Today’s newspaper contains an Associated Press article describing a link between girls’ behavior and previous consumption of BPA by their pregnant mothers.

The study was released online today at the journal Pediatrics, and involves 244 Cincinnati-area mothers whose urine was tested for BPA twice during pregnancy and at childbirth. Then when the children reached age 3, the women evaluated their children’s behavior using questionnaires.

The researchers found a positive correlation between increasingly high urine levels of BPA in pregnancy and worse behavior in the daughters. For every 10-fold increase in BPA levels, girls scored at least six points worse on the questionnaires. Oddly enough, no such correlation was found for sons.

The lead author, Joe Braun, is a research fellow at Harvard’s School of Public Health. He warned that such behavior changes could have dramatic implications for the population as a whole.

But another BPA researcher, Charles McKay of the Connecticut Poison Control Center, criticized the study for not recording other factors that could also affect the results. For example, mothers with poor eating habits might the the ones with the highest levels of BPA, and perhaps they continue to eat poorly and feed their children poorly, causing behavior problems.

BPA is a plastics additive widely used in our environment in things like water and soda bottles and cans, tin can liners, cash register receipts, and on and on. The FDA is in the midst of a review of its safety.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_9e185d93-ed15-58d0-a276-72c557d98d3d.html

Two Minnesota colleges are joining a reported nationwide push among students to ban bottled water as a favor to the environment.

College of St. Benedict and Macalester College both are banning the sale and purchase of bottled water on campus. Bottled water results in landfills full of plastic bottles, not to mention causing consumers to pay for something that’s basically free, said students on the campuses in interviews with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. And then there’s the BPA issue–who wants extra estrogen in their water?

Bottled water usage peaked in 2007 at 29 gallons per capital in the U.S. By 2010 it had fallen a bit to 28.3 gallons per capita.

So what will the students and faculty on the campuses be drinking? More soda? Not at St. Benedict. This campus is installing new water fountains.

The College of St. Benedict has installed at least one “hydration station” in each building. Will it be filtered water? All told, the stations cost about $20,000. After subtracting the cost of water coolers in offices and water bottles for events, the college will make that back in about a year, a college spokesman told the Star Tribune. But the college will lose another $5,000 to $6,000 per year in profits from the sale of bottled water on the campus. It will work out. “In the long run, we are going to save money,” said Judy Purman, director of sustainability.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/local/129195988.html

Cashiers are particularly likely to get BPA exposure through the skin, handling paper receipts that are coated with the stuff as well as money that’s gotten a good dusting of it from the receipts. In fact, cashiers should wear gloves.

That’s what a researcher from New York says. Kurunthachalam Kannan, PhD, a scientist at the Wadsworth Center and professor of environmental health and toxicology at State University of New York/Albany, discussed a study he co-authored, published Aug. 15 in Environmental Science and Technology.

The chemical BPA is a synthetic estrogen found in bottled water bottles, soda bottles and cans, food cans, dental fillings, and so on. Researchers have found it causes cancer as well as other health problems, but industry has succeeded so far in not having it banned. The chemical is in a review process at the FDA currently.

The study looked at BPA levels in 156 forms of paper money from 21 countries. All of them contained BPA. But while money may contain high levels of BPA, the skin provides an absorption barrier. Small amounts were found to be absorbed through the skin, said Kannan, according to WebMD.

He recommended that people rinse their hands after handling money, and that cashiers wear gloves to limit their exposure.

Meanwhile, an industry scientist scoffs. Steven G. Hentges, PhD, of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council, pooh-poohs Kannan’s investigation.

“Finding trace levels of BPA in currency is neither surprising nor a concern,” he told WebMD.  “Human exposure to BPA from contact with paper currency is minor and orders of magnitude below science-based safe intake levels set by regulatory authorities worldwide. Furthermore, available data suggests that BPA is not readily absorbed through the skin.”

Now Kannan and colleagues are looking at BPA levels in newspaper and toilet paper.

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21744851

http://www.webmd.com/news/20110812/study-paper-money-contains-traces-of-bpa

The agency that we’ve been pestering to change its mind on BPA is the Food and Drug Administration, FDA. So far, the FDA  has moved very slowly, saying for many years it thinks BPA is safe, and now finally calling for a couple of years’ worth of review. Never mind that it lets many possibly hazardous chemicals into our environment, assuming they are innocent until proven guilty. Never mind that the FDA is full of conflicts of interest.

