Well-meaning laws sometimes backfire. It's especially true when they are passed in reaction to media frenzies driven by ideology, not science. That's what's happening in the US and Europe, where advocacy groups are raising new alarms about bisphenol A (aka BPA), a controversial plastic component used to prevent spoilage in myriad products, including containers, dental sealants, and epoxy linings.

At this AEI conference, experts addressed the potential regulation of BPA, a chemical used in plastic and other common products.

The term "political science" used to mean public policy studied not just as opinion but based on empirical, documentable evidence. Today it's come to mean something darker--the subversion of science in the hands of ideologues committed to manipulating public policy to their end. This new, and disheartening use of the...

Finding plasticizers in dust is neither surprising nor necessarily a cause for alarm. Evidence that phthalates cause harm in humans is scientifically thin, and campaigners never directly address that hypothesis.

Policymakers might be sobered by the results of a natural experiment banning the sale of gutka in the state of Maharashtra in India.

The effort to ban Bisphenol A, a polycarbonate plastic, as harmful to human beings is misguided.

Styrene's recent listing as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" means something very different from how it is being framed by advocacy groups and the media—and this knowledge gap threatens to wreck legislative havoc across the country.

When or if dedicated anti-BPA campaigners yield to the emerging science remains to be seen. Let's hope the OEHHA has the wisdom and courage to base its decision on science rather than on a narrow interpretation of Proposition 65.