On Monday, the big news out of FDA was the announcement that they’re going to publish a new assessment of the risks posed by BPA in food packaging, due out by the end of November. Jesse Goodman, FDA’s Chief Scientist, made the announcement at a meeting of the agency’s Science Board, which also heard two presentations by scientists from different offices within FDA working on the new assessment.
Last year, FDA formed a task force to assess the risks of BPA and the task force quickly concluded that “there is a large body of evidence that indicates that FDA-regulated products containing BPA currently on the market are safe and that exposure levels to BPA from food contact materials, including for infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.” Given the rapid development of new studies on BPA in the diet, it’s a good thing that FDA is taking another comprehensive look at the available science. In the development of their new assessment, FDA ought to use a “weight-of-the-evidence” approach to their work and give due consideration to each study’s funding source and the researchers’ freedom to design and publish their work without sponsor interference.
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Matt Shudtz | August 19, 2009
On Monday, the big news out of FDA was the announcement that they’re going to publish a new assessment of the risks posed by BPA in food packaging, due out by the end of November. Jesse Goodman, FDA’s Chief Scientist, made the announcement at a meeting of the agency’s Science Board, which also heard two […]
Ben Somberg | August 18, 2009
If you haven’t caught it yet, Mother Jones magazine’s cover article on Fiji Water, by Anna Lenzer, is an impressive, provocative bit of reporting (“How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?”). Fiji responded, and Lenzer responds to that.
Holly Doremus | August 17, 2009
This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. In April, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to vacate a last-minute Bush administration rule relaxing stream buffer zone requirements for dumping waste from mountaintop removal mining. Salazar said that the rule didn’t pass the smell test, and that it had been improperly issued without […]
Ben Somberg | August 15, 2009
At Netroots Nation, the annual liberal blogger conference, organizations, candidates, and of course bloggers get together to talk. It’s informal. North Carolina’s Rep. Brad Miller, among several electeds at the conference, was sporting jeans by Friday. The focus among the environmental folks, not surprisingly, is climate change. The enviros here have qualms with the Waxman-Markey […]
Rena Steinzor | August 14, 2009
By now, followers of the controversy over the appointment of Cass Sunstein to serve as Obama Administration “regulatory czar” can do little but shake their heads in astonishment. The controversy over the Harvard professor’s nomination to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has taken on a picaresque quality, as one bizarre delay follows another. […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | August 13, 2009
This is one of two posts today by CPR member scholars evaluating NY Gov. David Paterson’s recent executive order on regulations; see also Rebecca Bratspies’ post, “Paterson’s Executive Order: Win for Industry, Loss for Public Health and Safety.” Who knew? With his newly announced plan to require New York departments and agencies to look back […]
Rebecca Bratspies | August 13, 2009
This is one of two posts today by CPR member scholars evaluating NY Gov. David Paterson's recent executive order on regulations; see also Sid Shapiro's post, "New York Governor Channels Ronald Reagan: Governor Paterson’s Flawed Plan to Review Regulations." It is open season on environmental, health, and safety regulations in New York. Last Friday, August […]
Shana Campbell Jones | August 11, 2009
One of the ongoing tensions in environmental law is the conflict between uniformity and flexibility, constancy and change. Many of the environmental successes over the past thirty years derive from uniform standards that are straightforward to administer and enforce. The Clean Water Act’s requirement, for example, that all industrial polluters are obligated to utilize the […]
Holly Doremus | August 11, 2009
This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. When it comes to climate change, lawyers and policymakers (and scientists too) have been guilty of emphasizing greenhouse gas emission reduction, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Adapting to climate change has taken a distant back seat, even as it has become increasingly clear that the […]