Thursday, May 27, 2010

Another bad thing about bisphenol-A: cancer

I've written before about SB 797, which would prohibit bisphenol-A from being used in many food containers for kids. It is an endocrine disruptor that causes a host of problems in little kids and breast cancer in adults, and now it is associated with other cancers and does a bunch of bad things to fetuses.
Developing embryos 'read' environmental cues as a forecast of the outside world. These cues can affect the way certain genes are expressed and in this way alter the structure and function of organs. Studies in rodents show that EDCs can cause harm at much lower levels if exposure happens during organ formation as opposed to exposures during adulthood.
Why is this so hard? As I said before,
All the medical groups were for (SB 797), and all the industry groups were against it. Guess who won. ... We have decided as a state that the fact that this chemical causes behavioral changes and changes to sexual organs in children and cancer in adults is not important enough to inconvenience manufacturers of food containers or to make them use more expensive ingredients. Our democracy in action.

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