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Chemicals heavily used in everyday products can end up in dust and increase people's exposure to the contaminants, reports a study by Belgium researchers who calculated exposure to bisphenol A, an antibacterial agent and a flame retardant through dust.
The researchers conclude that exposure to BPA, tetrabromobisphenol-A and triclosan from dust contributes to less than 10 percent of average total daily exposure. Diet and direct contact with personal care products are the the greatest contributors. 15 July 2009. More...
Women in menopause are more prone to the BPA-associated health effects of inflammation and oxidative stress than either men or women who are still menstruating, according to a study of Korean adults.
This is the first time BPA has been linked to these conditions in people and suggests older women may be more susceptible to the chemical's estrogen-like manner that drives these particular types of cell damage. Oxidative stress can be involved with aging, cancer and other disease states. 13 July 2009. More...
A new study from Harvard University has found that urine levels of BPA rise significantly when polycarbonate bottles are used for drinking water.
This is the first study to show that urinary levels of BPA are elevated after drinking cold liquids. 7 July 2009. More...
A new study reveals that by interfering with thyroid hormone, exposure to low levels of bisphenol A (BPA) slows the rate at which tadpoles develop into frogs.
Thyroid signals are necessary both for normal frog metamorphosis and for fetal development in people. In these experiments, exposure to levels similar to those found in human infants prevented key genes from turning on, thus delaying tadpole development. 12 May 2009. More...
A new study finds that exposure to bisphenol A in the womb causes infant male monkeys to behave more like infant females, highlighting a new and potentially important consequence of exposure to low doses of BPA.
The species of monkey used in this study was chosen due to its similarity to humans. People are exposed to BPA–a chemical found in hard plastics–through food, water and some medical instruments. 11 May 2009. More...
A study with mice finds that diet can modify the harmful effects of bisphenol A. The findings shed light on perceived inconsistencies in BPA research results.
Differences in diet dramatically altered the risk that mouse oocytes would develop errors in how chromosomes are aligned during cell division after exposure to BPA. When these errors occur in people, they can cause spontaneous miscarriage and severe disabilities. 9 April 2009. More...
Levels of bisphenol A (BPA) measured in people's urine don't add up to support current ideas about exposure to the common chemical in plastics, according to research examining the persistence of the chemical.
The unexpected finding led the researchers to propose that people are exposed to BPA from non-food sources between meals or that BPA is not cleared from the body as fast as has been previously estimated, or maybe both. 1 March 2009. More...
More evidence from lab rat studies shows the plastic compound bisphenol A can permanently affect reproductive hormones, resulting in early puberty and odd ovulation patterns.
The study is the first to find long lasting hormonal changes when exposure occurs after birth, during critical times of development. Past studies have found similar effects when exposures occur before birth, during prenatal development. 19 February 2009. More...
For the first time, scientists have shown that low levels of bisphenol A, even below levels considered safe by the EPA, increase breast cancer risk in rats exposed through their mother’s breast milk.
Adult females developed mammary tumors more rapidly once exposed to a carcinogen if they were exposed to BPA via their mother's breast milk. 16 February 2009. More...
Using a mathematical model based on enzymatic differences between newborns and adults, scientists estimate that the amount of bisphenol A (BPA) circulating in the blood of babies is more than 11 times higher than the amount in adult blood, given the same exposure.
The striking disparity is most likely due to natural differences in metabolism and body size between babies and adults. This study points to the need for chemical exposure standards to better incorporate differences in vulnerabilities between children and adults. 12 January 2009. More...
In this first study examining infants’ exposure to bisphenol A, premature babies hospitalized in neonatal intensive care units had levels of BPA in their urine 10 times higher than the general population.
The source of exposure most likely was plastic medical devices used in the hospital, although some could have come from infant formula. BPA is a plastic compound that is linked to various health abnormalities in humans and lab animals. 12 January 2009. More...
Thirty-six scientists conclude in a peer-reviewed commentary that the FDA's draft decision on bisphenol A uses unacceptable criteria for selecting data and depends heavily upon a key paper that is fatally flawed.
The NIH-funded research rejected by the FDA is likely to produce reliable and valid scientific data than the studies used by the agency in its draft. 30 October 2008. More...
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated experimentally a strong effect of low doses of bisphenol A on monkeys, raising new concerns about possible effects on people.
After a month of continuous low-dose exposure, the ability of the monkeys brains to form key connections was eliminated. The study suggests that BPA exposure may be related to human brain disorders and diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and mood disorders. 10 September 2008. More...
In human fat tissues, bisphenol A suppresses levels of a key hormone, adiponectin, that protects people from heart attacks and Type II diabetes.
These results implicate BPA as a potential cause of metabolic syndrome, one of the most serious and costly public health problems in the US. 18 August 2008. More...
A review of health risks of bisphenol A is flawed by errors of omission, commission, misrepresentation and misinterpretation.
The review, carried out by a scientist at the California Dept. of Toxic Substance Control 'working on his own time' and thus not representing the agency's position, ignores a large body of literature on low-dose effects of BPA, uses criteria that would, if accepted, invalidate 30 years of well-established research on diethylstilbestrol (DES) and employs a statistical method that violates basic statistical principles. 6 April 2008. More...
A new analysis by the CDC indicates that many Americans are exposed to bisphenol A at levels above the current safety threshold set by the EPA based upon decades-old data.
These levels are significantly higher than those sufficient to cause a wide array of health effects in animals following exposure in the womb. Exposure to another industrial chemical, 4-tertiary-octylphenol, is also widespread. 8 November 2007. More...
