Discussing the Complexities of BPA (Sara Taubman)

 

In this interview Sara Taubman Interviews Society and Genetics Professor Patrick Allard. They discuss the complexities of EDCs in food packaging, specifically delving into BPA and BPA alternatives.

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Tue, 3/8 3:56 PM • 36:18

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

plastic, bpa, talking, food, chemical, people, microwave, packages, minimize, pesticides, leaching, buy, question, food deserts, endocrine, apartheid, products, edc, contaminants, studies

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SPEAKERS

 

Professor Allard, Sara Taubman

 

 

Sara Taubman  0:07  

Hello, my name is Sara Taubman. I am a senior and I'm a human biology and society major. I am a member of the apartheid consulting firm, where we addressed the intersection between endocrine disrupting chemicals and food apartheid. I want to first acknowledge that at the time of the interview for this podcast, we use the term food deserts to describe areas without access to fresh food and grocery stores. However, I want to acknowledge that in our firm, we have recently moved away from the term the term food deserts in favor of the term food apartheid's because food deserts often implies that there's a naturally occurring barren area. However, these areas are not barren, but they have primarily corner stores and fast food. Additionally, it is not a naturally a natural occurrence, but instead the workings of systemic racism that results in certain people being seen as less important and therefore exposed to increased environmental chemicals. We focus on the chemical exposure from food packages within our consulting firms. With increased consumption of packaged food comes the increased chemical exposures. Well oftentimes we talk about lifestyle choices and making healthy choices related to diet, we see that many people do not have a choice because of food apartheid's. It is not an issue about choice but have access as we delve into this topic, on today's episode, we will be discussing some of the complexities of assessing endocrine disrupting chemicals in food packages. Today we'll be focusing on analyzing BPA. Today's guests will be Professor Patrick outlets. I chose to interview Professor Allard because I'm currently taking his class called society in genetics 105 B, which discusses public health topics relating to endocrine disrupters in BPA. Dr. Ahlers received his BS from University of Toulouse, France. And he also completed his PhD degree in Biology from the University of McGill, Canada. He also completed his postdoctoral fellowships in the laboratories in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Allard works with the intersection of genetics as well as Developmental Biology and Environmental Health. He has also had his work recognized in many high profile journals. The following interview takes place on Zoom and is a conversation between ourselves and Dr. Allard as we have a conversation discussing the complexities of BPA and endocrine disruptors in food packages today.

 

In your opinion, like how do you assess different health outcomes when you talk about like, let's say the use of BPA in cans in lining cans to prevent rust in the can but then comparing that to like the health outcome of Russ being in the cannon that potentially getting into food versus BPA leaching into food like how do you in how would you take an approach to making those types of comparisons

 

professor Allard  4:18  

Yeah, you're saying right off the bat was a very very good question and it goes back to the concept of why would you rather tray Would You Rather trade something that you understand pretty well? So you know, getting iron ore other metals contaminants with iron leaching into I guess it's at a minimum can so it's mostly iron but still right like you're you'll have stuff leaching from the metal into into the food. And metals are rarely pure anyway. So would you trade that known to you to BPA, or worse, the replacement of BPA that is one more unknown in terms of especially long term effects of. So I think it's a really hard question to answer really directly. It's a question of trade off, I think, from I think there's, like, we were talking about here is the this trading loss of known versus unknown, but also just an object of product, the integrity of the product itself. From a manufacturing standpoint, in the US standpoint, like we want to have a cat that's not leaching, we don't want to have again, that we can keep on a cup more for a long time. So when we keep stuff as tomato basil can be quite acidic, and start to eat into the integrity of the candle, like nobody wants that we want something that's practical and long lasting, right? So then what can we used to protect the product inside of the can? What can we use to protect the cannon cells? So they read is to do really over time. And the best thing that we found for soda cans for food cans was to have this landing of plastic inside. I see it as kind of I don't know if I know enough of the manufacturing practices, but it seems like a logical thing to do. You just want to make sure that you're doing it in a way that's still safe. Right?

