Study: Chemical in Plastic Harms Growth

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

RACHEL MARTIN, host:

Hey, welcome back to the Bryant Park Project from NPR News. We're online all the time at npr.org/bryantpark. And you know, this is the point in the show when all of our producers - everyone's very busy in the morning, putting together the show, but...

ALISON STEWART, host:

Ordering from Mirage.

MARTIN: Yeah, ordering food, bagels, et cetera. Bacon, egg and cheese.

DAN PASHMAN: Sweet, sweet bacon.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: That's Dan Pashman.

PASHMAN: I was actually flying solo this morning. It was kind of sad.

MARTIN: Oh, I'm sorry.

STEWART: I was with you for one.

MARTIN: No one else ordered?

PASHMAN: You've got a can of diet ginger ale, Ali.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PASHMAN: I got a bacon, egg and cheese.

MARTIN: It always helps when more people want to order. Otherwise you think, oh, maybe I shouldn't be getting that bacon, egg and cheese.

PASHMAN: It does. I refer to that phenomenon as "shame dispersal."

(Soundbite of laughter)

IAN CHILLAG: I had one yesterday and I'm still kind of dealing with it, and so I didn't want to.

PASHMAN: But I did find that it comes a lot hotter when you only order one.

MARTIN: Gosh, everyone really wanted to talk about their food today.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: Actually, we're going to talk about The Most. Hit it.

(Soundbite of music)

MARTIN: Dan, since you're already talking, what've you got to say for yourself?

PASHMAN: I've got a most-emailed here from the Los Angeles Times. "Chemical in Plastic May Harm Human Growth." Interesting study here. A controversial estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming children's brains and reproductive organs.

And this comes from a federal health agency, the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the NIH, the National Institute of Health. They concluded there were some concerns that fetuses may be hurt by the stuff they can bisphenol-A, or BPA. It harmed animals at low levels, the same levels found in nearly all human bodies. This stuff is in - it's one of the most widely-used synthetic chemicals in the industry today.

And they are concerned that it could seep from hard plastic beverage containers, like baby bottles, as well as certain kinds of liners. Now, we should say that the plastics industry says there's no serious high levels of the stuff anywhere and no one should be concerned and that the experiments were flawed.

MARTIN: Yes. There you go. Mine is one of the most-read at bbc.com. This is the latest installment in the "Harry Potter" courtroom drama. We've done this in the newscast in the last couple of days, but there's a suit. The author of the "Harry Potter" series, J. K. Rowling, has sued this guy who has a website where he chronicles the kind of characters, spells and creatures that appear in the Rowling series.

And it's kind of like an online encyclopedia of all things "Harry Potter." So she says that's a violation of her copyright because he wants to turn that website into a book. She says, no, no, no, no, no. So I think it's one of the second - yesterday was the second day of testimony - and this poor man, Steven Vender Ark, is the guy who's being sued.

He's this huge "Harry Potter" fan and he's really upset. When was asked yesterday on the stand if he still thought of himself as part of the "Harry Potter" fan community, he struggled to speak through tears. He said, "I do. It's been difficult because there's been a lot of criticism," obviously, "but it's been," the series, "an important part of my life for the last nine years or so." He's a 50-year-old librarian.

PATRICIA MCKINNEY: Yet the website was not enough and he had to have a book. This is - I'm just going to point that out.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CHILLAG: I thought that, too, yeah.

MARTIN: But he says that the publisher told him that it didn't violate the copyright laws.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MCKINNEY: OK.

PASHMAN: I don't feel bad for him.

CHILLAG: Isn't it - didn't we - weren't we also talking about - isn't Hermione's birthday today? Is that today?

MARTIN: Oh, I don't know.

CHILLAG: Tricia?

MCKINNEY: Ah, you know, I don't remember if it's today or yesterday.

PASHMAN: I thought it was yesterday.

MCKINNEY: But anyway, Emma Watson, happy 18th birthday.

MARTIN: Either birthday or belated birthday.

MATT MARTINEZ: We've got the Google monkeys on it.

MCKINNEY: Yeah. I'm working it.

CHILLAG: Go, Google monkeys.

MARTIN: Ah, Ian?

STEWART: Yesterday, yes, yesterday, Emma Watson turned 18, for all you men who keep track of those things.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: OK, Ian.

CHILLAG: OK, what's it going to be - is it going to be sicko? What's it going to be? Yeah, this is a most-emailed from Yahoo! and I have to say, speaking of things we talk about, every day at our editorial meeting, Matt, at the beginning, he says Tricia, you know, what's going on in the news? What do we need to be looking at?

And it's always, well, OK, there's the Pope's visit. Maybe there's a conference on the environment that we might want to look at. And for the last week, pretty much every day, Tricia has said, coming on Tuesday, at two o'clock, Motley Crue will be making a major announcement!

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: That's so true!

MCKINNEY: I'm sorry. It's three o'clock.

CHILLAG: Sorry.

