California officials reopened the issue, culminating last August in a proposed safety goal for chromium-6 of .06 parts per billion in drinking water. Once the goal is established, regulators plan to embark on a rule-making process to set a legally enforceable upper limit for chromium-6 in the state’s water supply.

Sharp said the new goal, if translated into a legal cap, should afford Californians far more protection than the current state limit of 50 parts per billion total chromium in drinking water and also the federal safe drinking water rule of 100 parts per billion total chromium.

EWG contends that regulating total chromium fails to distinguish between dangerous chromium-6 compounds, which the U.S. government lists as known human carcinogens when inhaled, and less toxic forms of chromium , including chromium-3, a trace mineral considered essential for health. Both human and animal research, including a definitive 2007 study by the National Toxicology Program , links chromium-6 in drinking water to cancer

“Chromium-6 in drinking water is a carcinogen and should be specifically regulated,” Sharp said. “Right now, it’s really not. The state and federal standards are way out of date and not nearly strong enough to protect public health.”

Sharp said EWG would like to see the proposed safety goal lowered to reflect new state guidelines that call for more rigorous assessment of early life exposures to suspected carcinogens. “Otherwise, the special risks to California’s children won’t be adequately addressed,” Sharp said. She also noted that some scientists suggest a lower chromium-6 cap is needed to protect adults with compromised health

But for the present, she said, California deserves environmentalists’ support as the first state to move toward regulating chromium-6 pollution in drinking water.

Photo: Renee Sharp, EWG, and Erin Brockovich

Lisa Jackson, EPA’s chief and the president’s point-person on environmental policy, began something that should have happened 33 years ago: drive a stake into the heart of the horrendous federal chemicals regulatory program that has left an entire population polluted, beginning in the womb.

EPA plans to modernize the nation’s chemicals policy

Jackson laid out EPA’s plan to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) with more rigorous testing and safety standards and greater EPA authority to protect the public from the dangers of toxic chemical exposure.  The Obama administration’s “principles” for reform are:

• Chemicals should be reviewed against risk-based safety standards based on sound science and protective of human health and the environment.
• Manufacturers should provide EPA with the necessary information to conclude that new and existing chemicals are safe and do not endanger public health or the environment.
• EPA should have clear authority to take risk management actions when chemicals do not meet the safety standard, with flexibility to take into account sensitive subpopulations, costs, social benefits, equity and other relevant considerations.
• Manufacturers and EPA should assess and act on priority chemicals, both existing and new, in a timely manner.
• Green Chemistry should be encouraged and provisions assuring Transparency and Public Access to Information should be strengthened.
• EPA should be given a sustained source of funding for implementation.

The importance of bio-moniotoring

During a conference call this week with environmental and public health groups and industry representatives, Jackson spent considerable time discussing the importance of bio-monitoring as an effective tool to identify which chemicals should be reviewed first, since some are substantially more toxic to human health than others.

Later in the day, in a speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Jackson cited an EWG study conducted in 2005 that found hundreds of industrial chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies born in the United States. She noted:

A 2005 study found 287 different chemicals in the cord blood of 10 newborn babies – chemicals from pesticides, fast food packaging, coal and gasoline emissions, and trash incineration.

The Administration’s new “principles” embrace positions long advocated by environmentalists, including EWG, federal and state lawmakers who back TSCA reform, and for the first time ever, the chemical industry, which has laid out its own principles for modernizing TSCA.  Cal Dooley, President and CEO of the American Chemistry Council, said:

The chemical industry is committed to the safety of our products. Any effort to modernize our nation’s chemical management system must start with consumer safety as its highest priority.  Current law is more than 30-years old and the law must be updated to keep pace with science.

EPA calls for a changing burden of proof

Perhaps the most important element in the new Obama/Jackson vision for a modern chemical review process is the call to reverse the law’s assumption that a chemical is safe for human and environmental exposure unless proven otherwise.  Currently, the burden of proof falls on EPA to show that a chemical is unsafe, and it can do so only after the chemical has been introduced into use.

