Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Bisphenol A Lit Review

I've been doing my homework on Bisphenol A exposure. It's not easy to sort out the wheat from the chaff, but I've made a lot of headway. After a lot of reading, it's clear that the jury is still out on how dangerous bisphenol A exposure really is. There are a significant number of animal studies that show serious health effects. The trouble is that animal models don't always correlate with humans, and that the doses in these studies are usually well above the levels considered safe for humans.

On a personal note, I've decided to err on the side of caution. We are being exposed to an ever widening range of contaminants, and our children are especially vulnerable. Some of the exposure is beyond our everyday control, so I think that it is important to mitigate what we can. In addition, history has shown us that we tend not be cautious enough in determining what safe exposure levels are. Just think about how the acceptable limits for lead exposure have changed in the past fifty years.

Below is a list of links that I have found informative. They present both sides of the argument.

Polycarbonate Plastic and Bisphenol A Release Information

Bisphenol-A, an Environmental Contaminant that Acts as a Thyroid Hormone Receptor
Antagonist in Vitro, Increases Serum Thyroxine, and Alters RC3/Neurogranin Expression in the Developing Rat Brain -- Zoeller et al. 146 (2): 607 -- Endocrinology

Urinary concentrations of bisphenol a and 4-Nonylphenol in a human reference population | Environmental Health Perspectives

Bisphenol-A: an estrogenic substance is released from polycarbonate flasks during autoclaving -- Krishnan et al. 132 (6): 2279 -- Endocrinology

Bisphenol A. (CASRN 80-05-7) | IRIS | US EPA

humanSafetyAnOverview.pdf

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