Yesterday, April 9, 2013 the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health (ANSES) published a report which comes to the conclusion that bisphenol A (BPA) is harmful to human health after all. The report, whose preparation took the agency four years to complete, considers neurological, metabolic, reproductive effects as well as effects on the mammary gland caused by prenatal exposure to BPA to be the most important endpoints. It estimates that 20-25% of pregnant women are exposed to levels of BPA above those advised by ANSES. The agency had measured BPA in household dust, water, food, homes and supermarket receipts. Pregnant supermarket check-out operators were identified as a particular risk group. ANSES estimates diet to be the main source of exposure, with canned foods alone accounting for 50%, and considers that the safe level declared by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of 0.05mg/kg body weight/day should be significantly reduced in order to effectively protect public health. The report also considers 73 possible alternatives for BPA and states that on most of them sufficient amounts of toxicological data is available to evaluate their safety.
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ANSES – Evaluation of human health risks of BPA (pdf, french)
