Thursday, June 30, 2011

BPA Wrap Up

Allow me one more post on BPA (bisphenol A) before we move on to something much more fun tomorrow.

Exposing humans, animals and the environment to chemicals is a serious consideration, but the emphasis is on "serious". Emotional approaches such as demanding that "absolute or total safety" be shown and portraying chemicals companies, their executives and customers as evil incarnate are not "serious" arguments. Ever.

Here are my questions on BPA that need to be addressed:
  1. At what exposure level will BPA have a real, measureable effect on people? Keep in mind that exposure level can and will change with exposure route (oral vs. contact vs. inhalation) and so a blanket statement cannot be provided.
  2. What alternative chemical(s) will replace BPA? Are they truely safer or have they just not been studied as much? Will we just be endlessly chasing our tails looking for a "totally safe" alternative when none exists and BPA is the best choice?
  3. As I've said numerous times, a system is optimized by optimizing the entire system, not by optimizing the individual components. Given this, our concerns cannot be on BPA alone, but the entire system that it is part of. How is this being addressed?
So that will be enough on this topic for a while, unless something really big shows up, which I doubt. Answering questions like these is not something that happens quickly, no matter how much we desire it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cool blog!