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able—think canned food storage and that metallic aftertaste. and studies. Not all the time, but more often than
• Friability: Rub a plastic bottle with a nail file for a couple of minutes; not, they are funded by the very industry that
notice the light clear flecks on the nail file—those are friable particles. produces the product in question. Factsaboutbpa
• Thermal stability: Take a plastic bottle and put it in the dishwater is no exception, as it is funded and produced by
several times; notice how the plastic bottle softens and is deformed. the BPA and Polycarbonate Manufacturing As-
You have now thermally fatigued the plastic bottle. sociation. It would be odd (or not in their own
self-interest) for the entities that profit from the
BPA, like almost all thermal polymers, is subject to all three of these manufacturing of BPA and related compounds
deterioration mechanisms. And because BPA is prevalent in food packag- to spend hundreds of millions of dollars evalu-
ing, it is almost inevitable that some amount of BPA will mix with food ating their own product to determine that their
or drink and be ingested into the human body, even if the amounts are own product is unsafe and has deleterious ef-
incredibly small or at the molecular level. fects on humans after prolonged exposure. So
odd that you can likely count the occurrences
IS IT SAFE? of industry doing this under their own volition
So what happens when small amounts of this synthetic material, BPA, on the fingers of one hand.
are ingested into our bodies? I will give you a hint: It accumulates. The I am not suggesting that the scientific re-
other detail to note (and the rationale for the mini-organic chemistry lesson search done around BPA is faulty or fraudulent,
at the beginning of this article) is that benzene molecules (the hexagonal as it is subject to the same rigorous peer review
ring) are very stable and difficult to break down. This is one of the rea- that all research is required to undergo to be
sons we utilize benzene so ubiquitously in modern chemistry but also the labeled as “science.” My concern is one of vested
reason why chemicals labelled as carcinogens usually contain benzene. interest, conflicting priorities and the distorted
The second key thing to note about BPA is that the scientific and reality that often occurs when science is mixed
medical communities have classified it as a xenoestrogen, in that it exhibits with corporations and corporate lawyers. What
estrogen-mimicking behavior in the human biological system. Without we are seeing in society more and more is a case
having a background or educational degrees in medicine, chemistry or where the individual is left to decide who has
advanced science, these are the key details I note. We interact with it; it the best science. A natural inclination is to as-
enters our bodies in minute quantities; it is chemically stable and difficult sume that the entity that spends the most money
to break down; it behaves in our bodies as if it were a hormone; and thus on their science has the best science. What is
it interacts with our endocrine systems. perhaps more accurate to state is the entity that
BPA has been investigated and evaluated as a synthetic hormone has the most resources typically produces the
for at least the past eighty years. In the late 1930s, it was evaluated as a most science (quantity) and the best-packaged
synthetic estrogen and found to be approximately 1/37,000th as effective science (quality) but not always the correct sci-
as estradiol, the naturally produced form of estrogen, prescribed as a ence (truth). I think this case is no exception.
hormone replacement for women experiencing menopause. The other underlying issue is that our so-
This potential interaction as a synthetic hormone is a primary reason ciety and legal system currently do not have a
why many consumer advocacy groups have raised issues about the com- commonly-accepted numerical definition of
mon usage of BPA and why it has been studied extensively for the past safety or many other key definitional words that
twenty years by the various food, health and medical safety organizations we use all the time to make decisions about our
across the globe. There are many, many studies by these various orga- lives. I’m sure there is legal definition of “safe”
nizations that, for the most part, have concluded that “BPA in low levels and “unsafe,” but I’m willing to wager that
in the human body is safe,” followed by a dozen or so caveats about the these definitions are so obfuscated in legalese
effects of low and high dosages on mice. The studies and websites typi- that they might as well be written in Klingon.
cally contain statements such as the following: “Overall, the study found Here is the challenge that we have with
‘minimal effects’ for the BPA-dosed groups of rodents. The report did BPA and many other synthetic materials that we
identify some areas that may merit further research, such as the increase interact with regularly. We have a lot of clues
in occurrence of mammary gland tumors at one of the five doses, in one or circumstantial evidence that BPA is probably
of the groups. But the significance of these findings will be assessed not something we want to be ingesting into our
through the peer review process.” Not very reassuring, to say the least. bodies in large quantities—call it common sense
Many of these studies are publicly available and can be found at or intuition. Yet the scientific, health and safety
websites such as factsaboutbpa.org, but there are a couple of key details administrations of our respective governments
to note about these types of informative public health advocacy websites label it “safe.” The formal official published

WINTER 2020 Wise Traditions 49