Hands Off My Plastic Stuff

Well done, Gov. Brown of California and the state’s bevy of environmentalists:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Tuesday that he has signed a bill that will ban a chemical known as BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups made or sold in California.

Assembly Bill 1319 says that by July 1, 2013, bottles and cups made for children under age 3 may not contain bisphenol A, a chemical common in clear-plastic containers.

One thing, though – this is nothing more than political grandstanding at its worst.  Not only does it set the terrible example of taking regulatory matters out of the hands of regulators who actually know about chemicals, the bill itself looks almost moot. A stroll down the baby-stuff aisle at my local Walmart is literally festooned with ‘BPA-FREE!’ signage on products. Does anybody even make baby bottles or kids’ cups using BPA anymore? I can’t find any and that’s a fact that is ignored in news coverage of the bill signing. This dog-and-pony show in California is the rough equivalent of the governor signing a bill to ban kryptonite. To put my money where my mouth is, I’ll bet a can of ravioli that the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Betsy Butler (D-Marina del Ray) also fails to mention that salient fact when she’s touting this “victory” on the campaign trail.

This is nothing more than putting politicians in charge of making scientific decisions. And the politicians have just proven that they have about as much scientific knowledge as we do about antimatter and quarks. The end result in this case is that politicians caved to political pressure and made some bad decisions that are not supported by credible science, including very recent studies showing no harm from BPA.  The usual suspects have all issued their breathless victory lap statements, natch, which we won’t bother to link to here basically because we’ve already lost enough brain cells reading their mindless drivel that we don’t wish to expose you, dear reader, to it unnecessarily.

We will, however, suggest some intelligent reading. Check out this piece in National Review from Julie Gunlock, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum taking the Breast Cancer Fund to task for their irresponsible “study” claiming that BPA is lurking dangerously in childrens’ foods.

What’s also interesting about California’s latest Chicken Little maneuver is that Gov. Brown signed this useless piece of legislation in the same time frame during which several studies have come out indicating there are no discernible health risks to humans from BPA. (Rats and mice that get injected up to their little eyeballs are, of course, a different story.) 

Here’s a study finding “no clear evidence” of a link to diabetes risk from BPA exposure.

Here’s a study showing that the male offspring of pregnant mice exposed to high levels of BPA had no effects on their boy parts.

Here’s a study showing no risk to children exposed to house dust that contains BPA.

Here’s a doozy of a headline: “CDC, EPA Clinical Exposure Study Finds BPA Exposure Unlikely to Cause Health Effects.”

Yeah, that kinda sums it up.