120 Fall Mini 05
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Melissa: Hey, I'm Melissa.

Jam: I'm Jam.

Melissa: And I'm a chemist

Jam: And I'm not.

Melissa: And welcome to chemistry for your life.

Jam: the podcast that helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life. Mini edition.

Melissa: I was wondering if you're going to do a little mini. Okay. So today's episode today's mini is going to be around BPA again. BPA part three.

Jam: Yeah. I can't remember how many we did, three or four.

Melissa: And I'm really excited to talk about this. It was prompted by an email by Danny E who wrote in to talk about that episode.

Jam: Nice.

Melissa: He's a retired chemistry teacher. He's taught chemistry, regular and honors and AP and all this stuff. So jam. Do you want to read that email?

Jam: Yes I'd love to.

The BPA fury rose a long time ago. And the reason most manufacturers moved to other plasticizers is not because BPA was proven to be dangerous. Only that there was weak evidence showing correlation between BPA and endocrine disruption. No company wants to have a chemical in their product that has a bad name.

In the years since BPA has continued to be shown as G R a S generally regarded as safe. And an analysis in 2018 showed that BPA at the levels we're exposed to causes minimal effects. And then he actually included a link to show that that will include in our show notes as well.

Continuing on, sorry. And then he said, people should be worried about some chemicals in their everyday life, but BPA is not one of them, breast implants were Silicon filled, and a big outrage hit the media and they were changed to saline. It turns out the Silicon was not cancer causing or dangerous. And silicone implants are, again, back in use.

I would ask that you be very careful in spreading inflammatory information about chemicals in everyday life. Washing hands and making attempts to minimize exposure to BPA and other chemicals is a good thing, but most people listen to a podcast and their takeaway is that BPA is a dangerous chemical.

Melissa: Thank you so much for reading that Jam. And thank you, Danny, for sending that in. I think that this is a great email to give me an opportunity to talk about so many different of the subtleties that are involved in making a chemistry for your life episode and in making decisions about chemistry,

Jam: Hmm.

Melissa: but not spreading inflammatory information is something that we are committed.

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: Jam and I consistently talk about our goal is to present you the best information we can with what science has at the time. So he states that the FDA generally regards BPA is safe at the levels that we're exposed to. And that is true. And I want to make sure that people know that that's what the FDA says, and that's why it's not banned in the United States yet.

However, it is linked to endocrine disruption, as he mentioned, and there are some endocrine disruptors that, that disruption can be linked to cancer. So that's something that concerns me, although they haven't found that link with this particular endocrine disruption. Also, we discussed a paper in one of those episodes where.

They challenged these assertions that were based on the assumed level of interaction that we have with some of these products. And if you remember it's linked in the show notes for that episode, but also they just to remind you, they observed people in a cafeteria style environment. Similar to at a college campus, I believe is what it was. And a lot of interactions with those receipts that were coated in BPA or similar chemicals were much higher than the assumed levels of a few minutes of interaction a day up to like 11 minutes, I think is what it was. And so that's something that I wonder about is how can we determine what our normal levels of exposure to BPA for me, that's probably a lot less than someone who works at a cash register, touching those receipts, every. And I also wonder if they've considered for people who are impoverished, they might be eating out of cans, lined with BPA. That food is leached into a lot more than say people who haven't.

Jam: Right, right.

Melissa: I also don't know if they consider it. Some of those studies that we talked about, where there could be transported chemicals on your hands, that then transport it through the skin and it can stay for a much more sustained environment.

Or if they focus solely on the food aspect. So I didn't look at the FDA's study extensively to see if they looked at every single one of those areas. But those are questions that I have. So that's something that makes me think. Although the FDA generally regards BPA as safe. I personally am not going to risk increasing my exposure to BPA. I'm going to attempt to minimize it every way possible. But me saying all that, and the episode was not an attempt to fearmonger or undermine the FDA. I trust the FDA a lot. It's just something that I think it's important to be aware that there are some gray areas here,

Jam: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also worth knowing that there's always potential for this, where Melissa talked a lot about how she uses the science that she has access to at the time. And there could tomorrow come out a study, that's like, Hey, we've done tons of tests. And we've fully proven that BPA is great and we've, you know, that could happen tomorrow and it's a moving target, but all the episodes that Melissa does research on to prepare, she takes the information she has available from good sources.

So it's not a guessing game.

Melissa: right.

Jam: It's not. Yeah. Or not just Melissa saying like, this seems bad. It's like, no, no, here's what we, she found when she did the research,

Melissa: Right. Absolutely. And that kind of brings me to the point, another point that I wanted to make, which is because we're on the cutting edge of our research, in so many of these areas, BPA, although it's been around for a while, the technology of studying it, I think as our BPA studies have happened a lot more recently, And so we're discovering new things about BPA and so much of the technology that we use every day.

