“I think that might be the most scary use, here you have pregnant women in these ultrasound and imagery rooms handling these printouts with BPS,” said John Warner, president of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.

Data are not available on how much BPS is produced annually. Each year about six billion pounds of BPA are produced globally and more than one million pounds are released into the environment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, did not respond to requests for comment about BPS.

Research investigating possible health impacts from BPS is nascent.

Some studies have proven a link between BPS and estrogen mimicking, but these studies used such high doses it is unlikely people would ever ingest so much, Watson said.

BPS is only a little less potent than BPA in mimicking estrogen, according to a 2005 study in Japan. And a 2012 study in Europe found the two compounds to be equally potent in their estrogen mimicking.

Given the discovery of hormone changes spurred by BPS, some scientists say the chemical could be linked to similar health effects as BPA. Animal studies suggest that BPA exposure causes reproductive problems, obesity and cancers. In human adults, it has been linked to increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Researchers haven’t focused much on BPS because they’re still trying to get policymakers to pay attention to BPA, Vandenberg said.

The EPA and Food and Drug Administration are currently reviewing BPA to determine if regulations are necessary. The EPA also mounted a program in 2010 with manufacturers and green chemists to evaluate BPS and other alternatives used in receipts.

This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

4 Comments

1. 1. RSchmidt in reply to Vendicar Decarian 01:47 PM 1/17/13

   @Vendicar Decarian, wow you are a real nutter.

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2. 2. greenhome123 04:57 PM 1/17/13

   i think Vendican Decarian was being sarcastic. Anyways, i'm going to start asking for no receipt from now on. I believe that the EPA should ban both BPA and BPS receipts. We have the technology to send customer receipts via text message or email. It would save stores money to send receipts that way as well since they wouldn't have to buy the receipt paper.

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3. 3. mudphud 01:37 PM 1/22/13

   This is one of those controversies that drives me nuts. Does BPA mimic estrogen in cell culture? Yes. Does it affect rats? Yes, they have a circulation system between their gut and liver that greatly prolongs it's half life after exposure. Does it affect humans? Probably not much, human livers rapidly modify BPA with glucuronide so that free BPA is almost undetectable, and all of it is in the urine tihin 6 hours. Does BPA-glucuroniode have ANY detectable estrogen activity? NO. Sometimes cell culture and rats do not translate to human risks. A lot of times it does, some times it misses things, but not in this case. But what about babies? Their livers don't detoxify like adults! True, but only for certain pathways- BPA gets eliminated immediately. Studies looking at levels in human serum that have shown high levels if free BPA would require huge exposures to BPA, and no such sources have been identified, leading to the conclusion that there is either a contamination (BPA is all over the place in lab equipment) or the inactive form breaking down in samples over time to leave free BPA. Overall, it probably deserves more study but it seems like an overreaction.
   
   I don't have access to the BPS article, but the abstract say BPS in urine thay measured is a sum of BPS and BPS-glucuronide. Since they don't separate it, I would suspect the inactive conjugated form is most of it, which is far less sensational. There are plenty of things we know are harmful to us in the environment in measurable ways, it seems foolish to ban substances we can't even measure human toxicities from that will cause to just use less studied compounds as replacements.

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4. 4. bucketofsquid in reply to mudphud 12:49 PM 2/1/13

   This is why companies should be forced to prove safety before being allowed to bring anything to market. The pattern of waiting until millions are harmed and dozens or even hundreds are killed is just not acceptable.

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