Does plastics additive affect sexual development?*
Wow, what a big news day on the bisphenol A front.
First, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is defending its decision of earlier this month that the stuff used in a variety of plastic products looks to be A-OK.
That comes as the Journal of the American Medical Association reports today
on a study of BPA levels in nearly 1,500 Americans' urine that is the
"first large-scale and high-quality population-representative (BPA)
data set to become available," according to JAMA.
It found that people with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were most likely to have been diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes, and to have clinically abnormal concentrations of three liver enzymes. The study concludes:
Independent replication is now needed to confirm the associations reported. Because our analyses are based on urinary concentrations of BPA, which reflect recent exposure, studies based on repeat measurements over weeks, months, or even years would improve the assessment of longer-term exposure.
Here is a related JAMA editorial, also published today, by two leading critics of BPA.
And that's not all. In other developments:
We hear a lot from parents and other consumers who are concernd about BPA in consumer products. There's definitely a public cry for safer products on store shelves. . . . It's encouraging not only that consumers are taking this into their own hands but (also) the marketplace has figured out that when consumers don't want this in their products, there are ways to come up with safer products.
* Whoops. We forgot to mention that, previous to this latest finding
on BPA corresponding with serious diseases, it's been strongly
suspected as an endocrine disrupter, meaning it affects the development of the sexual reproduction system. And not in a good way, either.
We should also mention that the industry has its own take on this subject.
