Meg Kissinger & Susanne Rust, “BPA Industry Fights Back: Public Relations Blitz Takes Cue from Tobacco Companies’ Past Tactics,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, August 22, 2009

This article discusses a four-month Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel investigation into the initiatives allegedly undertaken by the plastics industry to forestall the proliferation of local, statewide and national restrictions on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in food and beverage product packaging. According to the authors, “The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics—and people—the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry’s arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube.”

The reporters apparently relied on IRS reports, disclosure forms and e-mails exchanged by lobbyists and government officials, in addition to the industry’s public relations documents and materials. They contend, “The documents offer a rare glimpse of the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working the system.” Citing previous articles about the Food and Drug Administration’s relatively recent purported deference to the industry on BPA safety, the article claims that the documents show, “agency scientists have relied on chemical industry lobbyists to help draft public safety standards on BPA for much longer, more than a decade.”

Among other matters, the authors note that documents supposedly found in the archives of The Tobacco Institute, which was disbanded by court settlement in 1998, detail meetings between federal regulators and chemical industry lobbyists. The article states, “Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government’s assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters
and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.” The authors cite details they allegedly uncovered about multi-million dollar campaigns to protect the chemical industry’s image, exaggerate safety claims and use “outdated studies to support their position.” A public health and history professor is quoted as saying, “We’re watching a propaganda campaign in the making.”