Dancing With Fools

Exposé on the Journal: Chemicals In Our Food

There may be a potentially dangerous chemical leaching into our food from the containers that we use every day. BILL MOYERS JOURNAL and EXPOSÉ: AMERICA’S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS examine why, even though studies show that the chemical Bisphenol A can cause cancer and other health problems in lab animals, the manufacturers, their lobbyists, and U.S. regulators say it’s safe.

In a watchdog series for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, a trio of reporters focused on Bisphenol A, a chemical contained in many plastics that is also found in 93% of human beings. The problem at issue? Congress ordered the federal government in 1996 to begin testing and regulating certain chemicals suspected of causing cancer and a host of developmental problems. Eleven years later, not a single compound has been put to that test.

You can read the full series “Chemical Fallout” online, plus ongoing coverage of the fate of Bisphenol A. On May 15, 2008, the SENTINEL reported on some new Congressional hearings:

Members of a Senate consumer affairs subcommittee faulted federal agencies for reacting too slowly to concerns that children are exposed to bisphenol A through leaching from common items such as water bottles, baby bottles and the linings of food and baby-formula cans.

On May 20, 2008 a reform bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate and House. “The “Kid Safe Chemicals Act” is modeled on European legislation enacted last year. More study and more debate is anticipated.

The reporting team who broke the story for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL “Chemical Fallout,” Meg Kissinger, Suzanne Rust and Cary Spivak, were awarded the 2007 Sigma Delta Chi award and the Society of American Business Writers and Editors award for the series. All three reporters will be taking viewer questions about the story and their work as investigative science reporters on The Moyers Blog. Simply add your question and they’ll be answering them in the near future.

Meg Kissinger
Meg Kissinger is the Watchdog reporter for healthcare investigations. Kissinger was a finalist for last year’s Selden Ring and Investigative Reporter and Editor awards for her reports on the filthy and dangerous housing conditions in Milwaukee County for people with mental illness. That series won the Mental Health America Award for best news reporting. In her 25 years in the newsroom, Kissinger has written about abuses in the nursing home industry, the scam of the door-to-door magazine sales industry and the travails of an oncologist who unwittingly discovered his own end-stage cancer. Kissinger has received awards from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

Susanne Rust
Susanne Rust is a science reporter at the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL. In her five years at the paper she has trekked through the hills of Rwanda to cover stories on civil engineering and AIDS; hacked through the dense foliage of a Ugandan rain forest in search of mountain gorillas; poked around Scotland’s Roslin Institute looking for clones; and written about eco-friendly agriculture in Costa Rica. Rust has also been recognized for her reporting on stem cells, including winning a First Place Inland Press Association award for explanatory writing. Before joining the JOURNAL SENTINEL, she pursued a doctorate in biological anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied primate communication, evolution and ecology.

Cary Spivak
Cary Spivak is the JOURNAL SENTINEL’s investigative reporter focusing on business. Before joining the Watchdog Team as an investigative reporter focusing on business, Spivak was the co-author of the Spivak & Bice column. Prior to launching the column in 1998 with Daniel Bice, Spivak worked on the business desk at the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL as an investigative reporter specializing in casino gaming, the legal industry and financial fraud. During his 30-year career, he has worked on a variety of investigations involving business, politics and law enforcement. Subjects he has probed include a now-disbarred bankruptcy lawyer who pocketed thousands of dollars in fees without doing any work for his destitute clients; illegal property flipping schemes and securities fraud.

Published on May 23, 2008.

The American people are being poisoned by corporate greed.

This once grand nation which originally gave it’s people all the freedoms necessary to prosper has turned it’s back on itself and taken that all away, leaving instead a polluted and poisoned populous and a ravaged environment.

Mercury, Flouride, PCB’s, CCA, BPT, DDT, Roundup, and literally thousands of untested and potentially lethal chemicals surround us at all times and some are killing our babies!

Is this an OK price to pay for ‘convenience’?

This must not continue, this chemical war against America.

As American citizens it is our DUTY AND OBLIGATION to do what it takes and start the revisions necessary to attempt to correct the enormous sacrilege committed against us by the profiteers.

Your child or grandchild’s life depends on it.

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