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Chemical Linked to Aggression in Girls
Pre-birth exposure to a chemical widely used in plastics appears to be linked to more aggressive behavior in little girls, according to research published Tuesday by a scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Plastic baby bottles that do not contain bisphenol A are available. (Photo courtesy The Soft Landing) The findings, which are preliminary and call for more study, are the first to connect behavior problems in humans with the chemical bisphenolA, which is a key component of plastic bottles, the liners inside canned goods and medical devices.
The chemical leaches from plastic and is detectable at some level in nearly everyone's system. Scientists began to raise concerns about BPA because of its tendency to mimic estrogen -- a hormone that plays a crucial role in establishing the sex differences in the brains of developing fetuses.
Studies in mice have shown fetal BPA exposure can abolish or reverse inherent behavioral differences between the sexes -- specifically, females act more aggressive -- and those studies prompted questions about what the chemical does to humans.
Joe Braun, a doctoral student in epidemiology at the UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health and one of the authors of the aggression study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, said researchers began examining the effects of BPA two years ago with a group of pregnant women enrolled in a larger study into lead.
The researchers measured BPA levels in urine samples from 249 women at three different times during their pregnancies: At 16 weeks, 26 weeks and birth. Later, they observed the women's children at age 2, using a standard behavioral test.
Early exposure matters
They found that women who had the highest concentrations of BPA at 16 weeks of pregnancy were inclined to have more aggressive, hyperactive 2-year-old daughters. There was no statistically significant change of behavior among the boys, although there was some evidence of heightened anxiety and depression.
"It's an intriguing finding that suggests the need for more research in this field, especially with prenatal exposure and the timing of exposures," Braun said.
Timing is especially important from a regulation standpoint.
Some have called for curbs on BPA, and Canada last year became the first country to ban BPA in baby bottles. Afterward, Walmart and Toys R Us announced they would stock only BPA-free baby bottles, toys and baby food containers in all their stores.
But the work of Braun's team suggests that the time to limit exposure is in the womb -- maybe even before many women know they are pregnant.
And that could lead to calls for a larger BPA ban, and a far more controversial approach.
"It's hard to remove it from all consumer products," said John Bucher, associate director of the National Toxicology Program in Research Triangle Park. He noted that baby items represent less than 2percent of the plastic products sold to consumers.
Bucher said the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is one of the National Institutes of Health and is based in RTP, has allocated $30 million to study BPA.
But the research, coming after the chemical has become so widespread in the marketplace, may result in a regulatory effort akin to putting toothpaste back in the tube.
"Polycarbonate plastic is a huge market," Bucher said. "It goes into lots and lots of things, many where BPA may not be harmful."
The American Chemistry Council, along with BPA plastics manufacturers in Europe and Japan, cite studies showing that the chemical additive is safe. The groups note that BPA does not appear to cause cancer and that "the potential human exposure to BPA from polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resin food contact applications is minimal and poses no known risk to human health."
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15 Comments so far
Show All"It's hard to remove it from all consumer products"
Why?
Somehow, as recently as the 1960's or 1970's people got along fine without BPA's. Before the 1930's people somehow suvived without any plastics at all.
I understand that BPA's are used in the lining in cans - even most organic canned products. They say it is needed to prevent harmful metal leeching that happened in cans that were just galvanied of tin-plated. But surely, our talented chemists could come up with something safer - it's just that a capitalist somewhere will lose a little of his money if the can linings are changed.
BPA's in food containers are jut part of the immensely profitable and environmentally destuctive food-packaging industry - which is largely just an extension of the advertizing industry.
What are little girls made of?
1950's: Sugar and spice and everything nice.
2000's: BPA and other nasty stuff.
Just increase the Ritalin ration. What's the problem?
While I agree that BPA is nasty stuff, I am hesitant about possible correlation between BPA and aggression. Newspaper science reports skim off the highlights of journal articles and not every finding is accurately presented. It would be interesting to look at the original article, see what statistical methods they used, see what variables they correlated. The report above mentions that the women were enrolled in a lead study as well and we have known for many years that lead is extremely toxic and affects cognition and behavior. Also be aware that in order to be competitive in science and get funding, researchers have to publish and produce results, so they will correlate everything and if one stat test does not work, they will try another. I think avoiding BPA is absolutely prudent, but I would like to see more studies with larger population samples to verify aggression in females.
I have a great idea, let's test this crap BEFORE we expose it to humans.
"I have a great idea, let's test this crap BEFORE we expose it to humans."
.
.
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Can't. Animal rights groups have banned most testing on animals. Most cosmetics and new polymers are now just rubber-stamped at the FDA accepting Big Chems in house studies that everything is A-OK.
Don't eat anything in a package. If you pull it off the tree yourself, (or a small farmer does it) you have some increased likelihood it's not going to leach you. That way you also don't contribute to the island of plastic the size of the USA out in the Pacific.
Unfortunately, few products come in glass anymore. Remember glass? I only drink beer or wine from a glass bottle. It taste better because no plastic polymer coating is on the inside like it is with cans. I'm careful not to leave water sitting overnight in my polycarbonate britta water filter. Make it fresh and transfer it right away to a glass pitcher.
Big Chem Co's bought up all the seed rights starting in 2000, and now it's pretty hard to avoid "roundup ready" spliced GMO chit in your food. (about 70 percent of US food is Genetically Modified). Experimentation on humans. Yep, torture, buzz bombs, V2's, spying, NSA Hindenberg blimps, slavery (in China)..... It's 1938 Germany all over again.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
TJ,
Your absurd blame of "animal rights groups" for blocking testing of BPA is just the most idiotic right-wing misdirection i've seen all day.
