Environmental Distinguished Lecture Series
Toward Sustainability: Changing our Physical and Chemical Environment
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Plastic: The Conflict Over Safety between Scientists and Government Regulatory Agencies
Frederick S. vom Saal, Tuesday, March 30, 2010
4:30pm, Porter Hall 100 (Gregg Hall)
Frederick S. vom Saal, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri
There is now compelling evidence that many plastic products contain chemicals that can both mimic and inhibit the activity of hormones that are essential for normal development and subsequently the normal functioning of numerous systems in wildlife, experimental animals and humans, although the majority of chemicals used in plastic products remain unknown. One example of an “endocrine disrupting chemical” is bisphenol A (BPA), the chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic (such as baby bottles) and the resin used to line metal cans, which was known to act as a synthetic estrogen prior to being used to make polycarabonate plastic and resins in the 1950s.
A goal of the “Green Chemistry” initiative is to prevent these types of mistakes. Leaching of BPA from products is implicated as a contributor to the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, infertility, bladder-urethra disorders, breast and prostate cancer and neuro-behavioral disorders such as ADHD. Another example is the phthalates, which are chemical additives (plasticizers) that leach out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. A number of phthalates block production of the sex hormone testosterone, which is required for normal masculinization of males. Numerous plastic products leach significant levels of both BPA and phthalates, which exposes people to amounts of these chemicals that are clearly not appropriate for normal development of males or females.
However, federal regulatory agencies have refused to acknowledge the hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies, and conclusions of scientific review panels, identifying concern regarding harm to human health and the environment due to leaching of these chemicals from a wide array of commonly used products. Instead, risk assessment panels for regulatory agencies such as the US FDA have deemed chemicals such as BPA safe based only on a very small number of chemical industry-funded studies that used outdated methods developed in the mid 1900s that are described as “guideline compliant” (approved for use in the chemical risk assessment process).
The methods used in these studies never lead to the conclusion that endocrine disrupting chemicals such as BPA pose a threat to animal or human health. This is in stark contrast to hundreds of NIH-funded studies that virtually always report harm using state-of-the art methods to reveal molecular pathways mediating disease at levels of human exposure. In response to the failure of federal regulatory agencies such as the FDA to take appropriate action to protect the public health, state and federal legislative bodies are attempting to pass legislation to protect the public from specific chemicals such as BPA and phthalates, while the affected corporations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting each piece of legislation rather than using this money to develop safer alternatives. This reveals the urgent need to re-structure laws governing our federal chemical regulatory system that has allowed thousands of chemicals to be used in household products even though they have never been tested for health effects and remain unidentified not only to the public but also to federal regulatory agencies.
Frederick vom Saal was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia and Kenya and then received a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Rutgers University and postdoctoral training in reproductive biology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is Curators’ Professor of biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The focus of his research is on abnormal development of reproductive organs and metabolic processes due to exposure during fetal life to estrogenic chemicals in plastic. In addition, numerous collaborative projects relating environmental chemicals with diseases in humans are being conducted. He has published over 160 articles on his research and has testified at hearings in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, numerous State legislative bodies, the EU Parliament, and at regulatory agency hearings in USA, Germany and Japan. He has served on editorial boards of a number of scientific journals and on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Hormonally Active Agents in the Environment and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and a number of foundations.
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Green Science and the Chemistry Department, the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and The Shaw Group
