In an article published on March 14, 2016 by the news provider Environmental Health News, journalist Brian Bienkowski reports on scientific studies showing that exposure to bisphenol A (BPA, CAS 80-05-7) reduces successful pregnancies in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF). According to the most recent study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and conducted by Jorge E. Chavarro and colleagues from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, U.S., 17% of women with the highest BPA exposure had a baby as compared to 54% of women with the lowest BPA exposure. The study examined 239 women who underwent IVF in Massachusetts, U.S., from 2007 to 2012. The researchers also discovered that eating soy may protect women from the reproductive impacts of BPA: Women who did not eat soy foods had lower birth rates, according to Russ Hauser, professor of reproductive physiology and senior author of the study.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has thus far not commented on the evidence associating BPA exposure with negative IVF outcomes, Bienkowski writes. FDA’s “assessments declare that BPA is rapidly cleared from the body, leaving no time for health effects,” he further notes. Wade Welshons, associate professor at the University of Missouri, U.S., studying estrogens, called FDA’s position “untenable” and added that “we wouldn’t see all of these associations without exposure.” In contrast, the U.S. chemical industry trade association American Chemistry Council (ACC) referred to the study as “not adequate to support any medical advice or decisions.”
Read more
Brian Bienkowski (March 14, 2016). “Undergoing fertility treatment? Watch your plastics.” Environmental Health News
Reference
Chavarro, J.E. et al. (2016). “Soy intake modifies the relation between urinary bisphenol A concentrations and pregnancy outcomes among women undergoing assisted reproduction.” The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (published online January 27, 2016).