 

Sara Taubman  6:27  

I don't know. Am I answering your question? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's no one right answer, because it's a complicated issue. And the health outcomes from etc, are not going to be necessarily the same health outcomes. And it's, I think, difficult to even compare. But I guess another question following that. We can talk about like, what the lining is, and you mentioned, something like maybe acidic, like tomatoes might increase, or amplify the leaching? And like, one question I had was, we talked about in class, the cumulative effect of certain pesticides and EDCs, like mixing. Is that something to your knowledge that is considered or that you think should be considered when you talk about what type of package is being contained with what type of food? And is there potential for using maybe a certain BPA analog or using a different chemical? That structurally accomplishes what we want but minimizes the amount of amplified risk?

 

professor Allard  7:59  

I don't know for sure that this is so I'm actually seeing Sorry, I'm seeing several things in your questions. You mentioned pesticides at the beginning. And then you went more like do we line? Do we try to align what the container is made? With what it's containing? Like? Right? And are we making a decision based on that adjustment? I don't think that those things line up, I think, can cans are being made. And then people are free to put in whatever they want. So I don't think that's that alignment made between the two. But I don't know, again, as I said, I don't know too much about the manufacturing practices. I would be surprised if people did stuff. And in terms of our people researching, let's say, right, let's say this something instead of a cat that would be somehow contaminated with pesticides, there's always going to be traced recent use of pesticides, right? Is it like it just by law, it has to be understood in level but that's the part that's regulated, but there's always going to be a little bit of pesticide especially for non organic products. Maybe just for an organic products, but then do people take into account you know, endocrine disruption of those pesticide contaminants with a can? And the answer for that is no. Even from a research perspective, that question of mixture is poor, poorly done or not done at all. And that's because it's very complicated to do. When you talk about mixtures you're talking about While just multiplying the number of conditions to test, because you need to test more than one by definition. So at the minimum of two often multiple things at multiple chemical that different concentration, each one of them, it just, it just multiplies all the conditions by so much that it becomes very hard to do. I've been talking about the need to study mixtures for for, you know, more than a decade, decade, decade now, and And yet, there's still headway that's being made in that direction. It's just, it's a numbers thing. It's very difficult to do.

 

Sara Taubman  10:43  

That's interesting. And I think that builds to a question like, well, maybe mixture hasn't been studied as much. Something else we talked about was like, the stress that the added stress the maybe even the environment might place on products, but also that we might be instructed to put on products, for example, like, Tupperware that is supposedly microwave safe, but even goes to one step further, where there are packaged plastics that the instruction is to steam your vegetables in the microwave with that. I know. Right? Yeah. And so not only in my mind, that seems like it may be not only a false sense of safety in certain like labelings, where it's saying you can heat this, when the instructions are to heat this. What What can we do to work through legislation or shift that narrative or even in our personal lives, to put our education through even my project, of redirecting the instructions where even if that's the package you buy, maybe transferring it to a glass bowl and then microwaving it? Or where does that? What are your thoughts on that? And the explicit instructions and the ethics of that?

 

professor Allard  12:14  

Yeah. I mean, that's also a really, really good question. They are nongovernmental organizations, NGOs. There's a breast cancer group, in particular, in the Bay Area, there's also also in the Bay Area, for some reason, most of the people that I know, in the Bay Area, in that area, but so there's a Center for Environmental reproductive health at basic UCSF. So again, in the barrier, that basically does fundamental work like this to look at, to take different kinds of products and look at the level of contaminants and, you know, like common consumer products, and look at what's going on. So I remember the, I can't remember now what the exact name of the breast cancer, it's not the Breast Cancer Fund, but it's some breast cancer related organization in the, in the Bay Area. And they had actually done, you know, paid their own studies to look at measurements of Bisphenol A, but also other bisphenolS and different food products. And made this publicly available in like, very plain language right now, like a science paper, but like actual pamphlets, display the data reporting the results in a way that was understandable. And, you know, I don't know necessarily, from your project, specifically what you can do, maybe except for like trying to amplify this value in amplifying the work that has already been done, and then ask, you know, can we do this more? And make a call for more research in the same vein as those NGOs are doing? So, I mean, I'm a researcher. So I always believed that it starts with more research more information thrown at a question. But then you also need to be able to propagate those results into the general population and then amplify them. So yeah, I agree with you, we need first by understanding the magnitude of the problem and the different ways that it shows up. I did notice as well, because I buy those things like those plastic bags with green beans or whatever and Supersprint microwave and it's not the type of plastics that will be made with BPA, but it's still plastic is still a polymer. It's supposed to be more stable. But you are putting it under stress. And it's one use though, right? So the thing with BPA, if I can make a distinction Now, the thing with BPA is those plastics are hard and transparent and a made to be reused. And so over time with the use of detergents and heat, the plastic can degrade, and eventually start to leach other monomers from the polymers that made the glass, the cup. So here, we're talking about plastic that is more of a one time use, and it feels good to be put under stress and things can leach out, but it's not going to be the same as the VP, no matter what, from a precautionary principle, it's not something that I would want to do, right, but it would, we would want to start with why do those green beans is out of the bag after microwaving? Why are they loaded with? And it starts by doing pretty intense chemistry, like analytical chemistry, as it's called to understand what's in there. I've not seen studies looking at this, I'd be very curious if people had done them. And you found them if they've not done them? Like, I'd be curious for people to do that. Right? Because I'd like to know as well. Right? Ultimately, ultimately, it starts with that kind of knowledge. And then it's, it comes continues with the dollar. As long as you'll have this company's selling us practicality, and people buying into what they see as being very highly practical, it's going to be hard to convince to people to switch to the really heavy, you know, glass space stuff, right? Because here, you just throw your thing in the microwave, and you're done.

