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During the summer of 1998, Patricia Hunt, a geneticist at Case Western Reserve University, could not answer why the chromosomes of the eggs of 40 percent of the female mice in her laboratory looked abnormal. Typically, one to two percent of the mice had abnormal eggs. Hunt investigated further and noticed that some of her mouse cages, made of a polycarbonate plastic, appeared to be melting.
Hunt discovered that a lab worker had cleaned the cages with a highly alkaline detergent that caused a chemical reaction. After additional basic tests, Hunt and her colleagues pinned the abnormalities on the leakage of a chemical called Bisphenol A.
According to Dr. Rigoberto Advincula, a chemistry professor at the University of Houston, additives like Bisphenol A or BPA are used to make plastics more pliable. BPA is found in plastic products such as baby bottles, the liners of food cans, dental sealants and many other common products.
“These additives can be in the form of modifiers to make the plastics more processable, or they can add compounds to make them more stable, and they can use them for molding,” said Advincula.
Plastics used to be much harder and less flexible when first developed in the late 19th century. Nowadays, researchers and environmentalists are arguing that low levels of synthetic chemicals, such as BPA, are causing reproductive problems in wildlife and perhaps humans.
Hunt and her associates replicated their accident and found similar results. In the April 2003 issue of Current Biology, Hunt and her colleagues published their findings. The team at Case Western found that BPA was causing the mice to develop aneuploidy, a condition that causes cancer, birth defects and mental retardation.
Reproductive biologist Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri, whose lab has published several studies of BPA’s impact on mouse reproduction development believes that Hunt’s findings have led to a “watershed paper” on BPA and its effects. But the scientific community is split between those who work for universities and those funded by companies like Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and General Electric.
In a report made public in Nov. 2005, vom Saal says that of the 152 studies done on the effects of BPA in animals, 129 of which reported harm. Of the 23 that found no harm, 12 were funded by chemical corporations. None of the studies funded by chemical corporations found BPA harmful.
Currently, neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Environmental Protection Agency have declared BPA harmful.
Advincula explained why the federal government may be slow reacting.
“There has to be a serious study that is an alliance between the Society for Plastic Engineers with the FDA to determine the tolerable toxicity,” said Advincula. “Or [the FDA needs to] do research on possible substitutes that are not toxic at all, that minimizes risk. But the additives business is a very important business, so there has to be a balance that considers the economic consequences of replacing one plasterers with a more safe quote, un-quote plasterers.”
Meanwhile, health activists are trying to convince consumers to stop using household products with BPA additives. Houston activist Sue McDonald says the media and the government is doing a poor job of informing the public of the dangers that chemicals like BPA impose. She currently holds seminars on the topic and tries to spread the information through any forum she can.
“We know that a lot of phythalates, what they do is mimic hormones, a lot of them are estrogen mimickers—it’s very simple,” said McDonald. “If you eat a food that has been packaged in plastic that contains phythalate plasticizers, what you are going to have then in your body is low levels of estrogen mimicking compounds.”
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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