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« Warning: this pesticide may be toxic to children and fish | Main | Santa, please bring me toxin-free fragrance »

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel does bang-up job on BPA

Our hats are off to the top-notch reporters at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who have invested time, energy and considerable expertise to daylight important pieces of the puzzle that is bisphenol-A. We weren't surprised to hear that they won the John B. Oakes Environmental Journalism Prize from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for the important Chemical Fallout series.

We heartily agree with the judges for honoring Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger, and Cary Spivak. As the judges said, these dedicated investigative reporters "worked tirelessly to analyze the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its efforts to protect the public from dangerous chemicals found in common household items such as baby bottles and toy rubber ducks. The Journal proved that despite millions of taxpayer dollars spent by the government, the EPA failed to test products for hazards to the body's reproductive, developmental and behavioral systems, particularly impacting fetuses and women of child-bearing age."

As we have learned in our own work here at EWG, reviewing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of public documents to better understand an issue, a process, a failed regulation is an essential step connecting the public and our lawmakers with the information we all need to create effective public policy.

If you haven't been keeping tabs on this series, we encourage you to have a read. It's well worth your time. All of the articles are posted here. The paper's editorial board made a very strong statement on BPA just today, a bit of which we are repeating here - because it's right on target:

If it wasn't clear before Monday's disappointing letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it should be clear now:

The FDA is punting. The agency sees no reason to ban, or even restrict, the use of the chemical bisphenol A. In the letter to its advisory board, the FDA said it would review more studies and do more research on BPA. Until then, the chemical should be considered safe for anyone to use, even babies. Is this the FDA or the CYA?

The FDA has dithered for years, embracing studies that found the ubiquitous chemical to be harmless - nearly all of which were paid for by the chemical industry - while ignoring a much larger body of independent research that linked BPA to an array of health problems, including diabetes and cancer.

BPA has been studied to death. There is no need for further research to reach the conclusion that it shouldn't be in kids' products.

And to take it a step further, the newspaper created the Facebook group "No BPA in Kids Products," a clearinghouse for information and action on this issue. Join it to stay involved. We did.

[photo courtesy of flickr commons]

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