HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Moderator: Lawrence Bachorik 01-15-10/12:30 pm CT Confirmation #1386689 Page 1 HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Moderator: Marc Smolonksy January 15, 2010 12:30 pm CT Coordinator: Welcome everyone and thank you so much for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. During the question and answer session please press star 1 on your phone. Todays conference is being recorded, if you have any objections you may disconnect at this time and when you do go to questions please introduce yourself by name and organization. Now Ill turn the meeting over to Marc Smolonsky you may begin. Marc Smolonsky: Thank you everyone, thank you for participating in the call. Im Marc Smolonsky, Im the Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Im joined here with other officials from the department including FDAs Principle Deputy Commissioner Josh Sharfstein, Jesse Goodman, the Acting Chief Scientist of FDA. HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Moderator: Lawrence Bachorik 01-15-10/12:30 pm CT Confirmation #1386689 Page 2 Also with us is Linda Birnbaum, the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the NIH and Robin Ikeda who is the Acting Deputy Director for Non-Communicable Disease, Environmental Health and Injury Prevention from the CDC. Weve asked you to join this call today to talk about the administrations work on health risks, environmental health risks that disproportionably affect children and specifically we want to talk to you about bisphenol-A or BPA. BPA as you know is a chemical thats been used for more than 40 years in the manufacturing of many products containing hard plastics and epoxy resins including baby bottles and hard plastic sip cups used by infants. Its also used to produce the lining of metal cans, for example cans of liquid infant formula and trace amounts of BPA has been detected in the food of these containers. Now under the previous administration the Food and Drug Administration conducted a review of BPA toxicology research and determined at that time that food related products containing BPA were safe. But thanks to new technology and advances in science we now have new research findings about BPA that shows subtle effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals, and this has raised new concerns. At this time I want to be clear that BPA has not been proven to harm either children or adults. However especially given that children in the early stages of development are exposed to BPA, the data and the new research deserves a closer look. HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Moderator: Lawrence Bachorik 01-15-10/12:30 pm CT Confirmation #1386689 Page 3 In fact we need more research to understand the potential health effects of BPA exposure to children. Its one of the reasons the president has asked HHS along with other federal agencies to pull together an inter-agency task force on childrens environmental health. Our role will be to use the expertise we have to drill down on a range of key environmental health questions affecting children, especially questions about BPA. At HHS through the NIH, the FDA and the CDC, we are investing in important new health studies in both animals and humans to determine the potential health affects of BPA. And this includes an investment of $30 million funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act supporting research at NIH. Dr. Sharfstein and Dr. Birnbaum and others are here with me to go over the details of this new research as well as some of the specific work being done by FDA and NIH. In the meantime while we gather more data, there are simple reasonable steps that we are recommending families and parents can take to minimize exposure to BPA and these recommendations are now on our Website at hhs.gov. Ill go over just a few of them. Number one, were recommending that parents follow the recommended guidelines to feed your infant. The guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics which recommend breastfeeding infants for at least 12 months whenever possible since this is the optimal source of nutrition for babies. HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES Moderator: Lawrence Bachorik 01-15-10/12:30 pm CT Confirmation #1386689 Page 4 But if breast feeding is not an option iron fortified infant formula is the safest and most nutritious alternative. As I mentioned there are small amounts of BPA that have been detected in canned liquid infant formula. But if canned infant formula is iron fortified it remains nutritious for formula fed babies and good nutrition outweighs at this time the potential risk of BPA exposure. Parents should not be making any significant changes to a babys diet without talking to their doctor first. Number two were recommending that parents throw away scratched baby bottles and cups. These baby bottles and cups that have scratches may have germs in the indentations that may be contaminated with BPA or may release small amounts of BPA. Were