Tag: US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

EHN Sciences.org- April 9, 2021

EHSciences.org produces many links to environmental and health related stories. They are well worth subscribing to.

Above The Fold – Children’s News: DDT; PFAS; chemicals’ impact on male fertility;  Black maternal health; children held in toxic detention centers; their ‘Fractured’ investigation; toxic heavy metals in baby food; federal support for food program; asthma funding in California; lead legislation; FDA’s rationale on baby food; pediatricians and lead poisoning.

Above The Fold – Covid News: US intelligence report; pregnancy & vaccination; predicting the next pandemic; food workers and Covid; pink dolphins in Hong Kong; AI designing antibodies; pandemic & electric vehicles.

FDA must do more to regulate thousands of chemicals added to your food, petitioners say

CNN discusses why FDA must do more to regulate thousands of chemicals added to your food, petitioners say. You’re careful about every morsel you put into your mouth, exquisitely conscious about the potential impact on your growing baby’s development.

But there is a catch: No matter how careful you may be, the food you eat and the beverages you drink likely contain one or more of some 10,000 chemicals allowed to be added to foods — some of which are known endocrine (hormone) disruptors linked to developmental, cognitive and other health problems in babies and adults.

Yet the agency charged with protecting our food from unsafe chemicals — the US Food and Drug Administration — hasn’t been doing the job Congress intended when it passed the 1958 Food Additives Amendment, according to a citizen’s petition filed Wednesday and provided exclusively to CNN in advance.

Critical Food and Farm Rules Have Been Rolled Back Amid Pandemic

CivilEats discusses Critical Food and Farm Rules Have Been Rolled Back Amid Pandemic. Inspection suspensions, enforcement freezes, and rule rollbacks by the EPA, USDA, and the FDA could have dire impacts on the food system.

While the coronavirus pandemic claims more lives and precious resources throughout the U.S., the federal government has been suspending regulations, canceling inspections, and rolling back regulations that experts warn could significantly impact the country’s food system.

Much of the action has centered around the three agencies that oversee the nation’s food safety net and regulate pollution from industrial farms: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). As the agencies have put on hold rules meant to prevent foodborne illnesses and industrial pollution, experts worry that some companies may take advantage of the lull and do less to protect public health and the environment.

“The administration has stepped away from its responsibility and empowered regulated industries to take charge and do as they please,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The US Food and Drug Administration disputes BPA health risks. 

Living on Earth discusses how the US Food and Drug Administration disputes BPA health risks. The chemical BPA, an endocrine disruptor, is widely used in food packaging. Environmental Health News published a reported series showing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stacked the deck against findings from independent scientists that link BPA to harmful human health effects, ranging from birth defects to cancer. Science journalist Lynne Peeples joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss this investigation and why even BPA alternatives may also not be safe.

FDA under scrutiny: Policymakers, advocates push for stronger science, regulation of the chemical BPA

Environmental Health News discusses the FDA. Policymakers, advocates push for stronger science, regulation of the chemical BPA. “The mindless clinging to outdated science is detrimental to public health and to the development of good science”.

Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY) was pregnant with her second child when she became concerned about the toxic chemicals that she and her kids — and nearly all of us — encounter every day.

It was 2009, and she had recently been elected to the New York State Legislature as it considered a bill prohibiting bisphenol-A (BPA) from infant and children’s products sold in the state. She voted yes on the bill, which passed in 2010.

Now she wants to see similar action on the national level.

“The FDA needs to be more transparent about what additives and chemicals are in our foods and products and how they could potentially impact us — just as we do for cigarettes,” Meng told EHN.

Policymakers, advocates push for stronger science, better FDA regulation of the chemical BPA

Environmental Health News discusses why the US FDA is under scrutiny: Policymakers, advocates push for stronger science, regulation of the chemical BPA. “The mindless clinging to outdated science is detrimental to public health and to the development of good science”.

Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY) was pregnant with her second child when she became concerned about the toxic chemicals that she and her kids — and nearly all of us — encounter every day.