As a result, it has been been virtually impossible for the agency to ban or even restrict the use of any chemical. Even asbestos, the deadly material that causes serious disease in roughly 10,000 Americans every year, has escaped federal regulation.  Administrator Jackson described it well:

As with existing chemicals, the burden of proof falls on EPA. Manufacturers aren’t required to show that sufficient data exist to fully assess a chemical’s risks. If EPA has adequate data and wants to protect the public against known risks, the law creates obstacles to quick and effective action.

Since 1976, EPA has issued regulations to control only five existing chemicals determined to present an unreasonable risk. Five from a total universe of almost 80,000 existing chemicals.  In 1989, after years of study, EPA issued rules phasing out most uses of asbestos, an exhaustively studied substance that has taken an enormous toll on the health of Americans.  Yet, a court overturned EPA’s rules because it had failed to clear the many hurdles for action under TSCA.

The beginning of a new era

Jackson’s announcement signals the beginning of new era of toxics policy in America and will continue to build momentum for Congressional efforts to reform the federal toxics program.  For the past three Congresses, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Congressman Henry Waxman (D- CA, 30th) have been the champions of toxics reform with their legislation, “The Kid-Safe Chemicals Act.”  Congressman Bobby L. Rush (D- IL, 1st) is expected to lead the efforts on toxics reform in the House in this Congress.

What a difference new leadership at EPA has made. In April, 2008, a top EPA official testified on toxics reform before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  This is what Jim Gulliford, then-Assistant EPA Administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, had to say:

Overall, I believe that TSCA provides broad authority for the Agency to adequately control new and existing chemicals and to address emerging chemical issues as they arise.

I believe that TSCA provides EPA with the statutory tools necessary to protect public health and environment.

Next week, as the effort to reform and modernize federal regulation of toxic chemicals gets underway, environmentalists, public health advocates, chemical industry leaders and Lisa Jackson will convene an historic conference to discuss what a new federal chemicals policy should look like.  It should be a lively, frank debate and one I’m looking forward to.

Especially for kids. An estimated 71 percent of American tweens and teens own cell phones, and more than half use the device daily, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Is that much electronics-aided talking safe?

We at Environmental Working Group aren’t so sure. And we’re troubled, not only by what the science is showing but by the federal government’s failure to consider regulatory action to raise the margin of safety for constant cell phoners.

As Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG Senior Scientist and report author, put it:

“We would like to be able to say that cell phones are safe, but we can’t. The most recent science, while not conclusive, raises serious issues about the cancer risk of cell phone use that must be addressed through further research. In the meantime, consumers can take steps to reduce exposure.”

Current U.S. cell phone radiation standards, set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and based largely on 1992 cell phone industry recommendations, are outdated and allow 20 times more radiation to penetrate the head than the rest of the body.

Are US cell phone radiation standards too lax?

Scientists don’t know. But if they are, kids bear the greatest risks. Their softer, thinner skulls are less able to shield the brain from radiation. Scientists have found that their brains absorb twice as much cell phone radiation as those of adults

Because the feds aren’t getting it done, EWG has provided consumers with the information they need about cell phone radiation to make informed decisions about purchasing cell phones with lower emissions.

On September 14th, Naidenko testified before the Senate Appropriations Health subcommittee about the EWG report. Here she talks with EWG’s Chief of Staff, Heather White, just before her testimony (you can watch the full hearing here):

Other countries are more advanced

Health agencies in six nations — Switzerland, Germany, Israel, France, the United Kingdom and Finland — have issued warnings to limit cell phone use, particularly by children.

We can change this

Join us to ask the FCC to upgrade its standards to take account of the newest scientific evidence and also increasing cell phone use by children. Help us send the FCC a strong message that it’s time to update its standards. They should:

• Modernize their cell phone radiation standards.
• Give people the information they need to make informed decisions about their cell phones.
• Insist that the cell phone industry offer consumers phones that operate with the least possible radiation.

