Behind the Scenes: The Lefty PR Group That Stokes Consumer Fear of BPA
This is the third part of a BMI report related to BPA, a chemical commonly found in plastics.
- Part one: Ignoring Science, 97% of Stories Hype BPA as Health Threat
- Part two: Lefty Group Uses Pink to Camouflage Green Activism, Attack Business
The science against BPA isn’t very convincing, yet the left-wing onslaught from environmental groups, activist scientists and the media has convinced many consumers that soup cans, soda bottles and plastic storage containers are going to make them sick.
In
the case of BPA, perception and reality are far different, but false
perceptions can still cost businesses millions -- or put them out of
business altogether. The infamous Alar scare cost apple farmers $100 million according to a 1989 Associated Press report. Even growers who weren’t using Alar were devastated. By March 31, 2012, the FDA will announce a decision on the use of BPA in food and beverage packaging.
As
in the case of Alar, such perceptions have even prompted government
agencies to regulate or ban chemicals that served a useful purpose. That
could happen again at the end of March, the deadline for the Food and
Drug Administration to respond to the left-wing group NRDC’s petition to
ban bisphenol A from food and drink packaging. Some companies,
including Campbell’s soup, have already announced a BPA phase-out as
soon as alternatives can be used.
Like
many left-wing groups, NRDC “experts” are often quoted in the media and
are not always labeled as liberals. A March 23, 2012, Washington Post
story about green jobs merely called NRDC an “advocacy group.” Another
Post story from February gave no indication of the eco-regulatory agenda
of NRDC.
The
kinds of attacks used against BPA aren’t new. NRDC was the same
eco-group that created one of the most famous modern public health
scares: the 1980s apple scare over the chemical Alar. They were helped
by prominent progressive PR shop, Fenton Communications. NRDC claimed
Alar would cause cancer, especially in children. But the studies they
relied on were rodent studies (not human studies) and had other flaws.
According
to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), the National
Cancer Institute (NCI) found the active ingredient of Alar to be a weak
carcinogen, but so weak that the EPA couldn’t use it for a risk
assessment. Other studies of by Alar's manufacturer, Uniroyal Chemical
Company, Inc. (conducted within EPA guidelines). “No carcinogenicity was found,” ACSH said.
But
bowing to pressure from the NRDC, the EPA ordered more tests of a
breakdown product of Alar’s active ingredient, according to ACSH. Those
animal tests were “analogous to drinking daily, for life, 19,000 quarts
of juice made from Alar-treated apples,” Kenneth Smith and Jack Raso
wrote for ACSH. Despite that, the EPA ordered that Alar be phased out.
As
they often do with health scares, the media reacted to NRDC’s concern
over Alar with hype. CBS’s “60 Minutes” exclusive (offered by Fenton
Communications on behalf of its client NRDC) even “broadcast an
illustration of a skull and crossbones over an apple in its report on Alar,” according to The New York Times.
Since
that time, many have condemned the Alar Scare including the American
Medical Association (AMA) and former surgeon general C. Everett Koop who
said, “[I] care deeply about the health of children, and if Alar ever
posed a health hazard, I would have said so then and would say so now.
But the truth is that Alar never did pose a health hazard.”
ACSH
has catalogued some of these remarks including the February 1992 AMA
statement that read, in part: "The Alar scare of three years ago shows
what can happen when science is taken out of context or the risks of a
product are blown out of proportion. When used in the approved,
regulated fashion, as it was, Alar does not pose a risk to the public's
health." Even The New York Times wrote in 1991 that, “Many scientists,
while acknowledging studies that indicate Alar could cause cancer, have
since concluded that because the risk is so low and because fewer than
15 percent of apples were sprayed with Alar, the Alar crisis was greatly
overblown.”
NRDC
succeeded, against the science, to get Alar banned. A similar battle
over BPA has been going on for at least a decade as NRDC, the Breast
Cancer Fund and a host of other left-wing groups (Fenton Communications
included) have sought to regulate or eliminate the chemical.
The media have often helped those groups in the fight, as the Business and Media Institute has reported.
In just the past two years, the three broadcast networks’ and five
major newspapers’ reports mentioning bisphenol A have hyped it as a
threat 97 percent of the time despite “scant” evidence that the chemical
should be avoided. On March 31, it will be clear whether the left-wing
group, its allies from Fenton Communications, to other anti-chemical
eco-groups and the news media gets its way again.
BPA, Fenton’s new Alar?
Fenton
Communications isn’t a household name, except for people working in
public relations, left-wing environmental groups or national news
outlets. Yet, this left-wing publicity group is behind one of the latest
targets of the left: BPA. At least one of its clients, BornFree -- a
BPA-free baby bottle company, has benefitted from the attacks on BPA.
Fenton cites its work for BornFree as a case study in reports on its
website.
David
Fenton, the founder of Fenton Communications, has a lengthy left-wing
resume. After dropping out of high school, he documented the late ‘60s,
early ‘70s protests with his camera. According to Capital Research
Center, Fenton “helped produce the ‘No Nukes’ concerts of the late 1970s,”
and through his own firm created campaigns against Alar, SUVs, the war
in Iraq and represented interests including the National Resources
Defense Council (NRDC) and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan who set up a
protest camp outside of the Bush ranch.
