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Inching Toward Safer Baby Bottlesby Matt FreemanThe battle over bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic baby bottles took another interesting turn today when the FDA’s own scientific advisory panel issued a stinging rebuke of the agency for its determination that the toxic substance is not harmful.
According to the Washington Post, FDA
As a result, the report from the panel says, FDA failed to provide “reasonable and appropriate scientific support” for its conclusion. According to a Bloomberg story,
Interestingly, the Post story takes a little editorial license, asserting that the panel’s conclusion is “likely to put to rest charges by environmental groups and public health advocates that the panel's chairman, Martin Philbert, co-director of the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center, was influenced by grants that his center received from Dow Chemical, a major BPA manufacturer. Dow gave the center $15 million for research on dioxin.” Another reasonable interpretation would be that efforts by environmental and health groups to shine some light on the chair’s obvious conflict of interest might have played some role in helping the panel to do the right thing, despite the conflict.
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