From Michael Shaw, Shaw’s Eco-Logic, a law that brings some sense, balance and yes, logic, to the environmental and chemical debates, a new post, “More good news on BPA“:

Leave it to Health Canada to finally put a stake through the heart of the BPA fear-mongering nonsense. Those of you who have been following this issue have often read that Canada protects the health of its citizens ever so much better than our own FDA. Since EWG and NRDC are fond of promoting this idea, let’s see what the good scientists at Health Canada discovered…

They tested the following classes of products for BPA:

• Baby food prepackaged in glass jars
• Canned powdered infant formula
• Bottled water

In all cases, dozens of products and different brands were tested, and in all cases, levels were exceedingly low. This new data confirms Health Canada’s previous conclusion that exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children.

In fact, Health Canada stated that an adult would have to drink approximately 1,000 liters (264 US gallons) of water from polycarbonate water cooler bottles every day to approach the science-based safe intake limit for BPA recently established in Canada.

The Canadian Press’s online headline, “Health Canada detects BPA in jarred baby food, water; levels considered safe.”

How much you want to bet that most papers drop the part after the semicolon?

The thing about modern science and technology? It’s very, very sensitive. It can almost detect anything in anything, the tiniest amounts. Stories that just report, “X detects Y,” are meaningless.

Following up on Monday’s item on the campaign against BPA, here’s some more about the trial lawyer/media/activist combine that targets specific chemicals and industries:

Add Wisconsin to the states where a legislative ban in now being considered. What took so long? After all, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel campaigned against the chemical in a series of “investigative” stories clearly designed to win journalism prizes.

Last April Rowan Scarborough wrote a hard-hitting, admittedly partisan piece,  “The Great Left Smear Machine,” in the conservative weekly “Human Events” demonstrating the connection among a PR firm, Fenton Communications, activists like the Environmental Working Group, and the trial lawyer industry in targeting the chemical, which is used to strengthen plastics. The gist from Scarborough:

In 2007, a group called the Environmental Working Group sponsored a study that said BPA is hazardous to your health. Fenton Communications describes the working group as partner and client. David Fenton sits on its board of directors. There had been previous anti-BPA studies, but this one — with Fenton’s backing — got the ball rolling.

Quickly, Fenton successfully placed anti-BPA stories across the liberal news media. Another group, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, spearheaded an anti-BPA petition drive. It asked citizens to demand that baby bottle producers cease using the chemical.

The CHEJ has been funded in part by the Tides Foundation, which helped Fenton set up its Environmental Media Services. Tides also has received George Soros money. The San Francisco-based Tides is another Fenton client, and it funds a number of environmental groups who are paying clients of Fenton Communications as well.

By 2008, the reporters were in a BPA frenzy. With the news media onboard and a grass roots effort under way to find BPA victims, a perfect storm arose for rich and powerful trial lawyers. They began filing billion-dollar lawsuits across the country against baby bottle makers and retailers who sold them.

That’s a very good article on the combine. Neil Munro of The National Journal also did a story on the campaign against BPA in November, “Toxic Suspicions Could Fuel Regulatory Overhaul,” noting how the non-BPA bottle manufacturer BornFree stood to make millions from the chemical’s banning. And who does BornFree’s public relations? Fenton Communications.

James Lileks reporting in The Bleat on the consequences of the anti-BPA  campaigns, litigation, legislation, hysteria:

Got up to get out, fetched 3 girls from the summer day-camp on the other side of town. I asked one of the counselors if my daughter could have a new water bottle with the camp logo, since she’d dropped hers and it had shattered. She said yes – in fact, they were all breaking, and had to be replaced. “We switched to a different kind of plastic because the parents worried that the other plastic gave you cancer,” she said. “But they all broke.”

Now why is that?

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, writing at Forbes.com, “The Latest Toxin Activists Want to Ban”:

The “toxin du jour” these days is bisphenol A, otherwise known as BPA. Environmental activists claim BPA harms babies as it dissolves out of the sides of baby bottles and sippy cups, causing everything from cancer to learning disabilities and even obesity. Spurred by consumer groups, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wants Coca-Cola, Del Monte and other companies investigated for trying to stop anti-BPA legislation.

In fact, BPA has been used safely for about 60 years to make plastic bottles hard and shatter-proof, for the coatings of metal food containers and even in cellphones and medical devices. Nonetheless, the California Senate recently passed a law to ban the sale of sippy cups and baby bottles that contain BPA, and Chicago recently banned such products from city shelves.

