Finally, a congressman is standing up to the FDA in an effort to fight and ban the use of bisphenol-A (BPA) in food packaging!
Despite the well-documented dangers of BPA use, the FDA has continued to falsely state that small amounts of BPA pose no health risk. So, on Friday, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) took a different approach in his fight. He asked the federal government to formally ban use of the toxic chemical in food and beverage containers based on Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 Sec. 171.130 which states that people can petition for changes or repeals to food additive rules if “new uses have been developed or old uses abandoned.”
With this new angle in mind, Markey and his team polled the food industry’s use of the dangerous chemical. Not surprisingly, they found that widespread public demand for products made without BPA coupled with state mandated bans on the chemical in children’s products, has prompted many major manufacturers to eliminate BPA from their food packaging or storage containers voluntarily. This “abandoned use” allows law makers to bypass any argument of its safety and ban BPA solely on the grounds that it’s no longer in use by major manufacturers.
BPA is know as an endocrine disruptor and has been associated with a myriad of health complications related to male and female reproduction, thyroid health, metabolism and obesity, neurological issues, neuroblastoma, various cancers and disruption of the dopaminergic system.
Many other countries, including China, Canada, Turkey, Malaysia and all of the European Union have banned use of BPA in many products and France recently passed a law to ban BPA in all food packaging and storage containers (effective Jan. 01, 2014).
Petitions sent to the FDA and letters of support can be found here: http://markey.house.gov/content/bpa-petitions-fda
For brands that have already committed to banning BPA from their products, check out this article: Want to Avoid BPA in Canned Foods? Stick with These Brands
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