Anthropomorphic Personifications

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Bisphenol A: Dental fillings, ADHD and the fall of the American Empire

globeandmail.com: The other place bisphenol A lurks: our teeth

BPA is a hormone disruptor that can mimic estrogen, and some research has linked it to health consequences, including early puberty in girls, breast and prostate cancer, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

(Emphasis, mine.)

So besides the increasing freakiness of all the unexpected places that this BPA stuff is showing up (Dental Fillings? really? Well at least it should only be a problem for people who are old enough to have been bingeing on HFCS for long enough to get cavities.) But what really caught my eye was the ADHD mention.

It's often been noted that the US seems to have a higher rate of ADD/ADHD than other countries, and this has variously been linked to: the mindset on the imigrants who make up the population (restless/ADHD people are more likely to move, thus the population has "self selected" for ADHD like traits) ; the over medicalization of the US population mindset (ie everything can be fixed with a drug even if it didn't used to be a problem); among various others. But this raises the prospect that it might juts be that Americans are more exposed to various endocrine disruptors and other chemical products that have a relatively short history of existence and use.

We learned, from Rome, that lead pipes, while useful will eventually poison you. I wonder what lessons the rest of the world will learn once the US finishes poisoning it's population (I'm still holding out hope that it will be clear enough to learn anything from in the end, though that seems increasingly unlikely. And besides, we've never been very good at keeping the mess in our own back yard, so there may well be no one left to learn the lesson.)

PS: Brita pitchers and filters etc are made of Polystyrene, not polycarbonate, so they are and have always been BPA free.

PPS: of course as with all of the various scary chemicals around... The ADHD connection could be bogus: no one has done the research, which, really, is the whole problem.



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Both before either.

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