The compound has since become so ubiquitous that of the 2,517 people tested in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 93 percent had detectable levels of BPA in their urine. But as people drank from their water bottles and ate their microwaved dinners, they were unknowingly dosing themselves with small amounts of BPA that leached from the plastic containers into their food and drink. Soon, BPA was everywhere: reusable water bottles, plastic plates, the liners in canned foods, sippy cups, grocery receipts, and even some dental sealants. Soon after, Bayer and General Electric discovered the molecules had a nifty trick: They could link together with a small connector compound to form a shiny, hard plastic known as polycarbonate. In the 1950s, BPA was used in the first epoxy resins. Even human studies have linked BPA to a range of health issues. A slew of studies document negative reproductive, developmental, and metabolic effects in a menagerie of wildlife- rhesus monkeys, zebrafish, nematodes, and mice. In the past couple decades, research on BPA has exploded. In the case of BPA, concerns surround its estrogen-mimicking effects. “What's kind of disturbing about this is hormones regulate almost everything in our bodies,” says Johanna Rochester, senior scientist with the nonprofit The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, who was not involved in the work. In the body, these chemicals can act like hormones or disrupt normal hormone functions. It's what's known as an endocrine disrupting compound. But this detective work is a losing proposition, he says likening it to a game of “chemical whack-a-mole.” What Is BPA?īisphenol A, or BPA, is a common building block in resins and some types of plastic. “We have to play catch up as disease detectives,” says Leonardo Trasande, director of the division of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health, who was not involved in the research. What's more, the study underlines a broader issue in commercial compound development: When chemicals are removed from the market, they're often replaced by others that not only look similar-but act similarly in our bodies. Of course, it's hard to draw conclusions between the effects in these tiny furry critters and those in our comparatively massive fleshy forms, but the latest work adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests all is not safe in the world of BPA-free plastics. Although whale sharks are the biggest fish in the sea, they're still threatened by ingesting small bits of plastic. A whale shark swims beside a plastic bag in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen.
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