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London: A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.
Until now, environmental and consumer activists who have questioned the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA, have relied on studies showing harm from exposure in laboratory animals.
But British researchers, who published their findings yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analysed urine and blood samples from 1,455 US adults aged 18 to 74 who were representative of the general population.
Using government health data, they found that the 25 per cent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and/or diabetes compared with the 25 per cent with the lowest levels.
Similar to animal trials
"Most of these findings are in keeping with what has been found in animal models," Iain Lang, a researcher at the University of Exeter in Britain who worked on the study, told a news conference.
"This is the first ever study [of this kind that has been conducted] in the general population," Lang said.
Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry group, said the design of the study did not allow for anyone to conclude BPA causes heart disease and diabetes.
"At least from this study, we cannot draw any conclusion that bisphenol A causes any health effect. As noted by the authors, further research will be needed to understand whether these statistical associations have any relevance at all for human health," Hentges said in a telephone interview.
A US Food and Drug Administration panel of outside experts yesterday was to hear testimony on health effects from BPA as it reviews a draft report it issued last month calling BPA safe.
"The study, while preliminary with regard to these diseases in humans, should spur US regulatory agencies to follow recent action taken by Canadian regulatory agencies, which have declared BPA a 'toxic chemical' requiring aggressive action to limit human and environmental exposures," Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri and John Peterson Myers of the non-profit US-based Environmental Health Sciences, wrote in a commentary accompanying the study.
BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastic, a clear shatter-resistant material in products ranging from baby and water bottles to plastic eating utensils and medical devices.
It also is used to make durable epoxy resins used as the coating in most food and beverage cans and in dental fillings. People can consume BPA when it leaches out of plastic into liquid such as baby formula, water or food inside a container.
Found in 90% of people
In the study, the team said the chemical is present in more than 90 per cent of people, suggesting there is not much that can be done to avoid the chemical, of which over 2.2 million tonnes is produced each year.
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