FDA Rejects Call for Banning BPA Use in Food Packaging

An American environmental group’s attempts to ban a chemical used in food packaging has failed after the US Food and Drug Administration rejected the petition stating that the organization has not given enough evidence. The Natural Resources Defence Council had petitioned the FDA to ban the use of bisphenol-A, a chemical that is used in hardening plastics in food packaging. The organization was calling for a ban on the basis of a number of studies that have shown the chemical to be harmful to the reproductive and nervous systems in animals.

However the FDA has rejected the petition and said that the studies were too small to be conclusive and that the conclusions cannot be applied to humans.

“While evidence from some studies have raised questions as to whether BPA may be associated with a variety of health effects, there remain serious questions about these studies, particularly as they relate to humans”, the agency said.



Source-Medindia