Want to know more? You can read our full report, search for a low-radiation phone (and see how yours ranks), and get our top 8 radiation reduction tips.

Threat to children  +

Overwhelming constituent support +

Solid science +

Well-financed industry opposition with fear tactics =

= Industry victory

Time and time again.  Here’s what happened this time:

The California state Assembly failed to pass SB 797, a bill which would have banned the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from use in children’s sippy cups, infant formula and other food and drink products designed for children aged three and younger (see how Assembly members voted).

Support, support, and more support for SB 797

More than 200 scientific studies have linked BPA, a synthetic estrogen used in many hard plastics, to reproductive disorders, prostate and breast cancer, autism, birth defects, infertility in men, early puberty in girls and other serious health risks.

Support for SB 797 included a broad range of concerned parents, scientists, physicians, public interest and health organizations, including CHANGE, Breast Cancer Fund, Environmental Working Group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, California Women Infants and Children (WIC), Moms Rising, the California Teachers Association and the California Labor Federation.

According to Breast Cancer Fund Policy Manager Gretchen Lee Salter, SB 797 failed to secure the necessary votes despite overwhelming support in favor of the ban because well-funded BPA industry lobbyists were successful in targeting legislators, swaying the vote against protecting the health of California’s children.

Director of the California Office of EWG Renee Sharp (pictured above, right), “The chemical and pharmaceutical industries weren’t shy in using the fear tactics they hatched behind closed doors here in California. Unfortunately, their influence, misinformation and outright deceptions carried the day.”

According to Sharp, Connecticut banned BPA with similar legislation last Spring by a nearly unanimous and bipartisan vote, before the BPA industry had fully developed and implemented their PR campaign.

A recent BCF press release reported that BPA industry meeting notes leaked in May 2009 revealed plans to sway the California legislature by “befriending people that are able to manipulate the legislative process.” The notes also detailed their strategies to use “fear tactics” to scare the public into opposing efforts to ban the chemical. These tactics appear to have been successful—at least for now, as the bill could be taken up again by the Assembly as early as January 2010.

“It’s sobering that our Assembly did not act to protect the millions of California babies and toddlers who are exposed to BPA every day,” said Salter. “This is a blow to kids’ safety, as well as to scientific integrity. Now we must work to ensure they do the right thing in the future.”

Let’s make sure that BPA-free future isn’t very far off.

That locked-in-place feeling gripped us during last week’s briefing on the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s progress – or lack of same — in reconsidering bisphenol A (BPA), the synthetic sex hormone found to leach into food and drink from plastic packaging. Back in June, the new FDA had promised a resolution of the question in “weeks, not months.”

Last week, though, FDA officials said the new review would not be done until late November. Moreover, they made it clear that the review was being led by one of the same officials who had developed the earlier, controversial FDA position that BPA food contamination is harmless to people.

We at Environmental Working Group don’t like to let the sun set on backpedaling, so immediately after the FDA staff briefing, Richard Wiles, EWG senior vice president for policy, sent a letter to FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, asserting that “the course on which the agency seems to have embarked will do nothing to restore public confidence in FDA.”

Specifically, Wiles asked Hamburg to remove a key FDA official from the BPA reassessment — Mitchell Cheeseman, who, as deputy director of the Office of Food Additive Safety, was a principle architect of the agency’s Bush era position that BPA food contamination presents no danger to the public, even infants.

Cheeseman’s name had surfaced back in September 2007, when he told Chemical and Engineering News, “FDA absolutely still considers BPA safe for uses in food containers.”

At the time, Cheeseman was dismissing a statement by the so-called Chapel Hill group, a panel of BPA experts convened by the National Institute of Environmental Health, who had asserted that BPA at levels to which people were exposed caused laboratory animals to develop, among other things, cancer, reproductive system abnormalities, brain and neurological disorders and diabetes.

