By Pete Myers

For the first time, a federal health panel has issued a draft advisory warning about a common chemical that can be found not just in our kitchens and our food and water, but in the blood and tissues of almost all Americans. The panel stated it was concerned about the risks that exposure created for how babies’ brains develop. The panel’s conclusion didn’t go nearly as far as a group of independent experts recommended, but the announcement led parents around the country on a rush to find glass baby bottles. Sales of glass bottles soared, as did sales of other types of non-plastic replacements.

The chemical is called bisphenol A. It is used to make polycarbonate plastic and also to make an epoxy resin that lines most food and soda cans sold in American grocery stores. Almost all popular baby bottles are made out of polycarbonate. So are the hard plastic sports water bottles that are transparent and often tinted pink or blue or green, and are wildly popular with college students. Even those common blue plastic 5-gallon water bottles used in offices are made of polycarbonate.

What is the concern? The hardness of the bottles is misleading. With every use, small amounts of bisphenol A may leach into the water or baby formula that is in the bottle. Heat makes this happen faster, for example, by warming the baby bottle in a micro-wave. And it goes even faster as the bottles get older. The problem is even worse with cans, because canning food requires that the food is heated to very high temperatures before it’s placed in the can. That’s for sterilization. But when the hot food hits the can lining, large amounts of bisphenol A go into the food, and from there into whomever eats it.

Careful experiments with animals show that tiny amounts of bisphenol A can have powerful effects, especially if exposure takes place in the womb or in infancy. Usually the effects remain hidden until later in life, sometimes not even showing up until adulthood. For example, exposure in the womb causes adult mice to develop prostate cancer and it increases their risk of breast cancer. Fetal exposure causes uterine fibroids and cystic ovaries in middle-aged female mice. It contributes to Type 2 diabetes, causes hyperactivity and even increases the risk of obesity.

But while early exposure is the most sensitive, adults aren’t free from concern either. Bisphenol A interferes with the standard medical treatment for prostate cancer. Scientists also report impacts that tie bisphenol A to spontaneous miscarriage.

Scientists have been surprised by how powerful the chemical is. Studies with rats and mice often use high amounts of chemicals. That’s not the case with this contaminant. The levels that cause harm to animals are beneath the average level found in Americans.

Very few studies of bisphenol A’s effect on people have been carried out. That’s because the animal studies that have identified these concerns have only been completed over the past decade — some only within the last year — and it takes a long time to conduct human research, especially if the effects can’t be measured immediately at birth. Without human studies, scientists can’t be sure that bisphenol A will have exactly the same consequences for people.

Many parents aren’t waiting. They are getting rid of their polycarbonate baby bottles and telling their teenagers to throw away the sports bottles. They are also reducing the amount of canned food in their diets. In Japan, concern about bisphenol A led can manufacturers to stop using it as a lining. Blood levels in Japanese students quickly dropped.

Pete Myers is the founder and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, www.environmentalhealthnews.org. You can subscribe to Above The Fold, the daily e-newsletter from Environmental Health News, by sending a note to www.environmentalhealthnews.org/subscribe.htm.