STEWART: But it really was about four or five days running.

CHILLAG: Yeah. And so we, you know, we were on pins and needles. I was really excited. And it turns out it's really underwhelming.

MARTIN: Aw. How surprising.

CHILLAG: They're going to be hitting the road again. You know, they're going to have this thing called Crue Fest, where the band members, they're going to be joined by Papa Roach, a band called Trapped, which I just listened to for the first time. I thought, you know, they've got a new album coming out. We'd maybe hear some new stuff. Nah, I'm just kidding. We'll hear "Girls, Girls, Girls."

(Soundbite of laughter)

(Soundbite of song "Girls, Girls, Girls")

MOTLEY CRUE: (Singing) Girls, girls, girls.

MARTIN: That's what we want to hear. So sweet.

PASHMAN: It still sounds just as good as it used to.

MCKINNEY: To me, that sounds major.

CHILLAG: Nah. Now, if this can stand up to the Red, White and Crue tour of 2005...

MARTIN: Woo hoo!

CHILLAG: You guys were there, right? Yeah.

MARTIN: In spirit.

MCKINNEY: Oh, Motley, you've let me down.

STEWART: Well, if you don't like this music, Tricia's next Most is something that you might enjoy a little bit more.

MCKINNEY: Yeah, well, this is a...

STEWART: Or not.

MCKINNEY: I don't know. It depends what you like. But Yahoo! has their own kind of competition for the Google Trends. It's called Yahoo! Buzz, and one of the top search terms on Yahoo! Buzz today is "Bill Cosby," probably because he announced he's going to release a rap album in May. But he's not actually going to rap on it himself. I was totally disappointed to hear that, actually.

STEWART: That makes me feel a lot better.

MCKINNEY: Does it, really?

STEWART: Yeah.

CHILLAG: No kidding.

MCKINNEY: Anyway, he's putting out a CD next month called "Cosby Narratives, Volume 1: State of Emergency" and he's going to, I guess, tell his jokes and stories and it's going to blend those with a hip-hop, popping jazz soundtrack...

MARTIN: Come on, Ian, do it. Do the rap.

CHILLAG: No. No, I won't.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MCKINNEY: Anyway, he's really come out - he's been very, very critical of the hip-hop community. So he's trying to address what he sees as what's wrong with hip-hop culture and music. He says, quote, "It's going to be the opposite of what I think is the profanity for no particular reason, the misogyny for no particular reason. It really looks at the frustration and anger that a young man may have." And so, that's what he's going to do.

CHILLAG: That raises the question, what is the opposite of profanity?

MCKINNEY: NPR?

MARTIN: Humanity?

STEWART: There you go.

MARTINEZ: Care Bears.

CHILLAG: I was thinking of a puppy, actually.

MARTINEZ: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: Care Bears. Matt Martinez, what do you have?

MARTINEZ: I have the number one most-emailed story at npr.org, as always. It's by NPR's David Kestenbaum. "Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists," and it's part of NPR's Climate Connection series. It's about this girl named Kirsten Byrnes. She's articulate, intelligent, and she's got a website.

That's the most important thing. She's 16 years old. Kristen's website is called Ponder the Maunder and it's made her a celebrity among people who are really skeptical about global warming. And here's NPR's David Kestenbaum with that.

(Soundbite of NPR show Morning Edition)

DAVID KESTENBAUM: Kristen Byrnes is wearing green furry slippers.

(Soundbite of dog barking)

KESTENBAUM: She has a dog that barks at first, then licks, and a snake named Rex, who recently ate a mouse. She's no slouch academically. Her stepfather, Mike Carson, proudly shows off her grades.

Mr. MIKE CARSON: Ninety-three, 97, 97, 98, 95, 89, 99. Hey, wait a minute, geometry? You went down to 99. Oh, my goodness.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: The quarter's not done yet.

Mr. CARSON: Oh, you're grounded. You're grounded for a week.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KESTENBAUM: Some scientists may cringe to hear this story, but Kristen has a quality you want in a scientists. She is skeptical. Someone makes a claim? She wants to see the data. So about a year ago, when she was 15, she started to look at the scientific evidence. When she got confused, she consulted her stay-at-home stepdad, Mike. Soon they had printed out a mound of technical documents from the Internet.

Kristen was convinced by the skeptics, and she began to write, summarizing their arguments, adding her own touches. Yes, she says, the Earth is warming, but it's part of the natural climate cycle. Documents and papers filled a cardboard crate that once held green peppers, which all surprised her mom, Tammy Byrnes.

Ms. TAMMY BYRNES: I was like, wow. All righty.

KESTENBAUM: Now, the story might stop here. A homegrown science project, except that Kristen says they decided to post it on the web.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: I felt it was important to inform other people that this isn't completely true. Yeah, like a public service to let people know.

KESTENBAUM: Mike set up the site. Tammy typed.

Ms. TAMMY KESTENBAUM: I was the faster typer, and so...