More from Canada’s Financial Post, “Junk Science Week: Case of chemophobia” from S. Robert Lichter and Trevor Butterworth of George Mason University’s Statistical Assessment Service. In the U.S. Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer has sponsored S. 753, the BPA-Free Kids Act.

There’s a buck to be made, though. On TV these days, you may find yourself watching ads for the EcoCanteen, a stainless steel water bottle that uses fear of BPA as a major selling point. The company has been lambasted at consumer websites such as The Greenest Dollar for “shady customer service, high fees, and aggressive upselling.” Well, that fits the whole BPA scare/litigation model, doesn’t it?

P.S. Have to mention Lileks’ punchline, responding to the camp counselor: “Wanted to say ‘yes, we were having a white-lead gargling contest last night, and the bottles leaked everywhere.’”

Another good report on NRP’s Morning Edition today from Jon Hamilton on the chemical used in some consumer plastic products, bisphenol A (BPA), and regulatory practices and philosophy. From “Is ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’ Reason Enough For Law?“:

The precautionary principle dates back to at least the 1930s, says Jonathan Wiener, a professor of law, environmental policy and public policy at Duke University. He says there are at least three basic forms of the principle, though one scholar found 19 variations.

Weaker versions of the principle say it’s OK to take precautions against a threat to health or the environment even if it’s not clear that the threat has caused any harm. Stronger versions say it’s essential to take precautionary action.

Extreme Interpretations

And then there’s the variation that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) used last month when she introduced her bill to restrict BPA.

“If you do not know for certain the chemical is benign, it should not be used,” Feinstein said.

Even advocates for restricting BPA acknowledge that’s an impossible standard to meet. The NPR reporter Hamilton also includes an important fact some stories (like this 2008 NPR story) leave out, that the European Union “hasn’t acted against BPA even though it has a law requiring it to follow the precautionary principle.”

Today’s story follows another fairly reported piece on BPA on April 1 by Hamilton, “Public Concern, Not Science, Prompts Plastics Ban.” The only missing element from both pieces is an acknowledgement that there are major costs associated with eliminating a particular chemical or substance from the production process, costs ultimately borne by the consumer.

Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee has a smart report on legislators who are busy looking through your cupboards for products that offend them. The two, in particular, are Assemblyman Mark Leno and Sen. Carole Migden, sponsoring bills against fire retardant chemicals and bisphenol-A (BPA), respectively.

The bills, Leno’s AB 706 and Migden’s SB 1713, are emblematic of the Legislature’s penchant for regulatory decrees on consumer products – based on what? Conclusive scientific evidence of looming harm, pressure from folks who dislike something for some reason, or merely a headline-grabbing crusade?

Some call them “nanny bills.” Whatever the name, they are proliferating, as Monday’s passage of a measure to ban “trans fats” from restaurant foods (but not, oddly enough, from foods prepared at home) attests. An Assembly committee analysis of Leno’s measure put the syndrome this way:

“Increasingly, the Legislature is faced with measures dealing with the management of individual chemicals and/or products of concern to public health and safety and the environment . . . This seems to be leading policy-makers away from a systematic analysis of threats to public health and safety and the environment.

That’s an unusually good legislative analysis. Wonder what the analyst had to say about the trans-fats ban.

Coincidently, one of the proposed litigation groups that met at the just-completed American Association for Justice conference — the national trial lawyers group — targets bisphenol-A. Coincidently.

BPA appears prominently in another, semi-related story by Mark Gunther at Fortune, a piece we recommend, “Wal-Mart: the new FDA.” With activists, the threats of lawsuits and politicians spooking the giant retailers, decisions about product safety are now being made outside the regulatory world, with little regard to, well, product safety.

The giant retailer, along with CVS (CVS, Fortune 500) and Toys ‘R Us, announced recently that it plans to stop selling baby bottles containing the chemical bisphenol-A.

The question is, why? Bisphenol-A has been widely used since the 1950s. The Food and Drug Administration, as well as Japanese and European regulators, have no problems with it. Canada is about to ban it from baby bottles, but officials term the move purely precautionary.

To be sure, other scientists worry because animal studies have linked small doses of BPA to cancer and other health problems. But scientific debate isn’t driving the baby bottle war; a hard-hitting push by activist groups, politicians and trial lawyers is.

So, there are alternative products, right?

If opponents drive BPA out of the food supply, consumers will pay. Some BPA-free plastic bottles sell for $10 each, more than twice the price of bottles with BPA. Baby bottles made of glass can break, potentially causing injury. Replacing BPA in the lining of cans would mean retooling all that packaging, and it’s not clear that there are safe alternatives.