From Environmental Health Symposium
Why did the European Union’s equivalent to the FDA (EFSA) decide to lower the allowable exposure levels of bisphenol A to 5000 times lower than the current average daily exposure levels in the U.S. and 100,000 times lower than previously assumed safe by the FDA?
A coalition of researchers, physicians and environmental advocacy/child health groups have written a letter to the FDA demanding answers to questions about BPA and asking for it’s removal from food contact materials. They asked why the European Union’s equivalent to the FDA (EFSA) has decided to lower the allowable exposure levels of bisphenol A to 5000 times lower than the current average daily exposure levels in the U.S. and 100,000 times lower than previously assumed safe by the FDA.
It is doubtful that the FDA will be able to come up with a satisfactory answer. They have been ignoring the science on BPA for years and even ignored it when faced with overwhelming published scientific evidence for BPA’s reproductive and immune harms.
Now they have an embarrassing situation. As explained in the recently released comprehensive safety assessment of BPA by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on December 15, 2021, anything above .04 ng per kg body weight is an unacceptably high exposure to BPA in the European Union. The average exposure in the U.S. to children and adults over 2 years old is 200 ng per kg body weight – that’s where the 5000-fold times difference comes from…
Studies have demonstrated widespread daily exposure to BPA in more than 90% of the European and US populations at concentrations above .04 ng/kg. BPA has recently been classified as a reproductive toxicant and a substance of very high concern by the European Chemicals Agency.
If BPA is the ubiquitous toxicant the CDC claims it to be (found in over 93% of representative samples of the U.S. population) where is this exposure coming from?
