Do Low Doses of BPA Harm People?

Scientists continue to disagree over whether the low doses of bisphenol A in canned foods and other consumer products pose a danger















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“Chronic disease in human populations is not something traditional toxicology is designed to handle. It doesn’t look for risk factors,” Zoeller said.

In addition, the biologists say BPA, like other hormones, seems to have effects at low doses that don’t occur at high doses. That doesn’t happen with the other chemicals that toxicologists are accustomed to.

While they readily acknowledge data gaps, they maintain that existing evidence strongly suggests that BPA is capable of affecting health at exceptionally low levels of exposure.

“How long do we have to see the same things repeated in studies until we say these effects are real?” Zoeller asked.

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



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  1. 1. jtdwyer 01:19 PM 2/20/13

    The animal studies were based on “exposure levels much higher than has been measured in most human blood samples and is therefore not sufficient evidence on which to make claims that humans are at risk at current exposure levels.”

    The above is a truly naive statement!

    Please see
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Expert_panel_conclusions

    "In 2006, the US Government sponsored an assessment of the scientific literature on BPA. 38 opponents of bisphenol A gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to review several hundred studies on BPA, many conducted by members of the group. At the end of the meeting, the group issued the Chapel Hill Consensus Statement, which stated "BPA at concentrations found in the human body is associated with organizational changes in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals."

    "The Chapel Hill Consensus Statement claimed that average levels in people are above those that cause harm to many animals in laboratory experiments. They noted that while BPA is not persistent in the environment or in humans, biomonitoring surveys indicate that exposure is continuous, however, which is problematic because acute animal exposure studies are used to estimate daily human exposure to BPA, and no studies that had examined BPA pharmacokinetics in animal models had followed continuous low-level exposures. They added that measurement of BPA levels in serum and other body fluids suggests the possibilities that BPA intake is much higher than accounted for, and/or that BPA can bioaccumulate in some conditions (such as pregnancy). A 2011 study, the first to examine BPA in a continuous low-level exposure throughout the day, did find an increased absorption and accumulation of BPA in the blood of mice."

    [references ommited]

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