Today's—Tuesday, March 6, 2007—Star-Ledger carried an article by Amy Ellis Nutt, Star-Ledger staff, titled, "Study: Canned food has toxic chemical".
Here's the lead paragraphs:
"A plastic ingredient used to line many kinds of food and drink cans may be poisoning pregnant women and infants, according to study commissioned by an environmental advocacy organization.
"Cans of commonly eaten goods, such as soup, fruit, vegetables and soda, were found to contain more than 200 times the acceptable level of bisphenol-A, the study says. BPA is a plastic resin repeatedly linked to a host of health problems including breast and prostate cancer, infertility, diabetes, obesity and asthma."
This is how the so-called "free" market protects us by letting us pay the costs of the mistakes of those who gain the profits.
Why doesn't anyone or any entity have to prove the benign nature of the substances they introduce into our environment? Yes, I can understand the failures of past ignorance ... BUT we have known for some time that a wide array of substances can have harmful effects ... and we STILL have powerful folks trotting out the province of the Invisible Hand as the best caretaker of the common good.
Don't get me wrong, the market can exert a powerful influence for the common good ... but there is nothing absurd about setting rational rules to dampen its obvious harmful excesses. We can simply observe the differences between major league baseball and major league football to learn that concept. I mean George Steinbrenner and the Yankees are grotesque, don't you think?
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