On January 6, 2014 the daily newspaper Washington Times published an article on the safety of bisphenol A (BPA). Laura Sesana, journalist for the Washington Times, comments in the article that while BPA is claimed safe by regulatory agencies, most manufacturers have removed from BPA from the production of baby bottles and infant feeding cups. In July 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned BPA from infant formula food packaging based on abandonment (previously reported on by the FPF). Further, the agency continues investigating potential health risks of BPA together with the U.S. National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Panel (NTP). Sesana reports that that exposure to BPA at environmental levels may affect brain, behavior, and prostate gland. Further, she refers to a 2012 study linking low dose exposure to BPA to reproductive defects, diabetes, obesity and prostate cancer (Hunt et al. 2012). Sesana concludes her article making multiple suggestions to reduce BPA exposure. These include the use of BPA-free products, a decrease canned food consumptions and avoidance of heating BPA containing food packaging. However, BPA free products may contain bisphenol analogues with similar endocrine disrupting properties (Viñas and Watson 2013Cabaton et al. 2009Grignard et al. 2012).

Read more

Laura Sesana (January 6, 2014). “BPA questions and answers: is it safe?Washington Times.

FPF article “FDA bans BPA from infant formula packaging

Hunt, P. et al. (2012). “Bisphenol A alters early oogenesis and follicle formation in the fetal ovary of the rhesus monkey.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (published online September 24, 2012).

Viñas, R. and Watson, C. (2013). “Bisphenol S disrupts estradiol induced non-genomic signaling in a rat pituitary cell line: effects on cell functions”. Environmental Health Perspectives (published online January 17, 2013).

Cabaton, N. et al. (2009). “Genotoxic and endocrine activities of bis(hydroxyphenyl)methane (bisphenol F) and its derivatives in the HepG2 cell line.” Toxicology255, 1–2, 8, 15–24.

Grignard, E. et al. (2012). “Weak estrogenic transcriptional activities of Bisphenol A and Bisphenol S.” Toxicology in Vitro 26, 5, 727–731.

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