The FDA stuck to its guns throughout 2008, even as more and more research labs produced evidence of the chemical’s hazards, leading Canada to ban BPA in baby bottles. Some U.S. states and municipalities enacted partial BPA bans in the early months of 2009.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel added texture to the saga by publishing internal FDA emails showing that Cheeseman had consulted with chemical industry lobbyists on the agency’s position but had excluded dissenting voices. At one point, the Journal Sentinel reported, Cheeseman asked an American Chemistry Council (ACC) official how to discredit a Japanese study of BPA toxicity.

Last October, the Science Board pronounced the FDA staff’s work on BPA “incomplete and unreliable.”

Harsh words. Last week, FDA officials indicated to the Science Board that they wanted to set up a fresh new BPA panel in place of the more experienced subcommittee responsible for that stinging indictment.

As far as we’re concerned, green isn’t always a good thing. So Wiles asked Hamburg to keep the battled-hardened panel to oversee the FDA staff’s work.

Bill Murray’s character extricated himself from the Groundhog Day infinity loop when he abandoned his self-absorbed malaise, devoted himself to the public good — and got the girl.

EWG’s message to FDA was similar, except for the girl part. Don’t just sit there. Do something. As Wiles put it, to salvage its reputation, FDA has to show that it “puts the health of the public before the interests of BPA manufacturers and users.”

Jackson’s move, announced Wednesday, is being welcomed by the environmental community and children’s health advocates. Perchlorate, a major component of rocket and missile propellants and many explosives, is a potent thyroid toxin known to disrupt brain and neurological development. For that reason, scientists and medical experts strongly urge that fetal and neonatal exposures to the chemical be prevented.

Defense and aerospace contractors are certain to fight any federal effort to order up perchlorate clean-ups, whose costs could run into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. During the Cold War, tons of improperly stored rocket fuel seeped into ground waters around rocket and missile test sites and chemical manufacturing and storage facilities.

As David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones reported last February, companies that make or use perchlorates have hired a “bevy of lobbyists,” among them Democrats such as former Nevada senator Richard Bryan, once a leading advocate for safe drinking water, to fend off stringent EPA measures.

MoJo updates its coverage this week by reporting that “lobbyists for perchlorate firms are well-funded and skilful—and those with Democratic ties, like Bryan, will arguably wield more influence in Obama’s Washington than they did during the era of Republican dominance. They’ll doubtless be working hard behind the scenes to head off the EPA’s new regulatory enthusiasm.”

Rocket fuel pollution in water and soil are bigger problems than you might think. In recent years, EPA has detected perchlorates in public water systems in 28 states and territories.
Environmental Working Group’s own tests have identified significant perchlorate contamination in nearly a fifth of lettuce samples grown in Southern California and Arizona.

During the Bush administration, EWG and other environmental health advocates, including the agency’s own Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, mounted futile efforts to persuade EPA leaders to crack down on perchlorate pollution.

Last November, EPA scientist Melanie A Marty, chair of the 28-member children’s health advisory panel, which works closely with the EPA Office of Children’s Health Protection, dispatched an unusually sharply-worded public letter to then EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson recommending a strict, legally-enforceable limit for perchlorate in drinking water.

Marty and her fellow panel members protested the agency’s assumption that perchlorate contamination of up to 15 micrograms per liter of water posed no threat to adults or even children. The agency’s failure to take into account differences between adult and children, she wrote, “does not recognize the science which supports the exquisite sensitivity of the developing brain to even small drops in thyroid hormone levels and the fact that neonates have much diminished stores of thyroid hormone relative to adults.” Without legal strictures and a much lower permissible perchlorate limit, she wrote, thousands of infants could be at risk for “life-long consequences of impaired brain development.”

Jackson’s announcement called for public comments over the next 30 days. She did not prejudge the outcome. But her carefully-worded statement sent a strong signal. It made clear that she and her aides had studied the Marty panel’s arguments closely and recognized their validity.

“It is critically important to protect sensitive populations, particularly infants and young children, from perchlorate in drinking water,” Jackson said.

