War has broken out on the pages of the world’s top scientific journal in toxicology – Toxicological Sciences – and for those watching it unfold, the intense combat, drawing in world leaders in their fields, has produced a clear and remarkable outcome: The panic over the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is not only unjustified, it has reached a point where the failure to accept basic, rational principles in scientific research is damaging toxicology itself, wasting taxpayers money and undermining scientific progress.

I’m always interested in articles about BPA, because it was right when I was first buying baby gear that the whole story broke.  I remember going to Babies R Us about six times to try to find the Dr. Brown’s BPA free baby bottles, but they were always sold out.  People were panicked about BPA, and the non BPA bottles would fly off the shelves.  I couldn’t even buy them online.  When you’re expecting your first baby, you just want to get all the stuff in the house before the big day, and these BPA free bottles were a huge pain in the butt.

Two years of motherhood have calmed me down.  I will now microwave broccoli in just about any plastic container.  And according to this article, that’s probably okay.

Trevor Butterworth writes quite a bit about BPA.  His lengthy (seriously lengthy, but organized so you can jump around) article entitled “Science Suppressed:  How America Became Obsessed with BPA” can be found here.

Nancy McDermott wrote an interesting and enlightening piece about the BPA scare.

Some highlights:

…the story’s grip on the public imagination suggests that there’s more going on here. It is not that the facts are unavailable or that parents and journalists are incapable of grasping them. It’s more that it never occurs to them to be critical. They are blinkered by a mistrust of the fruits of modernity and by deep pessimism about the future.

Well said.

The willingness to assume the worst has a debilitating effect on public discussion. When scientists find nothing in claims about BPA, for instance, it is dismissed as the product of chemical industry manipulation rather than genuine and profound weaknesses with the entire thesis. Large, well-designed studies conducted by independently audited contract labs are suspect because they are ‘industry funded’. Apparently even Harvard University’s Center for Risk Assessment is merely a shill for the chemical industry because their 2000 report on BPA was commissioned by the American Plastics Council. In fact, anyone who dares to be critical of the BPA scare is accused of using the tobacco industry’s ‘delaying tactics’.

I’m sure that many who have found this blog are frustrated, as I am, by the persistence of beliefs in spite of evidence. The dismissal of evidence as corrupt is especially frustrating.

However, I am always interested in why beliefs take hold. In discussing this blog when we started it, Jessie and I talked about envisioning ourselves as “bridge rationalists.” We live among so many people who believe weird things and who suspect big money, big pharma, and anything that smacks of “the man.” The pervasive paranoia about such entities can be blinding.

I believe that people persist in their suspicion because there is unfortunately precedence for corporate interests to take advantage of the public trust and do terrible things. It’s not entirely unreasonable to be fearful and paranoid, especially for those of us who are not scientists or business people. It’s easy to mistrust both groups. (After learning how the current financial crisis was wrought, I don’t think I’ll really ever trust banks again.)

Nancy McDermott on the culture of fear:

The problem with the BPA scare is not just that individual parents have been frightened out of their wits about a basically benign chemical, or even the potentially huge cost of identifying alternatives and scrapping entirely safe and effective manufacturing processes. The real problem with the BPA scare is the way it elevates fear above dispassionate consideration of the evidence, and makes it into an organising principle for all of society.

When there is a history of companies poisoning us for profit, how do we explain to our friend who might be new to critical thinking that well, this time, the threat is imagined? BPA is not a big deal. Vaccines are safe. Is it impossible to speak to the truly fearful? Discuss….

All this changed when I had a baby.

It started when I was four months pregnant. I was not even thinking about baby products yet when I got the email from a friend, who had heard from a friend, that it was discovered plastic bottles had some kind of poison in them. My friend kindly attached a link to a “natural baby” website, where all good mothers shopped, with a link to the check-out line for a pair of all natural, organic, non-poisonous Dr. Brown’s glass baby bottles — for the price of $29.95. I did the quick calculations: I’d need at least 10 bottles to be safe, with washing and everything, so at $30 a pair that would be… $150. More than her bouncy seat and swing added together. That didn’t seem like a good idea. Besides, I was pretty sure the whole breastfeeding thing would work out. And that whatever this poison was, they’d probably change their minds about it in a few months.

