helwen

A new study has come out that indicates there may be links between Bisphenol A (BPA) and heart disease and diabetes. Further studies will need to be done as this is a preliminary study, but what they have so far should be of interest to everyone.

The FDA published an internal report earlier this summer stating that they didn't think BPA was of sufficient levels in products to cause problems, and another federal agency published a report after them that it was indeed a health concern.

Full article is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26736202/

Here are some parts I thought of note:

"The FDA has asked its panel of science experts to weigh in on whether the plastic hardening chemical poses a risk to children and infants. Bisphenol has been used in baby bottles and the lining of canned food for over 50 years, but recent studies in animals suggest it can disrupt hormones and cause developmental problems in the brain."

And

"Past animal studies have suggested reproductive and hormone-related problems from BPA. The new study is the largest to examine possible BPA effects in people and the first suggesting a direct link to heart disease, said scientists Frederick vom Saal and John Peterson Myers, both longtime critics of the chemical.

They wrote an editorial accompanying the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Still, they said more rigorous studies are needed to confirm the results."

And

"BPA is used in hardened plastics in a wide range of consumer goods including food containers, eyeglass lenses and compact discs. Many scientists believe it can act like the hormone estrogen, and animal studies have linked it with breast, prostate and reproductive system problems and some cancers.

Researchers from Britain and the University of Iowa examined a U.S. government health survey of 1,455 American adults who gave urine samples in 2003-04 and reported whether they had any of several common diseases.

Participants were divided into four groups based on BPA urine amounts; more than 90 percent had detectable BPA in their urine.

A total of 79 had heart attacks, chest pain or other types of cardiovascular disease and 136 had diabetes. There were more than twice as many people with heart disease or diabetes in the highest BPA group than in the lowest BPA group. The study showed no connection between BPA and other ailments, including cancer.

No one in the study had BPA urine amounts showing higher than recommended exposure levels, said co-author Dr. David Melzer, a University of Exeter researcher.

Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice said the study presents no clear information about what might have caused participants’ heart disease and diabetes.

“Measuring who has disease and high BPA levels at a single point in time cannot tell you which comes first,” Schwartz said.

The study authors acknowledge that it’s impossible to rule out that people who already have heart disease or diabetes are somehow more vulnerable to having BPA show up in their urine.

“There’s a small possibility that there’s some other factor that’s explaining this and it’s not due to BPA itself. We’ve done everything we can think of to exclude that possibility, but it would be nice to get more direct evidence,” Melzer said."

And

"An earlier lab experiment with human fat tissue found that BPA can interfere with a hormone involved in protecting against diabetes, heart disease and obesity. That study appeared online last month in Environmental Health Perspectives, a monthly journal published by the National Institutes of Health.

Government toxicology experts have also studied BPA and recently completed their own report based on earlier animal studies. They found no strong evidence of health hazards from BPA, but said there was “some concern” about possible effects on the brain in fetuses, infants and children."

The American Chemistry Council of course has issues with the study, and I agree that more studies need to be done too, but... I also think it would be smart to limit one's exposure to BPA just in case.

I'm kind of annoyed about the canned goods. We don't have a lot of them in stock, but still... :(

Of course there are other reasons to avoid BPA-containing items:

- It takes a lot of water to make the bottles in the first place.
- Generally only the bottle part gets recycled. The caps are harder to process and many places can't handle them so they go to the dump.
- Plastics use a limited resource and should be used for more important things than bottles, in particular disposable bottles.

Okay, done ranting for now!