BPA: Canada knows, is the U.S. catching on?

The plastic additive bisphenol-A-- BPA--  has been banned from children's products in Canada, but it's gotten a pass in the U.S.-- until Friday, January 16, when the Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans. New York Times.

BPA can be found in hard plastic bottles, babies' sipping cups, dental fillings and sealants, and as coatings on the inside of virtually all soda and food cans.

BPA is also considered an endocrine disruptor, which means it could affect our health in many different ways.  Recently it's been implicated in making us fat!  See Newsweek.

So what can you do to avoid BPA given its ubiquitous nature?

• Know what PBA products look like-- usually hard and clear.
• Avoid No.7 plastic containers.
• Give up plastic containers entirely and use glass covered bowls or Chinese take-out food  containers.
• Use aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap (you can often clean and re-use aluminum foil).
• Avoid canned foods, especially canned soup and pasta.  Rinsing canned vegetables and fruit may help.
  
• Give up plastic water bottles and use stainless steel containers instead (some metal containers are lined with PBA).
  
• Use powdered baby formula instead of canned.
• Be careful microwaving  in plastic!  Pyrex containers are PBA-free; know what you're getting.
  

Photo from poolie's photostream at Flickr.

Greenfield residents sold down the river-- or should I say sewage line?

"If you wouldn't want to drink it, why would you want to breathe it?"  That very reasonable question by a Greenfield resident to the Greenfield Appointment and Ordinance Committee at a public hearing last Monday summed up the concerns of the 100 people in the Greenfield Middle School auditorium..

Greenfield is one of the three communities targeted for the development of biomass plants, Governor Patrick's newest, one-size-fits-all solution to Massachusett's energy needs. Biomass developer Matthew Wolfe's original proposal called for the plant to purchase water from the municipality to dissipate heat from its incinerator.

Now Wolfe wants to purchase partially-treated waste water from the town instead. Gotta keep those costs down, you know? The waste water would be pumped uphill to the plant.

Not one of the residents of Greenfield, many of whom were medical and scientific experts, spoke in favor of this idea.

First, there's the pathogens that might be emitted-- viruses and bacteria that abound in partially treated water. But even assuming that most of them would be destroyed in the heating process, that leaves everything else. A 2005 survey of drinking water in 42 states by the Environmental Working Group found 141 unregulated chemicals and an additional 119 for which the Environmental Protection Agency has set health-based limits, including disinfection byproducts, nitrates, chloroform, barium, arsenic and copper. CommonDreams.

Two categories of chemicals were of particular concern to Greenfield residents: antibiotics and endocrine disruptors.  The dangers of antibiotic overuse are becoming better-known: we get resistant to antibiotics and so do the pathogens.  Endocrine disruptors, which are both hormones and those chemicals which mimic hormones, are less well-known to the public, although biologists are aware of their effect on sexual reproduction on amphibians and fish.  Nicholas Kristof's column, It's Time to Learn From Frogs, details some of the effects already taking place in humans, and it's scary reading.

In the end, after receiving page after page of testimony against the use of waste water for cooling, the
Greenfield Appointment and Ordinance Committee did the only thing they could do-- they approved Wolfe's request.  The chairman of the board tried to get the decision put off for a week so it could be studied, but none of the other three had the guts-- or the intelligence-- to second the motion.

It's not all over for Greenfield residents, who continue organizing against this incinerator and who have a number of legal strategies in play.  We in Springfield, however, had almost almost lost the battle against the incinerator proposed for our community before we even knew knew about the war.  Our incinerator, proposed by Palmer Renewable Energy, will burn mostly construction and demolition wood, contaminated with arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxic chemicals.  We're late in the day getting started, but I don't believe we're too late.  Check out the website for our organizing efforts, Say NO to Construction and Debris Incineration.


Photo from Aliwest44's photostream at Flickr.