Cornered by a report from its own advisory board claiming it ignored studies showing that bisphenol A (BPA) threatens public health, the FDA announced it will reconsider its guidelines governing the chemical’s use in metal can linings, plastic baby bottles and food containers.

In August, the FDA deemed BPA safe as currently used. In doing so, it relied on 2 studies funded by a trade organization representing BPA manufacturers.

But the National Toxicology Program, a division of the Department of HHS suggested BPA causes brain damage and behavioral abnormalities in infants and children.

And a JAMA study showed that adults with high urinary BPA levels are more likely to develop diabetes and diseases of the heart and liver.

Oh, and 200 other studies have linked BPA to diseases ranging from reproductive problems to immune deficiency. The studies suggest BPA has negative effects at ingested levels below those deemed safe by the FDA.

Nevertheless, FDA official Mitchell Cheeseman had claimed that only those 2 potentially conflict-ridden studies met the agency’s criteria for assessing human safety of BPA.

All the other ones “lacked details about how the study was done, (and) don’t include all the raw data, so independent auditing can’t be done by agency scientists, and they have a variety of protocol limitations.” Cheeseman told the New York Times.

The editors over at JAMA probably got a good laugh out of that one.

OK so now at the request of its own oversight committee on BPA, the FDA has reversed course and the case is open once again.

That’s something, but not enough according to Anila Jacob, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group. 

“Every day we continue to delay removing this chemical from baby products is another day millions of infants continue to be exposed,” she told the Times.

Before China’s market reforms of ’78 and the consequent economic growth, Liukuaizhuang was a quiet, nondescript village 100 miles from Beijing.  But the expansion was wholly unregulated and now there is a price to pay.

Liukuaizhuang is circled by dozens of chemical, paint and rubber factories, all built in the last 30 years. Every one of them has poisoned the air and water ceaselessly since the day it opened.

One in fifty residents of Liukuaizhuang has been diagnosed with cancer in the last decade. That’s 10 times higher than the national rate.

“They asked in the hospital whether my family had a history of cancer. I said: ‘No, in the last three generations no one had it’,” one villager told Reuters, while pointing to x-rays of his metastatic disease.

Local Communist Party official Huo Junwei legitimizes the concern. “The factories were not far from homes and to a certain degree influenced the normal life of the villagers,” he conceded.

“(But) we think figures provided by individuals exaggerate pollution problems in our area. For several years we have been looking into whether there is a link between cancer and chemical production and have not yet got a scientific answer.”

That whitewash aside, things got so ugly in Liukuaizhuang that government officials quietly began a pollution crackdown in 2003.

It may be too late in that, “Pollutants including heavy metals like mercury and lead have already got into the food chain,” Gao Zhong, a water pollution expert, told Reuters.

Too late for many perhaps, so aspirations naturally turn to the children and grandchildren.

“Of course I am worried, but what is the use of being worried?” said a lung cancer patient. “We have to save our concern for the next generation.”

Things had been ducky for David Sinclair. A driving force behind intriguing, buzz-worthy research on aging and gene expression, the Harvard scientist helped introduce the world to resveratrol, a putative age-fighting, cancer-fighting ingredient in red wine.

And his recent article in Cell describes a chemical pathway that may link together several lines of truly major scientific inquiry.

So we hope he bounces back from a what-was-he-thinking decision to join the advisory board of Shaklee Corporation, a company that markets Vivix Cellular Anti-Aging Tonic, “the world’s best anti-aging supplement.”

The elixir costs $100 for a one-month’s supply. It’s loaded with resveratrol, which has been shown to have beneficial effects in mice, but not yet—and who knows if it ever will—in humans.

In response to inquiries by the Wall Street Journal about his apparent endorsement, Sinclair resigned from Shaklee’s board and claimed Shaklee associated his name inappropriately with Vivix.

Shaklee counters that Sinclair approved the use of his name in its promo materials, and points to his comments at a sales conference where he references his work and adds, “…we can take this technology to our friends, to our family, and have the benefits…right now.”

Shaklee sells Vivix through distributors that work for commissions and organize their own marketing, according to the Journal. Sinclair’s picture had appeared until quite recently for example on a Web site where Vivix is claimed to erase age spots, eliminate leg cramps and repair damaged skin.

According to Shaklee, 100,000 people have purchased Vivix since its release in August.

Sinclair’s resignation does not affect his role as co-chief adviser to Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which is studying pharmaceutical applications of resveratrol.

GlaxoSmithKline recently purchased Sirtris in a deal that allowed Sinclair to pocket more than $8 million, according to the Journal.