 

Sara Taubman  16:49  

Yes, I think but at the same time, like with those rice packages and green bean packages, when they're in a little bag, most likely, you wouldn't just eat them out of the bag, you'd probably pour them into a bowl. And so with the money, like I know, the FDA always has, you know, money in mind, and there's always industry, but even if the package was kept the same, and the only difference was the wording on the package saying open bag, pour into bowl, microwave safe bowl, microwave, then eat. Like I've been doing that since taking this class and doing research are dizzying cutting open the bag and putting it into a bowl, which do

 

professor Allard  17:32  

the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a, like, it's such a sea lace. I mean, it's it's not a sin, I was gonna say it's a silly steps that it's not as silly as status, just a novice that you know, and then you just made that bowl in two seconds in a day. Yeah, it's we're in such a society of convenience. And the plastic is at the crux of intersection of all these things are sold to us as opposed to. Right, right. But, but we're playing, we're paying the toxic price for that.

 

Sara Taubman  18:10  

And that leads into another question of how are things different in other countries? is the way that we have the amount of packaged food here, different? And would you find items like that in other countries? And why if there is a difference? Why do you think that is? I know, you talked about convenience here. I haven't really lived in a lot of other places. But I wanted to see what your input on that.

 

professor Allard  18:41  

Yeah, I mean, have a little bit of insight, but just from a personal standpoint, and also just curiosity about different cultures. I mean, I do think the, if I compare the three countries that I know very well, France, Canada and the US US is, I think maybe on the higher level of the use of plastic and every day kind of thing. And thinking about the large supermarket brands in France, for example. Many of them have moved to reduced packaging, ways of doing things where you know, the water bottles now, like this motion your hands because the plastic is a lot thinner. It's like 30% less plastic during those plastic bottle. So some people are happy because you plastic bottles are just not you know, like they used to be, but that's a lot less plastic. That's one of the ways but we are by far not the most extreme. The one extreme that I know of is Japan and all So Taiwan, where things are individually wrapped, I mean, the amount of wrapping around packaging, especially in Japan, because there's a lot of cultural ties as well in Taiwan. I mean, that's insane. Like, you know, you have an item, let's say, a box of candy, and then the box would be wrapped in plastic. And then inside of that box, you would have several layers of plastic that you have to open and paper as well. And then you would eventually get to the candy, but each candy would be individually wrapped. It's like, an amount of plastic, that's, that's just unheard of, in this amazing YouTube videos about about that, actually, the packaging waste in Japan, you can you can watch that, sort of short videos, you know, like to grocery store, a corner store to buy stuff and like opening stuff in front of you. And like making a pile of plastic at the end. It's, it's fascinating. And it has to do with a culture, which I think is also quite prevalent in the US. It's a question of convenience. It's also a question of hygiene, perception of hygiene, right? When things are individually wrapped, it just gives you this very strong sense of cleanliness. But really, from a bacterial perspective, anonymously from a plastic, see the more invisible, perhaps more or less direct version of kindness and hygiene.

 

Sara Taubman  21:42  

Right. And I know that some of the papers I read talked about how, in the age of COVID, packaged food increase significantly because of the fears of contamination and food carrying COVID Or having COVID on it. And so, you know, I think that when we look at one risk that we know, and that is, you know, one way that media can blow up COVID Not not to minimize that COVID is a risk, but to ignore any risk that putting those packages can also have on our health.