We're discovering new things about it constantly. And so we don't have all the information right now. There's always new information coming out about all kinds of things in scientific. And so it's important to be cautious and to keep listening to the research that's coming out and to keep refining our understanding based on new information that is presented to us.

And I've talked before about what happened with the radium girls, where they would paint, use radium to paint numbers on clock faces. So it would glow in the dark and that ended up being really dangerous because they didn't have enough information about that. And same thing with some diet sodas, some of the artificial sweeteners that they used when those diets had his first came out in the eighties, they didn't have enough information and some of them are cancer causing. So I think it's really important to be aware and be wary of technology, not to fearmonger, but just to know,

really what, in, what we're interacting with, what is considered average levels, you know those kinds of questions.

Jam: Yeah.

Yeah.

Melissa: So I definitely wanted to say, I agree with Danny. This is not a carcinogen level issue, but it is probably also not great for us because it is linked to some endocrine disruption and we don't know the full effects that could have long-term short-term we have a lot of questions,

Jam: Yeah. And it feels like it's a good information just to have out there as like a, Hey, if you're. About to buy a water bottle and you have a choice between one with BPA without lean, without, you know, something like that. It's, it's, it's as simple as if you're about to make a choice. It's nice to have that info

Melissa: Right,

Jam: in your back pocket.

Melissa: And also that, that some of the new alternatives for BPA have been said even less extensively. So it kind of depends. Maybe you should just go with glass

Jam: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa: or reduce your exposure to Ken food or whatever it is that you can make a decision about or wash your hands simply before eating your French fries.

Jam: Yeah,

Melissa: When you get a receipt at the fast food place or whatever it is. So I think that's good information to have, but I also think it's really good for us to talk about these things because science just, it isn't black and white. And we had a conversation just last night. I was with some friends and they said this scientific mindset makes us not believe in these things, which it was kind of about conspiracy theories, but it kind of started me on a rant because I think.

The scientific mindset is viewed as this is black and white. We know everything and that's that. But I have talked a lot about how at the higher level science is much more gray. We are researching things that we were just learning about. The cutting edge of science is not, we figured everything out it is.

What more can we learn and how can we refine our understanding? And that is how science has really been.

Jam: right, right. Where I think a lot of average Joes like me need to kind of navigate is that understanding that science is not black and white and it's not finished.

Melissa: Right. It's not finished,

Jam: it is our best bet to follow what the science currently says. And if it changes tomorrow to follow that, and that changes the next day, follow that.

Melissa: If it's changing, based on new evidence.

Jam: Right. Right. And not just doubt it right out of the gate because it's not finished because it's not black and white. I think get people who feel like this is a known thing. Cause they changed their mind, you know, every,

Melissa: Right. And we did a whole episode about that on the, it was called, is science always, right?

Jam: Yeah. Yeah. So I think for us average, Joe's just knowing that is great, but then still realizing it's the best thing we've got.

Melissa: Right. Exactly. There's a lot of thing that science is really sure on. And there's a lot of things that science, we don't have answers on.

Jam: Hmm.

Melissa: And so I think that's important for us to discuss. And I do also want to really emphasize our goal for this podcast is never to spread inflammatory information or to do fear-mongering of chemicals.

We love chemicals. Water is a chemical, the really good flavoring that you put the spices, the vanilla, whatever you're putting in your baked goods and your dinner. That's all chemistry. We love chemistry. We don't want to fear monger, but we do want people to take. These things seriously, such as reducing their exposure to BPA the impact that plastics has on the environment, stuff like that.

We really care about that a lot.

Jam: Yes, and we definitely love y'all's messages and emails. If you listen to something and you're a little worried or you've got some other info too, we love that. So don't ever hesitate. So that's, what's great about getting an email like this from Danny. We really appreciate that.

Melissa: Absolutely. And some of our listener feedback on episodes has prompted us to stop and think, oh yeah. If someone stopped halfway through this episode, maybe their takeaway would be wrong. So we're able to ensure that other people have the right takeaway or aren't missing out on some important piece of information by putting in disclaimers or different things like that.

So we love, love hearing from you. Thank you so much, Danny, for taking the time to write this email. If anyone else has any thoughts. Yeah. Like Jam said, please reach out

So thanks so much again to everyone who's written in. And thanks to all of you who are listening right now, because it's so fun that we get to have these conversations about science at a deeper level, and that there are people who are excited and care about them.

Jam: Absolutely. And if like Danny, you have a thought or an idea or a question or whatever, you can always reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook at chem for your life, that's chem F-O-R your life to share your thoughts, ideas, and questions. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it go to ko-fi.com/chemforyourlife and donate the cost of a cup of coffee.

And if you're not able to donate, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing review on apple podcasts. That also helps us to share chemistry with even more people.

Melissa: This episode of chemistry free life was created by Melissa Collini and Jam Robinson. References for this episode can be found in our show notes or on our website.