CONFIDENTIAL emails reveal Australia’s food regulator discussed hiding from the Federal Government international warnings about a potentially dangerous chemical used in plastic bottles.
The chemical, Bisphenol A (BPA), is found in plastic packaging. Latest research in the US says it may harm brain development and the prostate gland.
Australian stores last week began a voluntary phase-out of plastic baby bottles containing the substance, but Food Standards Australia New Zealand has long declared it safe.
A draft report to Parliamentary Secretary for Health Mark Butler includes comments indicating that the agency considered covering up international concerns.
“Maybe too sensitive for the Minister to see,” one comment says. Another comment, on industry moves to phase out products containing BPA, warns: “Would delete this – we do not want to be encouraging withdrawal of something we deem safe.”
The emails were written in January, at the same time as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched new research into the safety of products containing BPA.
“We have been quoting FDA as saying no health risk and now they have changed this, which makes us all look a little vulnerable,” a Food Standards officer said in an email to a Canadian regulator.
The official sought a European regulator’s reponse to the US move, as Australia was saying BPA was safe “even in infants”.
Food Standards has not changed its stance since the emails were written, but has launched an investigation into the use of BPA in a range of products. The study is expected to be completed soon and ready for publication in October.
Australia has no laws regulating materials used in food packaging, only an industry standard.
Food Standards chief scientist Paul Brent told international regulators in January that, despite calls for a BPA ban, no government agency here had full responsibility.
Jurisdiction in Australia is shared by Food Standards and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which regulates packaging safety.
The documents were obtained using Freedom of Information laws by the Australia Institute, whose executive director, Richard Denniss, said they suggested that Australian agencies were more worried about the politics than the science.”We don’t know what’s safe and what’s not, but it’s obvious that neither do they,” he said.
Read the full Daily Telegraph article HERE
Malini Alexander: Slow Death by Rubber Duck
Pesticide Action Network and local community members released a report this week with new evidence of high levels of pesticide drift in the California community of Sisquoc. Poison Gases in the Field: Pesticides put California families in danger (PDF) presents results of community air monitoring for fumigant pesticides in Santa Barbara county, on the central coast of California. Using a simple monitoring device called the Drift Catcher, community members measured pesticides above the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s “level of concern” – even when all application rules were followed and no equipment failure occurred.
The Sisquoc monitoring found the pesticide chloropicrin in about half of the 57 air samples collected. Two samples had chloropicrin levels higher than DPR’s 24-hour level of concern for children, and average levels over the 19-day period were 23 to 151 times higher than acceptable cancer risks. “What’s striking about these results is what they imply about fumigation in general,” says PAN Staff Scientist and report co-author Karl Tupper in a press statement. “Sisquoc is not unique in terms of how close fumigated fields are to people’s homes. The application we monitored was typical as well—there were no blunders and the amount of chloropicrin used was not abnormally high.”
California regulators are currently proposing use of a new, extremely volatile fumigant pesticide—methyl iodide. The proposal comes despite findings of DPR’s own Scientific Review Committee, whose experts reported in February that any agricultural use of methyl iodide would be harmful to public health. Fumigant pesticides are used to sterilize soil prior to planting. After sulfur and crop oil, more fumigants are applied in California than any other class of pesticides, about 35 million pounds per year. “Sustainable farming is all about building healthy soil,” says organic farmer Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farm. “I’ve been growing strawberries for 25 years, and fumigant pesticides are the last thing I’d put in my soil.”