KESTENBAUM: How much typing did you do?

Ms. TAMMY KESTENBAUM: Quite a bit.

(Soundbite of laughter)

(Soundbite of typing)

KESTENBAUM: The result was a website called "Ponder the Maunder." Kristen admits the title is a little obscure. It's a reference to what's known as the "Maunder minimum," a low period in solar activity in the 1600s. Her web page includes charts of El Nino indexes, isotope measurements, and ice cores.

Her tone is measured in some places, firm in others. Quote, "I will start this section with a very important point. CO2 in the atmosphere does not reflect radiation back to the Earth, as some have tried to state." Skeptics loved the website, a 15-year-old attacking the mainstream scientific view.

Mr. CARSON: Somebody had posted it on one of the blogs, and from there it took off. It took off like wildfire. But that was nothing compared to when her Al Gore critique went up.

KESTENBAUM: Kristen had no fear. She took on Al Gore, Nobel laureate, Academy Award winner, former vice president. She went after Jim Hansen, one of NASA's top climate scientists. Mainstream scientists would argue many of the issues on her website are red herrings or have been put to rest. And Kristen did get emails from people challenging her science.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: Yeah, there's a few who are, like, you're wrong. I disagree with you on this, this, and this. And we'd come back and be like, actually, you're wrong on this, this, and this and this is why. So...

KESTENBAUM: What happened at the end of that?

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: A few of them just kind of gave up and figured they can't fight against a 15-year-old, so...

KESTENBAUM: Mike says the website got a half million hits in a month. Emails poured in, mostly from people delighted that a young person was taking up their cause.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: I got a letter in the mail for my birthday from a senator.

KESTENBAUM: U.S. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, famous for calling global warming a hoax.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: OK. "Dear Kristen, thank you so much for your letter and email and for your kind words. I appreciate your help in the fight against global-warming alarmism. You're a common-sense young lady and an inspiration to me. I want you to keep up the good work. We are winning."

KESTENBAUM: Kristen says, when her determination sagged, her stepdad Mike encouraged her. Kristen, motivation, he would say. Mike himself is deeply skeptical of climate change.

Mr. CARSON: Well, this is one of our little handy things here. What has happened here is, we have taken a natural index, which is southern oscillation index - it's a major indicator of the El Nino southern oscillation - and we've compared it to temperature.

KESTENBAUM: And the truth is, for people who want to try to get down into the details, climate change science can get very hairy. There are oceans to consider, which can absorb heat, water vapor, cloud cover to account for. Much of the evidence rests on detailed computer models.

Scientists disagree on some of the details, and a handful of scientists do not think the case has been made. But the overwhelming consensus is that humans are causing global warming, and the consequences could be serious. When I visited Kristen, she had a friend over, Chrissy Flanders.

They said climate change doesn't get much attention in school, and despite Kristen's online celebrity, she doesn't talk about climate change with her friends. During lunch, Chrissy and Kristen talked about food and friends and clothes. So it was sort of a surprise when Chrissy mentioned that she disagreed with Kristen on climate change.

Ms. CHRISSY FLANDERS: No, I don't believe what you think.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CARSON: (Unintelligible).

Ms. FLANDERS: I don't - I think it's partly because of humans. I don't agree with you. Sorry.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: That's OK.

Ms. FLANDERS: It's your opinion.

KESTENBAUM: OK, so why do you believe that humans are involved in climate change?

Ms. FLANDERS: I don't know, um...

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: She just believes what everybody else is making her believe.

Ms. FLANDERS: No, I don't really know. I don't - I guess, maybe a little, but not all of it.

Mr. CARSON: Not everybody's going to have time to look at the data, right? And some of these people are going to have to sort of decide, you know, if 300 scientists signed something, maybe for some people, that's good enough for them.

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: Right. Like, even the media, other scientists, they're making everybody believe that it is anthropogenic. And like Chrissy here, good example. She doesn't know why she believes it, but she believes it because it's what everybody else believes. And I know that's not what you think, but...

Ms. FLANDERS: I don't really have an opinion. I don't really think about it.

Mr. CARSON: Maybe you (unintelligible).

Ms. FLANDERS: No...

Ms. KRISTEN BYRNES: You have an opinion. That's what you said.

Ms. FLANDERS: No...

KESTENBAUM: It's probably fair to say that most people, even those who have strong opinions about global warming, could not make a strong scientific argument for why they believe what they believe. Most of us delegate, decide to believe someone who we trust. We don't actively seek out the other side.

We probably wouldn't know what to make of it or how to reconcile the two. Who has time or the expertise? Kristen is getting out of the climate change business. She thinks she'd like to become an architect, maybe even build energy-efficient green buildings. She does not see herself as an environmentalist. She says that makes her think of hippies.

(Soundbite of music)

STEWART: That was NPR's David Kestenbaum reporting. You can find the link to this and all the stories you heard on The Most today by going to our website, npr.org/bryantpark.

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