Bisphenol What? A Hearing on Bisphenol A

Consumers have well-justified concerns about the estrogenic activity (EA) exhibited by BPA and phthalates because many scientific articles have reported that chemicals with EA produce many adverse health effects. While estrogens (the female sex hormones) occur naturally in the body, many scientific studies have shown that significant health problems can occur when chemicals are ingested that mimic or block the actions of these female sex hormones; the fetus, newborn, or young child is especially vulnerable. These health-related problems include early puberty in females, reduced sperm counts in males, altered functions of reproductive organs, obesity, altered behaviors, and increased rates of some breast, ovarian, testicular, and prostate cancers.

However, consumers should be aware that just choosing a BPA-free plastic bottle does not mean that they are safe from estrogenic activity. BPA and phthalates are just two of several thousand chemicals that exhibit EA. Many of these chemicals having EA leach from almost all plastics sold today, including polyethylene, polypropylene, PET. That is, plastics advertised as BPA-free or phthalate-free are not EA-free; almost all these plastics still leach chemicals having EA – and often have more total EA than plastics that release BPA or phthalates. In fact, our data show that all the plastics listed in this article release chemicals having EA.

Various plastics manufacturers are attempting to solve this problem by removing chemicals having EA (BPA, phthalates) one at a time. This approach is not an appropriate solution because thousands of chemicals used in plastics exhibit EA, not just BPA and phthalates. This is a marketing-driven solution, not a health-driven solution. The appropriate health-driven solution is to manufacture safer plastics that are EA-free. This is not a pie-in-the-sky solution, as the technology already exists to produce EA-free plastics that also have the same advantageous physical properties as do almost all existing EA-releasing plastics. In fact, some of these advanced-technology EA-free plastics are already in the marketplace. Your readers should be demanding EA-Free plastics, not BPA or phthalate free plastics that are not certified as EA-free..

George D. Bittner, PhD

Professor of Biology,

The University of Texas at Austin

Founder: CertiChem, PlastiPure