It was 2009, and she had recently been elected to the New York State Legislature as it considered a bill prohibiting bisphenol-A (BPA) from infant and children’s products sold in the state. She voted yes on the bill, which passed in 2010.

Now she wants to see similar action on the national level.

“The FDA needs to be more transparent about what additives and chemicals are in our foods and products and how they could potentially impact us — just as we do for cigarettes,” Meng told EHN.

Understanding endocrine disruptors

This Environmental Health News article discusses endocrine disruptors. New video resources from endocrinologists will make it easier for medical professionals and patients to join ongoing conversations about this important class of chemicals.

Yet, we are hit daily with news about health epidemics that affect human populations: obesity rates continue to climb; more than a million new cancer cases are diagnosed in the US each year; one in every six American children has a developmental disability, and one in 59 have autism spectrum disorder. Many of these conditions are linked to hormones and endocrine health.

This week, the Endocrine Society will roll out new materials, freely available online, to help educate physicians, other medical professionals, and patients with hormone-related diseases about chemicals that disrupt hormones in the body. These “endocrine disruptors” can mimic, block, or otherwise affect the actions of hormones that are responsible for development, reproduction, metabolism, growth, and the general coordination of cells, tissues and organs in the body.

The first video provides an introduction to endocrine disruptors and discusses how endocrine disruptors interfere with hormone biology. The second video examines how endocrine disruptors contribute to metabolic diseases including obesity, and discusses why action is needed to reduce disparities in exposures to endocrine disruptors. Finally, the third video provides straight-forward and cost-effective tips to reduce exposures to endocrine disruptors.

New educational resources on endocrine disruptors are available from the Endocrine Society at: https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/talking-edcs.

Exposed: How willful blindness keeps BPA on shelves and contaminating our bodies

This Environmental Health News article discusses how willful blindness keeps BPA on shelves and contaminating our bodies. EHN.org investigation finds regulatory push to discredit independent evidence of harm while favoring pro-industry science despite significant shortcomings.  A year-long investigation by Environmental Health News finds that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stacked the deck against such findings from independent scientists studying BPA – as well as many compounds used in “BPA-free” products. It is followed by 4 articles:

  • Part 1. Yet the FDA has remained reluctant to accept new science and independent evidence of harm. While the agency clings to the claim that BPA poses no health risks in the amounts it is used, thousands of peer-reviewed studies from academics suggest otherwise: Absorbing or ingesting the ubiquitous chemical may harm people at doses 20,000 times lower than what the FDA says is safe, comparable to levels at which most of us are exposed.
  • Part 2.  Patricia Hunt’s results say otherwise. Since being among the first scientists to report on the harmful effects of BPA on mice in 2003, Hunt has further identified genetic abnormalities, fertility problems and other health impacts in animals at very low doses.
  • Part 3. Historically, government toxicologists have assumed that the greater the exposure to a toxic chemical, the greater the harm — or, as the old adage goes, “the dose makes the poison.” A dose-response curve should therefore always be monotonic, meaning it will never change direction from positive to negative, or vice versa. But academic scientists, especially those who study endocrinology, are finding that this principle is not always true, at least not for chemicals such as BPA that mimic and mess with our hormones. These endocrine-disrupting chemicals, studies show, can wreak havoc at extremely small doses.
  • Part 4. An investigation by EHN has uncovered details of a stand-off between academic scientists and federal regulators that intensified with the launch in 2012 of a multimillion-dollar government-led project called Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on BPA Toxicity, or Clarity. Academics had increasingly voiced disagreement with the actions, or lack thereof, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with regard to the hormone imposter. The methods used by FDA regulators to assess the safety of chemicals, they have argued, remains decades behind the science. Clarity aims to help these critics and regulators reach a consensus on BPA’s potential health harms, and to inform future testing and regulation of BPA and hundreds of other endocrine-disrupting chemicals including BPA replacements such as bisphenol S, or BPS.