On Monday, the American Medical Association came out against use of bisphenol-A (BPA) in consumer products, citing the chemical’s effect as an endocrine disruptor. That specifically includes endorsement of a ban on use of BPA in baby bottles and baby “sippy” cups, and that ban is at issue in today’s Senate Committee on Health.
AB 1319 (Betsy Butler, D-Marina del Rey) would limit BPA use in baby bottles and cups, infant formula and baby food sold in California. It passed the Assembly at the end of May, and now is up for a vote in today’s Senate health committee hearing.
“The AMA has found that BPA is an endocrine disruptor and it would like to ban products that contain it,” Butler said. “It’s all about the science. There are many medical and health organizations promoting this idea [of banning BPA in baby products]. The opposition to BPA has grown stronger and stronger from the health community.”
The plastics industry opposes the idea, saying that BPA is one of the most thoroughly tested chemicals, with a safety track record that spans 50 years.
“The consensus of major government agencies across the world is that BPA is safe to be used in food-contact materials,” Kathryn St. John of the American Chemistry Association said. “Scientists informing those bodies have stated in their assessments that exposure levels to BPA are many times lower — even 1,000 times lower — than government-set safety levels. That means that typical human exposure to BPA is very low, and well below government-set safety levels established in Europe and the United States.”
Yesterday’s AMA statement that BPA is an endocrine disruptor is significant because those endocrine disruptors may increase levels of estrogen in children, which could contribute to an early onset of puberty, among other things.
“It is a health risk for children, and we want to get rid of anything that is dangerous to the little ones,” Butler said. “We don’t want to give them more estrogen.”
Some consumer advocates have pushed for a wider scope on the BPA ban, both statewide and nationally, but Butler said she just wants to focus on keeping the chemical away from babies with AB 1319.
“Let’s get it out of baby products and baby formula,” she said. “There is still a ways to go here on making this bill law. This is not a done deal, not by a long shot.”
Meanwhile, the Assembly Committee on Health passed a number of bills yesterday, including the heavily amended SB 850 (Mark Leno, D-San Francisco), which requires that certain notations and alterations to a patient’s electronic health record remain noted on the EHR.
In addition, SB 866 (Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina) easily passed out of the Assembly health committee yesterday, in part because opposition from the California Association of Health Plans was tentatively withdrawn, depending on last-minute amendments made to the bill. It’s a bill designed to streamline and standardize the many health insurance forms for preauthorization of medications.