Corporations rush untested chemicals into the market BECAUSE THEY PROFIT FROM MAKING AND SELLING THE CHEMICALS, not because "animal rights groups" force them to. We need to shut down introduction of unproven NEVER-BEFORE EXISTED ON LIVING EARTH chemicals into the living systems of the Earth. This is known as "the precautionary principle" and it does not get vetoed if animal testing is limited. If you wanna spread a new chemical around, THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU PAL.
You are a corporate shill, intentional or not. You do NOT do your namesake proud.
Webwalk,
Maybe I'm wrong. Now that I have read up on Animal testing a little bit, maybe that's only true for cosmetics, I'm not sure.
I'm not "right-wing" and as regulars here know, I'm anti-big corporation. I'm a Jeffersonian Libertarian/Naderite. No intent to misdirect anything. But, just out of curiosity, are you unwilling to sacrifice a few domestic laboratory animals for human consumer safety?
How is being a Naderite a corporate shill?
It costs cosmetics companies, for example, a few million dollars in animal testing per product; it seems to me they would rather just skip this precaution. But if you ban testing, your children become the lab rats. I tend to agree with the rest of your post; but face facts: Pandora's box is already open. Dozens of corporate molecules and "nano-particles" are now in consumer food (e.g.,vitamins) and personal hygiene products. The long term exposure effects are unknown.
I can't find any soap or antiperspirant anymore without Titanium Dioxide. Particles so small, my immune system may not be able to get rid of them.
Your opinion is valued and respected.
TJ
Health and safety
Titanium dioxide is incompatible with strong oxidizers and strong acids.[24] Violent or incandescent reactions may occur with metals (e.g. aluminium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, zinc and lithium).[25]
Titanium dioxide dust, when inhaled, has recently been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen possibly carcinogenic to humans.[26] Titanium dioxide accounts for 70% of the total production volume of pigments worldwide. It is widely used to provide whiteness and opacity to products such as paints, plastics, papers, inks, foods, and toothpastes. It is also used in cosmetic and skin care products, and it is present in almost every sunblock, where it helps protect the skin from ultraviolet light.
The findings of the IARC are based on the discovery that high concentrations of pigment-grade (powdered) and ultrafine titanium dioxide dust caused respiratory tract cancer in rats exposed by inhalation and intratracheal instillation.[27] The series of biological events or steps that produce the rat lung cancers (e.g. particle deposition, impaired lung clearance, cell injury, fibrosis, mutations and ultimately cancer) have also been seen in people working in dusty environments. Therefore, the observations of cancer in animals were considered, by IARC, as relevant to people doing jobs with exposures to titanium dioxide dust. For example, titanium dioxide production workers may be exposed to high dust concentrations during packing, milling, site cleaning and maintenance, if there are insufficient dust control measures in place. However, it should be noted that the human studies conducted so far do not suggest an association between occupational exposure to titanium dioxide and an increased risk for cancer. The safety of the use of these nanoparticles, which can penetrate the body and reach internal organs, has been criticized.[28]
Agree pjd412, and ha ha badger.
Any well-read responsible adult would by now be aware that the US FDA and safety barrier organisations in all countries have been hopelessly corrupted and compromised, and we can be sure that alarm bells were ringing over BPAs long before we got to hear about it.
Let me see... it was 1976 when it was discovered that the injected adjutant squalene caused terminal conditions, including immediate paralysis and death; yet the swine flu vaccine it was used in then is not significantly different to that which is used to vaccinate against the current grossly exaggerated round of flu. So, after 33 years no action has been taken to protect the public.
Similarly, two circumstances support the belief that thimerasol (mercury) in vaccines is responsible for autism, ADD and similar serious developmental disorders; yet use continues. The use of formaldehyde in other vaccines and foodstuffs is common. Then there are the cocktails of viruses, alive and dead, added to yet another round of vaccines.
Commonsense and normal human values would suggest that we abandon these substances until they are conclusively proved safe (salute to badger), so what we must conclude is that we have no such protection and that avoidance is our only safety option.
One wonders why we need government in the first place, but then we recall that this is the inevitable outcome of electing a corrupt politician to do our thinking for us.
Valuable government is that government which is of the people, by the people and for the people... otherwise known as democracy... or structured electoral consensus shaping the direction and thrust of national policy.
No more leaders to be corrupted. This is the conclusion that is taking painfully long to emerge through two centuries of belief and indoctrination.
Use glass instead of plastic bottles. Use glass, cast iron or ceramic pots and skillets rather than those with non-stick coatings. Better safe than sorry.
Joe
BPA also has the interesting effect of feminization of tadpoles and (IIRC) some fish. It's not only from food, and at least one study suggests the stuff remains in your body, even if you're not eating any of it.
http://bit.ly/gLuXI
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2009/0800376/abstract.html
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/bisphenola/bpauses.htm
And now the heros at the TSA protect us by confiscating our water bottles - regardless of their composition and thus requiring we buy a plastic bottle of tap water at $2 a pop from an airport machine or from the air line attendant. Ever try to find a public water fountain of late - more scarce than pay phones.
art
awegweiser - I'm with you on the need for more public water fountains in airports, schools, stores, sports facilities. It is economical, ecological. It is a simple old fashioned way to cut down on plastic bottles in landfills and the costs of transporting and storing water. It may help cut down on sugar drink consumption.
Joe
BPA is awful, but all plastics are toxic when used and toxic in their mmanufacture and disposal:
see the 7 Deadly Plastics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP-oC-0hOC0