 

professor Allard  22:23  

Yeah, and we talked about that very briefly. 105 B, it's kind of that risk trade off. Like, there's also the risks that we used to that we are okay to live with. And then the risks that is newer, and we're not okay to live with. And we make those trade offs. And those trade offs are cultural, temporal, political, and at the intersection of all these issues. And ultimately, we kind of as a society, I guess, decide on what's important now, short term versus long term and all this kind of stuff. It's it's, it's very interesting,

 

Sara Taubman  23:02  

right. In your mind, do you think that we are in a place where the substitutions we've made are regrettable? At least in food packaging?

 

professor Allard  23:20  

So again, yeah. I know, actually a little bit less about packaging and other things. But I

 

Sara Taubman  23:28  

are in general, and

 

professor Allard  23:29  

honestly, well, actually, sorry. Yeah, maybe I do know a little bit because not honestly, from a staff perspective, but from a vSphere perspective. Yeah. So just talking about the bisphenolS, which I know more about. I don't think they're regrettable yet based on the evidence that they have. But I don't think that we can make an argument that they're better. I don't think we've improved things. Because because we have data that shows that at least in some context, these substitutes to BPA, carry similar estrogenic or endocrine disrupting activity. Studies, I was conflicted, and when I've seen studies that show that you know there's estradiol shows the strongest effect of all this estrogen, right, like, Saugus effect of all always, and then BPA is very far. And then the substituents to BPI, even like further if there's an activity, so the highest is always a straight out BPA is the second strongest and then everybody else is like a lot lower. I've seen those kind of studies, but then I've seen also other studies showing that No, BPA is almost the same as the others or the same as the others. So I'm not sure we have a strong leg to stand on here that says that we've made definitely a move towards something that's safer. I conversely, I don't think that we have a strong leg to stand on to say that it's regrettable. But I think that we're in the middle. We've not made things better. From a mental health perspective, we have this false sense of safety. That's what I mean. But I do think it's a false sense of safety,

 

Sara Taubman  25:25  

which in some ways, could be more dangerous, depending on your opinions, but like, you know, feeling like oh, that that is BPA is regulated. And that's what we hear about, then we can do whatever we want with the plastics, because, you know, going back to that cycle of it says it's microwave safe, it says it's dishwasher safe, it even tells us to do some, some plastics tell us to do dangerous things with the plastics. And, you know, we could be in a time of a false sense of safety, which, ultimately, if we were in a time when plastic was seemed like it was dangerous, then we would probably use it less and also regulate our own behavior interacting with IP,

 

professor Allard  26:16  

absolutely. 100% agree with that. You know, I think often the question that I get when I teach that kind of material is, well, what can I do? Like, should I be and people want to know, they have very specific questions, like, like, is it okay to muck with the bag, and blah, blah, blah. And at the end, I would say, you know, in an everyday kind of scenario, meaning not OKCupid show exposure, like this is not our job to work with this chemical. So we're not going to have a crazy exposure to just one chemical, we're going to be exposed to relatively low levels of plenty of different types of chemicals. So I'm not going to point out like one particular behavior that you have, and say you need to change that. But I think what's useful is to think about it from a body burden perspective, like what is the overall load of chemicals that tend to have an estrogenic activity inside of our bodies, and then try to identify as many of these sources as possible, and then figure out, you know, what kind of easy changes can I make to try to minimize that buddy burden, it's not going to be eliminated. But let's try to minimize as many as possible, right. So like, I do the same thing as you, I will open the bag and open another plate, I will drink from a glass of glass, I do have some plastic bottles. But that I will buy from time to time. But I will not let those bottles, if I buy them, I will not let them sit in the sun in the car, which has been shown to release a lot of plastic into the water. And you can actually taste that the water has changed flavor. Yeah, so there's definitely some interest anyway, there's all these little things that you can do to minimize your overall burden. And I think ultimately, we don't want the false sense of safety. Because if there was, you know, if I was, especially a woman with breast cancer in my family, or if I hadn't had breast cancer, or I'm having breast cancer, I would definitely want to work on knowing what I know, I would want to minimize my exposure to Xeno estrogens. As much as possible, and I, I don't want to have a false sense of safety, that this thing is probably fine because they remove that one. You know that one chemical, because it has been replaced with another chemical that has the same endocrine disrupting ability. So you don't want to take I feel like by taking away information or misrepresenting information, you're taking away choice. And that choice may seem benign for some people, but for some other people that choice may actually be part of, of their strategy, too. Deal with a health issues. You don't want to take that away. So yeah, I do believe that the very basic information, but also talks about the people that are most at risk to suffer from these environmental exposures, right, based on the iniquities