Thirty-eight of the world's leading scientific experts on bisphenol A have warned policymakers of potential adverse health effects of exposure to the widespread molecule used to make plastic and food can lining.
They conclude that average levels in people are above those that cause harm to animals in laboratory experiments. And they calculate that average serum levels in people can only be explained by assuming that exposures today are already above the level that EPA considers safe. 13 August 2007. More...
A new study with mice is the first to link low level neonatal exposure to bisphenol A to uterine diseases that women develop as they age, including fibroids, adenomysois and cystic ovaries.
Some of the adverse conditions induced by BPA in mice have been previously described in daughters of mothers who took the drug diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen which is structurally and functionally similar to BPA. These uterine defects, which often require severe medical intervention, are common and appear to be increasing in women but remain poorly understood. 3 August 2007. More...
Exposure to bisphenol A during development changes gene behavior in mice, causing genetically identical animals to develop differently.
BPA exposure reduces DNA methylation, thereby increasing the expression of genes that would have been silenced. The results can be counteracting by supplementing the maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation with nutrients that increase methylation, such as genistein, a phytoestrogen found in soy. 30 July 2007. More...
Very low doses of bisphenol A increase the expression of genes in fetal mice responsible for directing production of hormone receptors in prostate tissue.
The effect is seen at concentrations observed in human serum. The effect helps explain why this exposure increases sensitivity to hormones throughout the life of mice exposed in the womb, as well as why BPA causes enlarged prostates in adulthood. 8 June 2007. More...
Consistent with previous studies, exposure during fetal life to extremely low doses of the common plastic molecule, bisphenol A, causes harmful effects on mammary gland development in mice.
BPA accelerates development and alters how the gland's tissues are formed. The changes are likely to increase vulnerability to breast cancers later in life. The doses used were chosen explicitly to be within the range of human exposure. Environmental Health News. 12 March 2007. More...
Experiments with mice show that exposure during pregnancy to very low doses of bisphenol A scrambles the chromosomes of their daughters' fertilized embryos, ie., the pregnant female's grandchildren.
This 3rd-generation effect is possible because the eggs of a female mammal, including human, are formed while the female is still in the womb. Exposure to BPA at comparable levels appears widespread among people in the United States, because of its use in common consumer products, including polycarbonate plastic and food cans. 12 January 2007. More...
Experiments with rats demonstrate that low level exposure to bisphenol A during fetal growth causes breast cancer in adults.
At all levels tested down to 2.5 micrograms per kg body weight, BPA induced formation of aberrant cell growth patterns associated in rodents and people with breast cancer. Levels only 5 times higher than EPA's current safe level caused carcinoma in situ. 7 December 2006. More...
Prenatal exposure to bisphenol A causes long-lasting changes in female rat breast tissue that increase the risk of cancer and also make the animals more sensitive to cancer-causing chemicals as adults.
The study strengthens support for a link between increasing rates of breast cancer in recent decades and increasing exposure to estrogenic chemicals like BPA. It also indicates that human epidemiological studies that fail to incorporate developmental exposures can't be trusted to identify cancer-causing agents. 25 September 2006. More...
In utero exposure to bisphenol causes long-term effects on endocrine parameters of female sheep that could impact fertility.
The onset of LH surge was delayed in methoxychlor-exposed females. In BPA-exposed females the LH surge was severely dampened. Endocrinology. 2 September 2006. More...
Research with a line of breast cancer cells reveals that details of how these cells chemically modify bisphenol A may increase the risks of exposure.
It had been proposed that sulfation of BPA would increase the rate at which cells excrete this compound. A series of experiments demonstrates just the opposite: sulfation may actually enhance the cell's estrogen burden by increasing the concentration of BPA within the cell. Chemistry & Biology. 26 August 2006. More...
Bisphenol A can be used as a model agent for studying and understanding endocrine disrupting effects.
Exposure before and shortly after birth causes changes in both male and female genatalia and mammary glands. These changes have been associated with an earlier onset of disease, reduced fertility and cancers. Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology 15 June 2006. More...
Early life exposure to bisphenol A at environmentally-relevant levels causes neoplastic (cancerous) lesions in the prostates of adult rats, linking BPA to prostate cancer.
Animals exposed perinatally to BPA and estradiol develop prostate lesions in adulthood called high-grade PIN that are generally accepted as an early stage of prostate cancer in people. For BPA, the effect requires changes in adult hormone levels that mirror estrogen changes in ageing men. The effects are associated with failures in a key gene to undergo hypermethylation, following perinatal exposure. 4 June 2006. More...
Human exposures to the plasticizer, bisphenol A, are occurring a doses shown to cause adverse effects in animal studies.
Although the industry manufacturing this chemical claim it is a "weak estrogen", laboratory studies have shown BPA disrupts estrogen action at very low concentrations, in the ppt - ppb range. Similar concentrations have been measured in human blood, including the cord blood of developing infants. Widespread exposure to BPA at current levels could be causing adverse effects to the human reproductive tract. Endocrinology 1 June 2006. More...
Science Byte: A comparison of bisphenol A levels in saliva and urine of men treated with dental sealants found that one brand resulted in exposures at levels comparable to those causing adverse effects in animals.
Use of a second brand led to negligible exposure. In animals, BPA causes a wide array of adverse effects, including impacts on reproductive, neurological and immunological function. These results indicate that dental sealants may be a significant source of exposure to BPA, but that levels vary between sealant types. Journal of the American Dental Association. 31 March 2006. More...
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