The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, is getting into the act now. It’s concerned that BPA is harming aquatic life. In an announcement, the agency cites several studies that have found BPA to have an impact on the growth, reproduction and development of aquatic organisms, even in tiny amounts.

BPA, you recall, is a plastics additive that’s also an estrogen, providing all of us with plenty of unwanted exposure. It’s not only in water and soda bottles and cans, but in canned foods, on cash register receipts, and in a host of other products. More and more studies are questioning its safety.

The Federal Regulation Brief for July 27 contained the following announcement from the EPA, asking for public comment.

Testing of Bisphenol A: Advance notice of proposed rulemaking, published July 26, 2011, comments by Sept. 26, 2011

Bisphenol A (BPA), a high production volume chemical, is a reproductive, developmental, and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency is requesting comments on requiring toxicity testing to determine the potential for BPA to cause adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects, in environmental organisms at low concentrations.

The EPA is also requesting comments on requiring environmental testing consisting of sampling and monitoring for BPA in surface water, ground water, drinking water, soil, sediment, sludge, and landfill leachate near expected BPA releases to determine whether environmental organisms may currently be exposed to concentrations of BPA in the environment at or above levels of concern for adverse effects, including endocrine-related effects.

This advance notice of proposed rulemaking is directed only toward the environmental presence and environmental effects of BPA. The EPA is working with the Department of Health and Human Services on potential human health issues, but is not considering any additional testing specifically in regard to human health issues at this time.

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/01/38622.htm

A new study seems to show that BPA is safe. The study, e-published June 24 in the journal Toxicology Studies, combined the efforts of researchers from the CDC, the FDA, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and has gained praise as being “carefully designed.”

In the study, 130 volunteers consumed lots of canned food containing BPA for 24 hours. The study looked for BPA in the blood during that time, and found no detectable amount.

BPA, you remember, is the false estrogen found in large amounts on cash register receipts, and also in tin can linings, bottled water and soda bottles, and elsewhere. It’s everywhere, so much so that researchers have difficulty avoiding contaminating their samples. It’s also controversial.

I am wondering what other scientists might be saying about the new results. I wonder particularly about Frederick Vom Saal, the researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia who says that even tiny amounts of the false estrogen can have big consequences in our systems. I am wondering so much that I emailed the PR people at Mizzou today and asked them to find out what Vom Saal says.

Stay tuned!

Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/trevorbutterworth/2011/07/25/majestically-scientific-federal-study-on-bpa-has-stunning-findings-so-why-is-the-media-ignoring-it/

Reader’s Digest features an article on clean water on its cover for August.  “We have the safest drinking water in the world–except for the pesticides that sometimes sneak in. And the rocket fuel. And the antibiotics…”

More than 60,000 chemicals could get into our drinking water, while the EPA patrols limits on fewer than 100 of them, says the magazine. Are old pipes in your city water system adding interesting things to the mix? The article details a lot of things to worry about.

Is bottled water a solution? Not according to Reader’s Digest, which headlined a small article “6 Reasons Bottled Is All Wet.” For one thing, it’s generally just tap water. For another, it costs a fortune to move around. They didn’t even dwell on the BPA issue, where plastic bottles introduce false estrogens into our bodies. Experts consulted all seem to be drinking tap water; Reader’s Digest suggests a home water filter. More RD advice:

1. Pick a filter or system certified by NSF International, “which sets recognized standards in this field.”

2. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for installation and use.

3. Replace filters on schedule. Otherwise you invite bacteria growth.

According to Reader’s Digest, you can consider a carbon filter in a pitcher, an under-sink model that includes reverse-osmosis technology, or a whole-house system.

Good news! Multi-Pure fits the bill on all of these with a proven, reliable set of filters, NSF-certified, to meet the level of filtering you want.

Source: Reader’s Digest, August 2011, pp. 102-113.

A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Cheryl Rosenfeld, has pinpointed a fundamental flaw with previous studies on the dangers of bisphenyl A, or BPA, a widely used plastics additive that mimics estrogen. The study was published June 6 in the journal “Environmental Health Perspectives.”

