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

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.

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

Adam Spanier, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics, followed 367 children, monitoring maternal BPA level through gestation and monitoring wheezing up to age 3. Ninety-nine percent of the children were born to mothers who had detectable BPA levels in their urine during pregnancy.

Spanier correlated higher maternal BPA levels with wheezing at age six months. The odds of wheezing at that age were found to be twice as high for children with mothers who had higher BPA than those who had mothers with lower BPA levels.

Spanier also found that higher BPA levels at 16 weeks’ gestation were associated with wheezing, while high levels at 26 weeks were not. The researchers reported their findings at the May 1st Pediatric Academic Societies’ meeting.

“This suggests that there are periods of time during pregnancy when the fetus is more vulnerable,” said Spanier. “Exposure during early pregnancy may be worse than exposure in later pregnancy.”

Source: http://live.psu.edu/story/53096

False estrogens such as those in the controversial chemical BPA can be found in nearly all commercial plastic products, even those that say they are BPA-free, scientists say.

A team of scientists headed by C.Z. Yang wrote the peer-reviewed article, published online March 2 in Environmental Health Perspectives, an online journal. In the study, the scientists examined a variety of types of plastics, including those advertised as BPA-free, and subjected them to various stresses such as heat and sunlight in the presence of salt or alcohol solutions.

Results? “Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled, independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source, leached chemicals having reliably-detectable estrogenic activity, including those advertised as BPA-free. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more estrogenic activity than BPA-containing products.”

The scientists closed with good news, however. They were able to identify some plastics that do not give off false estrogens, suggesting that it is in fact possible to manufacture plastic without this hormone signature. Unfortunately these aren’t in commercial use at this time.

Source: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1003220

The signers, representing 40,000 researchers and clinicians, want federal regulators to use to better and broader assessments of new chemicals.  Prompting the letter is the controversy over BPA, the plastics additive that is being blamed for a host of ills in the population, including erectile dysfunction, delayed puberty for boys, early puberty for girls, and higher rates of diabetes, along with cancer. BPA is commonly found in soda and water bottles, store receipts, and tin can linings.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulators in charge of permitting new chemicals, often lack information about the hazards of chemicals produced in high volumes, charged the scientists. “The need for swifter and sounder testing and review procedures cannot be overstated,” the letter states.

Rather than using outdated toxicology, the regulators need to be relying on scientists who have studied the effect of substances on the body. “We need geneticists, we need developmental and reproductive biologists and we need the clinical people on board to actually help interpret and evaluate some of the science,” said Patricia Hunt, a professor in the Washington State University School of Molecular Biosciences and corresponding author of the letter. “As things stand now, things get rapidly into the marketplace and the testing of them is tending to lag behind.”

Hunt said the letter was driven in particular by growing concerns about chemicals like the plasticizer bisphenol A, or BPA, subject of more than 300 studies finding adverse health effects in animals. Because such chemicals look like hormones to our body, they’re like strangers getting behind the wheels of our cars, Hunt said.

“Hormones control everything—our basic metabolism, our reproduction,” she said. “We call them endocrine disruptors. They’re like endocrine bombs to a certain extent because they can disrupt all these normal functions.”

Hunt’s testimony last year helped make Washington the fifth state to outlaw BPA in children’s food containers and drinking cups.

The organizations signing the Science letter are: the American Society of Human Genetics, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Endocrine Society, the Genetics Society of America, the Society for Developmental Biology, the Society for Pediatric Urology, the Society for the Study of Reproduction, and the Society for Gynecologic Investigation.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/wsu-scf030111.php

The researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital examined 1,200 girls between ages six and eight, in 2004 and 2006. They lived in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and East Harlem, N Y.  Female pediatricians determined whether breast tissue had begun to develop in the girls.

They found that 10.4 percent of white girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls and 23.4 percent of black girls had developed breast tissue by the age of seven. This compares to another study 10 years ago which found about half the incidence: 5 percent of white girls and 15.4 percent of black girls had developed breast tissue by that age. The prior study did not include Hispanic girls.

The researchers are considering possible environmental and genetic causes, and how they might interact. Others have linked early puberty in girls (and late puberty in boys) to endocrine disrupters in the environment, notably BPA, a plastics softener. BPA is found in tin can linings, bottled water bottles, store receipts, and even the air (see other posts on this blog).

