Microbiology/Genetics

Plastic Drink Bottles Cause Sexual Issues in Women

From sterility to cancer

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

7th of August 2007, 18:06 GMT

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We live in an era of plastic. All around you is plastic. I bet not 5 minutes go by without you touching something made of plastic. Even your food and drink come wrapped in plastic.

Now a panel of 38 researchers said that Bisphenol A - a main ingredient in hard plastics and one of the most common chemicals around us - is probably causing reproductive disorders in people. Bisphenol A (BPA) is used in the synthesis of polycarbonate plastic and several types of resins. Polycarbonate plastics are commonly employed in a variety of products including food and drink containers, CDs, DVDs, electrical and electronic equipment, automobiles, sports safety equipment. Resins are utilized as a protective lining in metal food and drink containers

and water supply pipes.

The team reviewed 700 researches just to reach the conclusion that people are regularly exposed to bisphenol A (BPA) levels which are much higher than those found to harm lab animals.

A NIH research has shown that newborn mice exposed to BPA experience uterine damage, connected in women to reproductive diseases and cancers. BPA could imitate the natural female sex hormone, estradiol.

Humans can be directly exposed to BPA through food or drink that has been in contact with material containing BPA. The chemical industry reacted by rejecting the conclusions reached by these studies, claiming that these studies are influenced by ideological conflicts of interest and cited governmental sources sustaining that BPA is safe.

"Two government scientific committees in Europe and Japan recently decided there was insufficient evidence to restrict the compound. Europe's food safety agency decided in January that the data were inconclusive, largely because of metabolic differences between mice and humans, and because it is uncertain that the amounts people are exposed to pose a health threat." reported Los Angeles Times.

"There is essentially no difference in the way that rat or mouse cells respond to BPA and the way that humans respond to it. Though the amount in humans may seem like an incredibly small amount, it causes effects in human cells at the part-per-trillion level," replicated Frederick vorn Saal University of Missouri-Columbia reproductive toxicologist.

"BPA caused reproductive tract damage similar to the anti-miscarriage drug DES (diethylstilbestrol), a synthetic estrogen that was prescribed to pregnant women from the 1940s until the late 1970s. The drug led to "DES daughters," who were born with reproductive defects that caused infertility and cancers." said lead author of the uterine damage study Retha Newbold, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

A NIH panel will meet next week to decide if BPA will be included in the category of reproductive toxins. In March, the Los Angeles Times reported that the panel's preliminary BPA report was "written by a consulting firm with financial ties to the chemical industry that has since been fired."

TAGS:

sterility | cancer | plastic

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