That flaw? Previous studies have relied on a single dose administered, then effects tracked.  Pretty soon, most of the BPA leaves the system. The toxicity levels are based on studies like this in mice. But in reality, our bodies are bombarded daily with the chemical, which is found in tin can linings, on store receipts, in plastic bottles for soda and water, in aluminum soda cans, and on cardboard food packages.

Rosenfeld decided to track effects in mice of chronic lower-dose exposure, comparing a large one-shot dose to a smaller amount of BPA administered daily over time. The results? The mice fed the chronic diet excreted most of the BPA after 24 hours, but 7 days later demonstrated a higher level of BPA in the blood than they had at the 24-hour point. So the body is holding onto the BPA under a chronic exposure.

A colleague, Gail Prins, summarized it this way: blood concentrations of the bioavailable form of BPA became higher when daily diet was the source, even though total BPA consumption was a bit lower in the mice dosed in food versus those given a single oral dose.

The FDA needs to take BPA toxic effects seriously and do a better job of protecting our health, rather than the interests of those who are producing 8 billion pounds per year of this stuff.

Source: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2011/2011-06-20-091.html

Consumers’ Union, the group that publishes the popular Consumer Reports, wants the federal government to ban BPA in food and beverage containers, in order to protect all consumers–especially children.

The controversial false estrogen is found in plastic soda and water bottles as well as in linings for tin cans, on store receipts, and in other places. It’s been found to cause cancer in animals, and the long-term effects of human exposure are unknown. Meanwhile, the FDA is considering whether to take action to regulate the substance, in the face of an outcry from the food industry, and various states have passed or are considering action.

Researchers at the FDA reported study results in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (May 20, 2011), reported Consumers Union. BPA in a variety of canned foods was checked. “The highest levels of BPA found in the FDA study were almost four times higher than the highest levels detected in a similar but smaller study published in Consumer Reports in 2009.”

The new study study of popular canned foods confirmed Consumer Reports’ findings that BPA levels can vary widely, even in cans containing food from the same lot. “Consumers have no idea how much BPA they may be exposed to from any given can,” said Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D., Consumers’ Union’s Director of Technical Policy .

But the highest levels in the FDA study increase CU’s concerns about health impact. “As we previously reported, just one to a few servings of some of these foods can expose consumers, especially children, to levels of BPA that have caused harm in animal studies,” Dr. Rangan said. “We believe this is an unacceptably slim margin of safety and that consumers should not have to ingest BPA.”

The Consumers’ Union press release “urges federal action to ban BPA in all food and beverage containers so that all consumers will be protected.”

Source: http://www.consumersunion.org/pub/core_food_safety/017777.html

Trinidad and Tobago’s Newsday published an article today identifying the “Toxic Ten every day products you should avoid.” Number two (behind air fresheners) is bottled water.

Here ‘s what the article had to say about bottled water: “This water can be contaminated (and sometimes more contaminated) than your tap water. Add the BPA content of the plastic bottles and they are simply bad news. Reusable stainless steel bottles are the only choice.”

Then it goes on to explain what BPA is– bisphenyl A, a compound used in the manufacture of plastics.

Source: http://www.newsday.co.tt/features/0,140371.html

Beware! There’s BPA lining your soda cans too.

Last month, 26 percent of Coca-cola shareholders expressed concern about BPA, asking the company to reveal its plans for the future concerning the chemical. But that wasn’t a large enough proportion for the top brass to do anything about it. Muhtar Kent, CEO and chairman, told shareholders the company did not believe there was sufficient scientific evidence to stop using BPA in the linings of its cans.

But there’s no scientific evidence showing it’s safe to use it, either.  To the contrary!

BPA, the synthetic estrogen that stiffens water and soda bottles and lines tin cans, is also found lining beverage cans. The use of the chemical, found to cause cancer in laboratory animals, is being called into question by many these days. There are researchers who are calling for a legal overhaul, so that the government will stop permitting chemicals in our environment without testing them first.

Source: http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/On-your-radar/BPA/Coca-Cola-rejects-growing-calls-for-bisphenol-A-disclosure

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryan_fung/