So I did a little research on the poison involved: Bisphenol A, or BPA, is an organic compound often used in the synthesis of polymers and polymer additives. The problem with BPA is that it gets into your system and acts as a hormone, interrupting your normal systems. While the EPA hasn’t decided exactly how toxic the substance is to adults, or even if the EPA maximum daily dose is “safe” for humans, researchers from the U.S. Department for Helath and Human Services and Yale agree that those most at risk are fetuses, infants, and children. Basically, if you’re very small, even the lowest daily dose will be too much.

And the things this chemical can do to you! Breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, prostate gland enlargement – at a dose of 30 micrograms per day, you can even reverse the normal sex differences in your brain structure and behavior. That’s at HALF the maximum daily dose as recommended by EPA!

I didn’t even get to the end of the side effects list before I started to freak out. There was no time to stop and think. I frantically clicked on the site my friend recommended, but by the time I got there, the store was in back order. “BPA is a deeply toxic material,” the site read. “But we look forward to filling the orders of all concerned mothers and their natural babies just as soon as we can!” This was no time to be using chipper exclamation points, I thought. This is my baby’s sexual identity we’re talking about here.

I wasn’t the only one freaked out by the prospect of feeding BPA to my baby. One site after the next offered their condolences to mothers who were just now trying to order glass bottles. The one exception was Babies ‘R Us. They said they got new shipments of glass bottles every week, so all I had to do was put my name on the email list. As soon as an order came in, they’d send me a message, and I’d go to the store. That seemed simple enough. Until I got the first notice — along with a message that the bottles were already sold out again. This seemed like a mistake. But then it happened again. And again. Finally I decided to go the store, thinking things would be simpler in person.

“I’m looking for Dr. Brown’s glass bottles. Can you help me?” I smiled at the employee. Those hips said she’d had a few babies. I knew she’d understand.

 “Right here.” She gestured to the Playtex bottle feeding system without looking.

 “No,” I shook my head. Playtex is for tampons. “I need the Dr. Brown’s bottles.”

 “Here,” she annunciated, pointing to the empty spot.

Just as she got done saying this, I noticed a group of women gathering. They watched the store back door nervously as they strapped their babies down to their car seats. Slowly, a circle started to form around the door.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

The door flew open.

“Shipment!”

The women moved in quickly. As fast as the employees could unload the glass bottles, they disappeared from the shelves. Eight months pregnant, I lurched forward. Hands and arms bounced off my belly as I barreled through to snatch two packages. BAM! I scored four bottles. It was all I could get.

I spent a good two hours gloating over my victory that night. I even called my friend to tell her.

“That’s great,” she said. “Though, of course you know not to refrigerate your milk in glass containers, right?”

Um, what?

“Oh, sure. I know that,” I said. “Everybody knows you shouldn’t do that because of the—the—”

“White blood cells.”

“Right.”

I could feel another Google search coming on.

Glass baby bottles are better than plastic in a few ways: the material is non-porous, so fat and other nutrients don’t stick to the sides of the bottle. This is good. However, glass bottles are breakable and have a tendency to chip. I don’t even want to think about getting a glass shard in my breast milk. More to the point, What to Expect: The First Year reports that glass should be used only when you plan to feed your breast milk immediately to the baby, because white blood cells from the breast milk attach to glass when that breast milk is refrigerated. Apparently, the cells start to detach after 24 hours, so if you refrigerate your milk for longer than that, or if you choose to freeze your milk in glass containers, you should be okay.

It was the “should” in that sentence that bothered me. Transferred immune function was one of the main reasons to breastfeed, so I wanted to be extra careful with my white blood cells. How would I know if they’d decided to detach by the time I was feeding my baby? How would I know if my baby was getting the full nutrition possible? And the bigger question: How could I ever be sure that the products I was using were truly safe and healthy for my baby?

I turned off the computer and realized I was back to zero bottles. I was completely undone. Sixty bucks on crap I was never going to use. I sank into the couch.

My husband looked up from the horde of plastic sacks that littered the floor, each with unopened boxes I’d brought home from Babies ‘R Us. “But this says the Medela plastic baby bottles have never had BPA in them.”

“Really?” I leaned forward.

He pointed to the large-print propaganda on the side of the Medela Pump-In-Style breast pump. No glass. No BPA. And it came with four bottles included. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to be enough to start.

Since the baby bottle incident, I’ve realized that even skeptical people like me can get drawn in to the culture of fear. My baby is just that important to me. And sometimes, as with the case of BPA, that fear seems justified. But I try to be rational, and do my research, and resist the urge to freak out.  I try.