The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year said “the scientific evidence at this time does not suggest that the very low levels of human exposure to BPA through the diet are unsafe.”  The FDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are analyzing whether to restrict use of the chemical, which is used in polycarbonate plastic, canned food liners and some paper receipts.

The report also cites threats to wildlife, particularly killer whales and harbour seals. Both have high levels of PCBs and flame retardants that accumulate in ocean ecosystems.

One problem vexing those who study endocrine-disrupting chemicals is the vast number of them – about 800 are known – and how they may interact with one another. They’re in a variety of things – such as pesticides, flame retardants, plastics, cosmetics and canned foods – and research has only touched the “tip of the iceberg,” according to the report.

“The vast majority of chemicals in current commercial use have not been tested at all,” the authors wrote in the summary.

Unless we know where the chemicals are used, and they’re tested, it’s tough to make informed decisions on how to protect people, Woodruff said. But developed countries such as the United States have proven that they can greatly reduce exposures to contaminants they find problematic, such as air pollution, she said.

“We seem to be accepting as a society that it’s acceptable to load up our next generation with chemicals in an unregulated manner and hope they’re not bad,” Zoeller said. “We need to change that entire culture.”

The leader of the panel was Ake Bergman of Stockholm University, who has studied PCBs and related chemicals in Sweden for several decades. Others include Riana Bornman from Pretoria Academic Hospital in South Africa, Niels Erik Skakkebaek of University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Taisen Iguchi of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Japan, Susan Jobling of Brunel University in England and Derek Muir of Environment Canada, among others.

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

7 Comments

1. 1. karenalcott 04:49 PM 2/19/13

   The Wiki on Menarche refers to several studies that show enviromental chemical exposures as one factor in the drop in age of menarche and increased BMI as another.
   "Most sources agree that the average age of menarche in girls in modern societies has declined, though the reasons and the degree remain subjects of controversy. A decline in the average age of menarche from 17 to 13 in Europe from 1850 to 1960 is well documented, but a large North American survey reported only a 2-3 month decline from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s".
   If child hood obesity is both a contributing factor in early menarche and a symptom of this sort of chemical exposure; then endocrine disruptors are a double whammy. I have also seen studies that are tracking a drop in male sperm counts, in reproductive age men, during this same time frame. Are these related phenomena? And what happens if the chemical industry changes our reproductive cycles, right when modern societies need their young adults to put off reproduction in order to get an extended education, in order to support their own children?

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2. 2. txbodhi 11:32 PM 2/19/13

   People who doubt this harm by toxic hormones in corporate products are robot like humans programmed by evil companies owned by the cabal cult of super rich banking families. Many independent scientists have proven this toxic effect.

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3. 3. lipovictor 07:24 PM 2/21/13

   Chemicals used in agriculture cause obesity. Pesticides and fertilizers allow abundant and cheap food.

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4. 4. rlh2012 11:56 PM 2/25/13

   interesting

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5. 5. johnson 06:25 PM 2/27/13

   There is a recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled: "No ill effect found in human BPA exposure" by Robert Lee Hotz. Says the exposure levels are thousands of times too low to affect the human body. and concludes: "The World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority, and Japan's National Institutes of Advanced Industrial Sciene and Technology have all dicounted its risk to human health."

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6. 6. Dennis2sheds 12:05 PM 2/28/13

   For some reason the Wall Street Journal is reporting more like Fox News. Care to guess why.

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7. 7. johnson in reply to Dennis2sheds 01:03 PM 2/28/13

   I know: I just threw this out there for something interesting...

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