Bisphenol A and You: 8 Ways to Reduce Your Exposure to BPA
Thursday September 18, 2008
Bisphenol A (BPA), the controversial chemical that is in many everyday products such as plastic baby bottles and the plastic liniing in most food and beverage cans, was in the news again this week. New research shows an increased incidence of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities in adults with higher levels of exposure to BPA, and earlier studies have found evidence that BPA disrupts children's brain and hormone development.
BPA is so widely used that avoiding it altogether may be impossible, but if you're worried about the potentially harmful effects of BPA on you and your family there are things you can do to lower your exposure to BPA and reduce your risks of serious health problems.
Comments
This certainly deserves more study, but before we panic, this study is not very well done or analysed. They took data from a govt questionaire of 1500 people, asking if they ever had the diagnosis of about a dozen different diseases. Then they analysed their urine for BPA. Note that urinary excretion of BPA is rapid, so it doesn’t build up in the system. It also has different effects in different species: not all experimental species get disease from it.
It seems that BPA excretion goes down with age,(except the 50-59y/o group !!??) and is much higher in Blacks. Older people and Blacks have more DM and CAD anyways. So it’s not at all clear that the BPA is causing disease, rather than serving as a marker for poor kidney function, itself a marker for DM & CAD/arteriosclerosis.