Madison, WI – Today, the Senate Small Business, Emergency Preparedness, Technical Colleges, and Consumer Protection Committee held a public hearing on SB271, the BPA Free Kids Act, which would ban the sale and manufacture of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups in Wisconsin.
“Toxic chemicals have no place being in children’s products,” said Bruce Speight, WISPIRG State Director. “And parents should not have to be chemists to know what products are safe for their kids. Wisconsin should take action to protect our kids from BPA.”
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic sex hormone that mimics estrogen, but which is also used to make hard polycarbonate plastic, the epoxy lining of most food cans, and in many other consumer products. Ninety-five percent of all baby bottles on the market are made with bisphenol A. Children’s daily exposure to BPA is up to twenty times higher than adults, in part because such a large portion of their food comes from containers made from BPA.
In October 2008, Canada’s national health agency classified bisphenol A as toxic, and is now implementing a nationwide ban on bisphenol A in baby bottles. In April, the United States National Toxicology Program reported “some concern” that bisphenol A disrupts human development due to evidence of harm in laboratory animals at low levels found in nearly all human bodies. This year, both Connecticut and Minnesota have passed legislation banning BPA in children’s products.
“Despite numerous independent, peer-reviewed studies that have linked BPA to serious health effects, the plastics and chemical industry have worked hard to influence government studies and reports and to halt government action,” Speight stated in testimony today. “Powerful special interests such as the chemical and plastics industries should not be drafting government reports about their own products and undermining efforts to reduce the exposure of our children to toxic chemicals.”
Today, state Senator Julie Lassa; Dr. Gail Prins, Ph.D Professor of Physiology and BPA expert from the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dr. Ellen Connor, Pediatric Endocrinologist from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; Robert Moore, Senior Scientist at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy; and Bruce Speight, WISPIRG Director all testified to the health effects associated with low-dose exposure to BPA. Small business owners and public health and environmental organizations also testified in support of SB271.
Major retailers and manufacturers, including Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, and Playtex, recently pledged to eliminate bisphenol A from baby bottles; yet, bottles and cups containing BPA are still prevalent on the market.
In the past year, the federation of State PIRGs, U.S. PIRG, tested five of the most popular baby bottle brands on the market. Our research found that bottles tested from all five brands leached bisphenol-A at levels found to cause harm in numerous laboratory studies.
“This bill is about protecting children. WISPIRG applauds Senator Lassa and Representative Roys for their leadership on this issue,” concluded Speight.
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WISPIRG is a statewide non-profit, non-partisan consumer advocacy organization. www.wispirg.org.