 

Sara Taubman  29:31  

right. And I think something that I've thought about when talking about, you know, estrogenic compounds and who's being exposed, I think, in a lot of communities, like school lunches, a primary source of food for many children, and there are guidelines for what's being provided. But in everything that I've looked at so far, most of the standards and guidelines are based on like macronutrients and calories. And, you know, in a lot of food deserts and communities that are, don't have access to as many fresh foods. There are also many higher rates of obesity and diabetes and, you know, heart disease that a lot of the EDCs are linked to by disrupting metabolism. So I don't know, the best. I mean, I guess it's not really a what's the best way? But do you know anything? In terms of like, what is? What shifts in terms of like, health standards for? Those types of things are being rezone? Yeah, but

 

professor Allard  30:58  

just like explicitly from the food lunches?

 

Sara Taubman  31:01  

Yeah, things like that.

 

professor Allard  31:01  

Well, basically, I know nothing about that. I think that's a very interesting question. I'd be surprised if people took that into account. Because because of the issues when we talk about EDCs, as that is still a controversial topic, I think, especially because of the pushback from the industry. And that sense, feeling at FX number p, its physiology, so it's complex, many things can fit into it. When you talk about obesity, you know, I mean, of course, Diane is going to be playing a big role. But we talked about ETCS as a modifier of that. But because there's several potential causes behind it, it's hard to say, Oh, the EDC has caused it, right. Especially in the human setting, we have pretty good animal data. But, but in humans, you know, that data is very, very hard to come to come to prove conclusively. So I'd be surprised if anybody really acted on that. Like, if there was an EDC, free or EDC, minimize, I guess, you know, lunch, lunch thing. Yeah, I'd be shocked. And honestly, because I have kids myself. Like, you don't want it, especially for young kids, like you don't want to have glass around. Like, it's also a very practical thing. It's, it's literally a cost benefit analysis that you make, it's a choice that you make between practicalities, safety from like, you don't want cuts, you know, injuries. And then the trade off is potentially exposure to plastics with a more unknown, less direct outcome of that. And you, you weigh those things, and you go with the usually with a more practical, you know, more tangible thing, is this trade offs that you make on a daily basis, whether you think of them or not.

 

Sara Taubman  33:16  

Right. Yeah, it's interesting. And I think in a lot of communities that there is not a choice necessarily, because that's only, I think that's the emphasis to that I see. It's like, well, I can choose, I can go, you know, to Brentwood, and go to the farmers market to pick up my veggies and fruits. In a lot of communities that are not too far away, don't they really don't have a choice. And then even if they leave, they've never been exposed to any produce. So they don't even know what it is. And so they probably wouldn't buy it anyway.

 

professor Allard  33:56  

I mean, yeah, presumably. I mean, it's interesting, the concept of food desert, right, because we're talking about it from a geographical standpoint, but it doesn't have to be geographical it, you can be the same location going to the same grocery store may not be able to afford the stuff. That's a much higher price. Or even, these options may not even exist at all, like, you know, some fruit we can buy organic, it's double the price. And then some foods, there's just no organic option at all. So So I think there's also right so I'm not I'm not minimizing the food desert thing. It's a reality. It's something that you need to address. But even outside of the food desert context, they can be a monetary food desert. Where you sell meat, maybe you have access to those produce So you're going to only be going to be able to afford the ones that are just loaded with pesticides. And they come that come from Mexico, where even the organic ones may still be loaded with pesticides, because that's actually an unregulated and it's all much less regulated and very murky. What's going on there. There's a documentary about that as well. That's fascinating. So, so like, you can't even really trust it. There's, there's different ways of looking at this food business, I guess the Song, etc. Perspective.

 

Sara Taubman  35:36  

Yeah. That's, that's very interesting. And a really good point that Yeah, even outside of that there's disparities. And I think that's kind of emphasizes the argument for every everywhere talking, like, you know, increasing research and education and regulation of these chemicals so that young people outside in all areas can will benefit ultimately. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day.