Time to mandate BPA-free containers

We’ve long tried to figure out how so many people who ought to know better keep supporting and voting for Republicans.

Science might have come up with at least part of the answer.

Scientists reported this week new evidence that low doses of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), widely used to make plastic food and drinking containers, can impair brain function in primates, extending the findings of previous research conducted in rats.

Whether the amount of BPA that leaches out of containers into food and beverages represents an environmental risk is a subject of controversy.

‘Our primate model indicates that BPA could negatively affect brain function in humans,’ study investigator Tibor Hajszan said in a press release from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.”

The point here is not to cast conservative Republicans generally as primates. We can think of a few who seem to fit the description, but however misguided, deluded and contrary they might be, most right wingers are human beings.

OK, this theory won’t hold water because, logically, liberal Democrats would be just as susceptible and as likely to ingest BPA as conservative Republicans.

Political humor aside, this finding holds serious public health implications. It also raises the possibility of a negative financial impact on food and beverage producers.

Even so, it’s better to be safe than sorry. If beverage bottlers and food packagers can’t come up with a means of eliminating BPA or keeping it from getting into their products, they had better go back to glass and other materials.

Determining when, how and how much BPA gets into various foods and drinks under an infinite number of circumstances could take decades. The industries involved shouldn’t be allowed to deny, stonewall and go on using plastics that contain BPA.

When it next meets, Congress should address this health threat promptly and decisively.