NRDC wants FDA to act on BPA

Executive Summary

The Natural Resources Defense Council requests a court order compelling FDA to act on the council's petition to ban the use of bisphenol A in food packaging and other materials likely to contact food. NRDC, which filed the complaint June 29 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, petitioned FDA in October 2008 to prohibit BPA, a hormone-disrupting chemical, in food packaging. FDA officials expressed concern about the effects of early life exposure to BPA on brain development and the prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children (1"The Tan Sheet" Jan. 25, 2010). When the agency noted that a National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program expressed "concern for effects of the substance on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and children at current human exposures," makers of infant formula sought substitutes to BPA use in can linings (2"The Tan Sheet" March 1, 2010)