John Peterson MyersPhD, zoology · endocrine-disruption scientist and chemical-policy advocate
The evidence that says no was selected on the wrong criterion, and the regulator that looked again agreed.
What it rests onMyers JP et al., Environmental Health Perspectives 117(3):309-315, first author of 36; restated to the US Senate in Dec 2022 as the Reform recommendation.
Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ↗
Joe SchwarczPhD · chemist, director of the McGill Office for Science and Society
After fifty years and thousands of studies there is no evidence of harm to humans, and funding source is not the right question to ask about a study.
What it rests onJoe Schwarcz, McGill Office for Science and Society, 20 Mar 2017, citing Richard Sharpe's assessment and the EFSA tolerable daily intake as it then stood, 5 micrograms per kg body weight per day.
Source: mcgill.ca ↗
Schwarcz's conclusion is explicitly bounded and the bound must travel with it, because dropping it is exactly the misquote to avoid. In the same piece he writes that "the absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of the absence of harm", that "the possibility of subtle effects on humans cannot be ruled out", that "this would seem to be especially the case during early development", and that "if BPA is to cause any harm it is most likely to do so if exposure is in utero or during infancy".
He closes by saying the back burner needs monitoring for flare-ups. He is talking about adults at ordinary exposure. Myers's strongest claims are about fetal and infant exposure. On the population Myers most cares about, Schwarcz concedes the possibility rather than denying it.
Both hold that BPA has hormone-like activity and binds hormone receptors. Both hold that replacing BPA in can liners would be desirable: Schwarcz writes that it "would be desirable to replace epoxy resins in canned foods with substances that don't have the Damocles Sword of 'endocrine disruptor' hanging over their head", which is Myers's Redesign recommendation in different words. Both hold that reproducibility is the test. They disagree about what failed to reproduce and why.
This has already partly moved and the movement is dated. Schwarcz's 2017 argument rests on the EFSA tolerable daily intake of 5 micrograms per kg per day and on the finding that human exposure sat 30 to 50 percent below it.
In April 2023 EFSA revised that same figure downward by a factor of 20,000, to 0.2 ng per kg per day, on a Th-17 immune endpoint, and on the new figure average and high consumers in every age group exceed it. That is not a correction from Schwarcz: the agency he cited changed its own number six years after he wrote, and whether he has revisited the question since is not known. What would move it further is whether the Th-17 endpoint survives the formal objections filed by EMA and other regulators.
You do, and your call is dated, kept, and yours to change. Follow the people you already trust and what they publish turns into a short daily practice.
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