Sources:

http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/about/news/release/2010/puberty-08-09-2010.htm

http://www.naturalnews.com/030447_puberty_girls.html

* The journal Reproductive Toxicology published a Harvard University study of 190 men that found correlation between BPA levels in men’s urine and damage to their sperm counts and DNA.
“Men with the highest levels of BPA had sperm concentrations 23 per cent lower than those with the least.
The results also suggested a 10 per cent increase in sperm DNA damage.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300402/Gender-bending-chemical-food-tins-cut-male-fertility.html#ixzz0wj4otRNc

* Store receipts in many cases are loaded with BPA dust which rubs off onto your fingers. The Environmental Working Group tested receipts from a variety of stores and governmental units, and found large amounts. Stores with particularly heavy loads of it included Safeway and Whole Foods Markets, not to mention the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. House of Representatives Cafeteria.
This is despite the fact that BPA-free thermal paper is now on the market, so these retailers don’t have to be exposing us to this.
http://www.ewg.org/bpa-in-store-receipts

Meanwhile, authors Stephen Perrine and Heather Hurlock coined the word “obesogenic” and suggested in a new book that the obesity trend is caused by chemicals like BPA in plastics.

And others, like me, sidestep the obesity question and point out that earlier puberty for females (and later for males) is a logical outcome for a BPA-rich environment. BPA, a synthetic estrogen, is used as an additive in clear plastic bottles, as liner for tin cans, and liberally covers credit card receipt thermal paper. It’s in the tissues of every one of us.

Dr. Frank Biro of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center led a team that published its results in the journal Pediatrics on Monday. The team measured breast development in 1,200 girls aged 7 and 8 in New York, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. They compared results with those of a similar study made in 1997. As previously, they found wide disparity based on race, but they found a troubling trend of earlier puberty for all races.

The study found that at age 7, about 10 percent of white girls and 23 percent of black girls had started developing breasts. This compares to 5 percent of white girls and 15 percent of black girls in 1997. Therefore the number of white girls developing at age 7 had doubled, and the number of black girls had gone up by 50 percent.

The researchers suggested that obesity, now an epidemic in America, makes girls more likely to enter puberty earlier. What’s the problem with earlier puberty? It causes depression and may lead to earlier sexual activity. In addition, it increases the individual’s exposure to estrogen and therefore her chance of coming down with breast cancer, said the researchers in the Reuters news article.

To counter the obesity trend and therefore the early puberty trend, families should eat together and eat more fruits and vegetables, said Biro.

However, critics suggest that the obesity trend could be caused by chemicals BPA and phtlalates, both plastics additives that mimic estrogen. Stephen Perrine and Heather Hurlock in their book The New American Diet have coined a new term, “obesogenic,” to describe these to chemicals, saying they cause obesity.

Whether they cause obesity is up for debate, according to The Wall Street Journal editorial (Are Plastics Making Us Fat?, 08/13/10, p. A15). But it certainly appears to me that BPA, created in a lab as a synthetic estrogen, is pretty likely to cause early puberty in girls–and late puberty in boys.

Sources: http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/us_puberty_earlier

The Wall Street Journal, “Are Plastics Making Us Fat?”, 08/13/10, p. A15

Image credit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Apparently one reason for it, indirectly of course, is the use of BPA, bisphenyl A, in our environment: in plastic water and soda bottles, in tin can liners, and on our credit card receipts, and other places probably.  Everyone has some levels of this contaminant in their urine. Now there’s proof that BPA, a synthetic estrogen, is adversely affecting male sexuality, according to a study by Kaiser Permanente, a health care provider in California.

Searching for a situation where some men are exposed to relatively high levels of BPA while others are not, the researchers chose to examine 427 factory workers in China. The study group worked in a factory producing BPA or epoxy resin; the control group worked in a different type of factory.  Up until now, BPA studies have been limited to animal studies.

Researchers took urine samples and explained that BPA is considered to be a hormone system disrupter. They asked plenty of very personal questions of these men.  They also asked questions about other factors that could influence male sexuality, including demographic characteristics, “smoking, alcohol use, chronic diseases, exposure to other chemical and heavy metals, and occupational history.” The study lasted five years.

Results? A correlation was definitely found. “Increasing urine BPA level is associated with decreased sexual desire, more difficulty having an erection, lower ejaculation strength and lower level of overall satisfaction with sex life, researchers said.”

Source: http://www.dor.kaiser.org/external/DORExternal/news/press_releases/press_release.aspx?id=5718&terms=bpa+male