She said she had ordered EPA staffers to place “special emphasis on evaluating the impact of perchlorate on infants and young children.” Moreover, she said, EPA calculations will “take…into account the fact that infants and children consume more water per body weight than do adults” and to consider “a broader range of alternatives for interpreting the available data on the level of health concern, the frequency of occurrence of perchlorate in drinking water, and the opportunity for health risk reduction through a national primary drinking water standard.”

If, as Jackson seems to be semaphoring, EPA is heading toward regulating perchlorate pollution, and presumably clean-up efforts, the effort will amount to a direct challenge to defense and aerospace contractors — who can be expected to make the EPA struggle for every inch of turf.

How fiercely and skillfully Jackson, and ultimately the Obama administration, counter the industries’ formidable legal and lobbying defenses will tell us a lot about the Obama presidency. The stakes are enormous. Is the administration willing to spend some of its political capital on this issue? Will it even have enough political capital left after the bruising health care and climate bill battles? There’s no way to answer these questions today. But very possibly, soon.

Tough call, and now you don’t have to make it.

Not, at least, when you’re picking up a bottle of water for the drink-holder of your Prius/Mini/Trek Madone.

Environmental Working Group’s research staff has just released a bottled water scorecard that grades close to 200 brands for labels or websites that disclose their sources, treatment methods and results of contaminant testing. (No matter what words the ads use – “pure,” “sparkling,” “essential,” no water is completely free of trace pollutants.)

Well, guess what. A bunch of humble, big-box-store, mass-market brands like Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Choice (B), Nestlé’s Pure Life (B) and Ozarka (B), and Walgreens (C) scored best for disclosure AND advanced treatment.

Pricey Perrier and S.Pellegrino scored Fs. These high-end brands’ labels and websites, our researchers found, were especially opaque. Elite Evian rated a C – good info on testing and source, partial data on purification method and no clue on advance treatment.

I keep thinking about the ad campaign, featuring leggy Euro supermodels.

“Hi, I’m Gisele. Where was I last week? I’ll never tell. Neither will my Perrier.”

“Kate here. Can you keep a secret? My Pellegrino can.”

Mystery can be alluring, but here at EWG, we’re old school when it comes to consumer products that make dazzling profits for big corporations like Nestlé, which produces Perrier and Pellegrino, and Coca-Cola, which owns Evian. We’re all about people’s right to know, so we investigate, the way newspapers used to. Newspapers. They were big bundles of paper with a lot of black printing…

Silliest bottled water: Aquamantra. It scored an F for zero testing info, zero purification info and an ad claim that the affirmative mantras on the label “actually change the molecular structure of the water, and most definitely change the flavor of the water.”

“Hi, I’m Claudia. When I want lychee-flavored water, I just chant for it.”

We find it particularly interesting that Sam’s Choice turns out to be one of the more consumer-friendly labels. That squares with Wal-Mart’s new eco-labeling program that aims to rate products for “sustainability.”

Sustainability — that’s a term environmentalists, lawyers, philosophers and students of modern culture struggle to define. We sure hope Wal-Mart’s initiative is true green, not a greenwash, and amounts to a net plus for the planet. We’ll be doing the numbers later.

But it’s a good idea if it works. We’re all for eco-labeling, as long as it’s solid, checkable and makes sense in the bigger scheme of things.

That’s why no bottled water brand aced the EWG report. Grade A goes only to filtered tap water, because municipal water utilities make extensive disclosures and because their product arrives in pipes, not little plastic bottles that clog the ocean and landfills. Like Mama said, green is as green does.

According to the Container Recycling Institute, Americans throw away 60 million bottles a day.

DIY chic is hot. So invest in a decent filtration system and do your own tap water bottling with a reusable BPA-free bottle. Many of them have fashion-forward designs and cool colors.

What are your favorite haute luxe, yet cleverly thrifty ideas for greening, really, our water and the rest of our stuff? We’d love to hear from you and also on Huffington Post.