BPA Scare Campaign Exposed - How to Profit from Non-Profits

It's been said that money is the root of all evil. If you take a hard look at how much those orchestrating the bisphenol A (BPA) scare campaign are making off of your fear, I think you'll agree with that statement.

We are talking lots of money here. Which equates into lots of manipulation to keep that money coming in. It made me think of the greatest line from the film All the President’s Men when Washington Post cub reporter Bob Woodward met Deep Throat in a parking garage and was advised to "follow the money." Let's apply the counsel of Deep Throat to the machinations of the anti-BPA crowd.

For starters, there's the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Both are considered non-profit groups under the Internal Revenue Code, meaning that contributions to them are tax deductible to the fullest extent of federal tax law. The EWG was able to amass more than $6.2 million in revenue in 2008, the most recent year for which I could find tax forms, otherwise known as the Form 990 for non-profits.

If you think that's a lot of money, the much larger NRDC pulled in a whopping $108 million in tax year 2007 (Okay, $107,999,911.00 to be precise) and had more than $186 million in the bank at the end of that year. Remember now – all these millions of dollars spent by these groups are tax-exempt. The groups pay no tax on the contributions they receive and the donors get to write their individual contributions off their taxes as charitable gifts.

This tax-exempt money, provided by tax-deductible contributions, is used to gin-up page after page of junk science and petitions that, among other things, seek to ban bisphenol A (BPA) which no credible research is able to show presents any harm to humans. However, these tax-exempt-funded efforts do help BornFree, the corporation whose calling card is BPA-free baby bottles and whose financial viability hinges in part on whether BPA is further regulated or banned, either of which would give it a considerable advantage over its competitors.

Another prominent funder of the BPA scare campaign is The Tides Foundation, the San Francisco-based grantmaking giant for left-of-center causes which raked in more than $114 million during tax year 2008. Among its more useful purposes is to serve as a front for trial lawyers, other donors and their agendas, according to the watchdog Capital Research Center, essentially "laundering" contributions so that both donors and recipients are virtually invisible to the public.

One beneficiary of Tides is the Center for Health and Environmental Justice (CHEJ). Tides gave $45,000 in 2004, $655,000 in 2005, and $100,000 in 2006, all which helped to drum up unfounded fear of BPA by invoking images of infant babies being put in danger by baby bottles. Not surprisingly, the CHEJ fuels its alarmism with references to Frederick vom Saal, perhaps the best friend the anti-BPA crowd has.

Oh – and Drummond Pike, founder and CEO of The Tides Foundation, has also served on the board of the Environmental Working Group. That’s what you might call a ‘tidy’ little arrangement.

Now enter Fenton Communications, which serves as the bridge connecting all of these parties, and serves as the main orchestrator of the manipulation process. Between Fenton’s "partnership" with the tax-exempt EWG and the NRDC, Fenton’s work on behalf of its corporate client BornFree and left-wing mega-grant maker Tides Foundation, the continuing efforts of the EWG, Tides and the NRDC to use tax-free money to promote and produce junk science that seeks to ban BPA, one wonders if this really passes the smell test. It also raises questions about whether tax exempt dollars are being used on behalf of a commercial enterprise.

Follow this trail with me for a minute to see just how these for-profit non-profits get a scare campaign rolling: EWG released a study that falsely claims that BPA is harmful. This is followed be a petition drive by the CHEJ that went after companies that sell products containing BPA. Meanwhile, Fenton Communications is busy pitching anti-BPA stories to an all too willing media while in the service of its client, BornFree, which makes BPA-free baby bottles. See the vicious circle here?

If it walks like a duck...