Sarah A. Vogel - Is It Safe?: BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals

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University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

2013 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vogel, Sarah A. (Sarah Ann), 1974

Is it safe? : BPA and the struggle to define the safety of chemicals / Sarah A. Vogel.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-27357-3 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-520-27358-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Phenolstoxicity. 2. Economics. 3. Endocrine Disruptorstoxicity. 4. Environmental Exposurelegislation & jurisprudence. 5. Environmental Exposurestandards. 6. Politics. QV 627]

615.95131dc23 2012026476

Manufactured in the United States of America

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled, deinked fiber that is processed chlorine-free. It is acid-free and meets all ANSI/NISO (z 39.48) requirements.

In memory of my mother, Judy Vogel

This book asks the question: What makes a chemical safe?

The rapid proliferation of petrochemical compoundsused to make pesticides, plastics, drugs, and many other products of modern lifeover the past sixty years has transformed our global economy and ecology, as well as human understanding of our brave new world. From the mid twentieth century onward, we marched forward in the petrochemical revolution with the assurance that the ease, health, and convenience provided by new pesticides and plastics would outweigh their risks. We were armed with comforting colloquialisms, such as All things in moderation. A bit of chemical exposure could be tolerated, given the enormous benefits petrochemicals afforded society. And indeed, as U.S. chemical production grew, so too did the gross domestic product.

The neat simplicity and seemingly commonsense notion of this logic, however, is being contested today by emerging understandings about the risks of industrial chemicals found within the human body. Recognition that exposure is so ubiquitous that industrial compounds can now be found in umbilical cord blood and amniotic fluid alters our perspective on what defines chemical moderation in the twenty-first century.