I'll be talking about an article from the Pioneer Press, on February 6th called “The Chemical Revolt.” It is addressing the presence of BPA in many plastics, including baby bottles. I want to address the fact that the article heavily contributes to the semantic contagion issue; that no one has proven that the chemicals present directly lead to any serious developmental issues and that coming at the scientific issue by stressing mothers' fears for their children the article encourages people to be afraid of something rather than considering it logically.
The article “The Chemical Revolt” was interesting to me. It reminded me of many other news programs I watch that seem to be trying to scare me rather than inform me. The presence of BPA in our plastics is certainly something that the EPA should be seriously looking into, but can we really not store or microwave our food in plastic, or drink out of plastic bottles, or let our kids play with plastic toys like the article suggests? It mentions that 6 years ago, most moms had no idea what phthalates or dioxin were, so how serious can the issue have been? And isn't it highly possible that the reason that so many mothers are stressing and worrying about what their children touch (stress isn't good for pregnant women, is it?) is not that the media has done us a favor by raising our awareness on this serious issue, but that the media's obsessive coverage of the issue is making our society worry about something we needn't? One of your experts even acknowledges that she definitely has BPAs in her system but guesses they aren't harming her, so maybe we're all just worrying and stressing because everyone else is doing the same.
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I think you make a a good argument for the over-coverage of the media on certain issues. Would you consider that the job of the media is to inform, and it is our job as a society to take what we want from this information? Would it be better for the media to withhold certain information that might prove to be important later? Just some questions you could think about. I understand that you're specifically referring to obsessive coverage, but maybe you could make the distinction between informing the society and scaring the society.
ReplyDeleteGreat topic. What and how something becomes a 'health hazard' is a great issue for us. We know, for example, that lead will really damage babies / kids who ingest it (by chewing on painted window sills, say). But lead poisoning in children happens only in certain places: basically in poor, neglected housing (where kids are hungry, often ignored, and in contact with bad old woodwork. Kids in Edina aren't eating a lot of lead paint. Yet we've just put new building code regulations in place that require every contractor who disturbs old paint to remove ALL the paint in the house--at a cost of god knows what.
ReplyDeleteAs regards BPA, the jury really is still out as you say.
But check out this HARPERS magazine piece on the BPA industry trying to block regulation. It's a dandy:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/12/0082737