EPA Study Finds No Harm From Bisphenol-A

Bisphenol-A, a chemical used to provide strength and flexibility to plastic goods such as baby bottles and food and beverage containers, has no negative effect on rats even when rats are fed mega-doses of the chemical, EPA scientists report in the latest issue of Toxicological Sciences. The three-year study shows that efforts by environmental activists to ban the chemical through state and federal legislation have no scientific basis.

Anti-chemical activists allege bisphenol-A may interfere with sex hormones, and have led a push to have the chemical banned by various states and the federal government. Prior studies by EPA and other scientific bodies had found no such negative effects, but activists claimed the studies were outdated. EPA’s just-completed study confirms the results of prior research.

Professor Richard Sharpe, one of Britain's leading specialists in endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment, observed in the April 13 London Independent that the new EPA study is the best he has seen on the alleged link between bisphenol-A and alleged health impacts.

"The results [of the study] are unequivocal and robust and are based on a valid and rational scientific foundation," Sharpe, a researcher at the Medical Research Council's Centre for Reproductive Biology in Edinburgh, told the Independent.

"They tell us that, in vivo in female rats, bisphenol A is an extremely weak oestrogen, so weak that even at levels of exposure 4,000-fold higher than the maximum exposure in humans in the general population there are no discernible adverse effects," Sharpe added. 

According to the Independent, “The study with many other studies, ‘more or less close the door’ on the possibility that bisphenol A has oestrogenic effects we need worry about, said Professor Sharpe, one of first scientists to discover falling sperm counts in Western men.”