Fenton
and his PR firm garner plenty of national media attention for their
clients, but little for themselves. In the few national news reports
mentioning Fenton Communications in recent years, there wasn’t a hint of
environmental radicalism or even progressivism in the descriptions.
Print outlets were content to label the company “A D.C. public-interest
marketing firm,” “A public interest communications shop” and a “public
interest public relations firm.”
In
each of those descriptions, “public interest” was the term that keeps
cropping up. It is a moniker left-wing groups cling to to make it sound
like they are doing what is best for people, especially when they are
calling for more regulations and less freedom of choice.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Fenton was also “a major force in the silicone breast implant scare, serving as the PR firm to the trial lawyers in implant litigation.” Throughout the early 1990s, media hyped the unproven dangers of
implants by including dramatic examples, not identifying activists and
excluding relevant opinions. Reporters also ravaged implant manufacturer
Dow Corning. In 1992, the FDA banned the implants except in controlled
studies so that their safety could be examined. Years later, multiple
scientific studies would show no connection between cancer and
autoimmune diseases and the implants.
In
2006, the FDA approved silicone breast implants for use again. But the
news media were still prejudiced against them. NBC’s Brian Williams
said, “Given the history of this product, I think a lot of people are
going to have a hard time with the government blessing for this
particular product, being a foreign substance being sewn inside the
bodies of women.”
In recent years, Fenton has been helping dissuade consumers from using products containing BPA. CEI mentioned this on May 12, 2010,
but the Fenton study warning about BPA has since been removed from the
Fenton website. But other information is still there. It is clear the
group views BPA as a “hormone-disrupting chemical” and claims that it
“causes cancer in animals, even at low doses.” (They didn’t point out
that some of those animal studies were done by injecting the chemical
into cells, rather than having the animals ingest BPA, which is the
primary way humans come into contact with it)
One of Fenton’s clients, BornFree, is a BPA-free baby bottle company. Fenton says they wanted to “position” BornFree “as a leading consumer health advocate.”
How did Fenton do that? They had them testify about the “dangers of
BPA” before a California State Senate committee that was considering a
BPA ban. So they had executives testify about science to project the
right public image for the company. Fenton managed to get national
attention for BornFree by “leveraging” their relationships with
reporters, and bragged that the product “was covered in virtually every
major national newspaper” and on “Good Morning America.”
Fenton
cited not only the company’s increase in sales as the success, but
added that “national legislation has been introduced to ban BPA from
children’s products.”
The left-wing PR group has a report called “Take a Position: 10 Steps to set Your Organization or Cause Apart.”
In it the company gives examples of products and liberal advocacy
groups that have done that successfully. On page 10, the anti-chemical
group Breast Cancer Fund (which has also campaigned against BPA) is
mentioned for creating “a unique area of specialization” among breast
cancer groups. It was unclear whether Fenton was directly involved in
helping BCF become one of “the most ‘out front’ breast cancer groups
focused on identifying and preventing the causes of breast cancer.” In
addition to similar goals, BCF and Fenton also share at least one former
employee.
Media Hype Poor Science and Help Activists’ Anti-BPA Crusade
Fenton knows how to get its messages out, especially by using the news media.
The
PR company is well connected to the media according to Rowan
Scarborough who wrote for Human Events back in 2009, that Fenton boasted of its connections
on its website saying one of its employees, “has landed clients in
mainstream news outlets across the country such as Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and Politico as well as congressional publications such as Roll Call and CongressDaily. She has placed stories in many major media outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.”
National
news coverage of BPA has been extremely slanted against the chemical.
In just the past two years, the broadcast networks and top five national
newspapers have continued to label BPA “carcinogenic” and “toxic”
and use flawed reports from activist groups to bash it. Just two out of
87 reports focused on research that found BPA wasn’t the huge danger
the left claims it is.
On
the Feb. 25, 2010, CBS “Early Show” broadcast, Katie Lee crossed the
line from hype into outright falsehood when she said of BPA: “And that’s
been shown to cause liver disease, heart failure, all sorts of things.”
Anyone
listening to the media coverage might be surprised to learn that large
and reputable studies done by government agencies have failed to find
proof that BPA is dangerous to people at reasonable exposure levels. One
of these studies was a “huge” and “scientifically rigorous” study
called Ryan et al.
in 2009. Richard Sharpe, a leading endocrinologist, of the Queen’s
Medical Research Institute (UK) wrote in The Toxicological Sciences
journal that the Ryan et al. study “throws cold water”
on the BPA controversy “by showing complete absence of effect of a
range of bisphenol A exposures ...” According to Sharpe, this study
found no estrogenic effects of ingested BPA even when the doses were
4,000 times more than maximum human exposures.
But instead of reporting studies like Ryan et al., the media have relied on left-wing eco-groups and other activists that claim BPA is harmful.
One of those groups, Breast Cancer Fund, has used its name to camouflage its green activism
and the media have helped. The Los Angeles Times unchallengingly listed
BCF as one of the “top breast cancer charities” back in 2010, despite
its focus being entirely on the “environmental” (translation: chemical)
causes of breast cancer. BCF supports liberal Rep. Edward Markey’s,
D-Mass., bill (introduced in Jan. 2011) to ban BPA in all food and
beverage containers.
