“From a regulatory perspective, human exposure is supposed to be, at a minimum, 1000 times lower than the amount that causes harm in lab animals. Government funded research has found that the amount humans have in their body is higher than the amount needed to stimulate abnormal cell growth in animals. Humans are being exposed to amounts that can cause harm. There is no safety margin.”
Since the researchers heated the liquid used in the studies, I wondered if room temperature liquids were enough to leach BPA from plastic products. Dr. vom Saal assured me that leaching can in fact happen at room temperature, which is about seventy degrees.
“The higher the heat, the greater the leaching. If you put hot water in a new baby bottle, you’re modeling what you’d get at room temperature for an older bottle.”
Should adults be worried too?
“BPA acts like a birth control pill in the sense that it takes over your endocrine system. Like the pill, when you remove the exogenous [foreign] compound, your own hormones kick in and your system will go back to normal. But, if you keep BPA there long enough, you increase your risk factors for cancer. So yes, it can harm adults. But a single exposure for babies can cause permanent harm.”
Dr. vom Saal notes that increased blood levels of BPA may lead to genetic abnormalities in pregnant women, which in turn, can lead to miscarriages.
Although he confirms that there have been only a couple studies to test the outcome of exposure to BPA in humans, he doesn’t feel we should wait for this evidence to accumulate before acting. He compares it to the situation with diethylstilbestrol (DES), a hormone used in the 1970s to prevent miscarriage, which was later found to cause birth abnormalities and cancer in offspring.
A quick visit to bisphenol-a.org (a website sponsored by The American Plastics Council), finds a much different slant on the evidence. The site states that human exposure to BPA is well below the levels set by governmental regulatory agencies. It decries the City of San Francisco’s December 1, 2006 decision to ban all children’s toys and products that contain BPA, saying the decision is not scientifically based.
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