Is There Poison in Our Food? Concerns About BPA

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Bisphenol A is found in the lining of most canned foods and drinks. PHOTO: MATTHEW T. STALLBAUMER

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The synthetic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) — often found in plastic containers and the linings of metal cans — is a potent, estrogen-mimicking compound that can leach from containers into food and water. In this interview, published by Yale Environment 360, an online magazine from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, BPA researcher Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri’s Endocrine Disruptor Group harshly criticizes U.S. corporations and government regulators for covering up or ignoring what he believes are serious health risks of BPA. — MOTHER  

Yale Environment 360: Everyone’s heard of BPA, but I really don’t think people know what it is. What is it? 

Frederick vom Saal: Bisphenol A is derived from petroleum. You take benzene, this sort of basic building block that corporations like Exxon produce, and they sell this to corporations like Dow Chemical. And they’re the ones that turn this, through a manmade chemical reaction, into this chemical called Bisphenol A. And this is an extremely reactive chemical that has the shape that any biochemist will look at and say, “This chemical will act as an estrogen-mimicking hormonal chemical.”

Yale Environment 360: This chemical was originally investigated by... 

vom Saal: Charles Edward Dodds. He was a British chemist, one of the leading chemists of the 1930s and 40s, and he won the Nobel Prize for synthesizing a chemical — people would love to dig him up and take the prize away from him — called DES, diethylstilbesterol, which was given to millions of women and has destroyed the lives of many of them. They were looking for synthetic, orally-active estrogens. Bisphenol A is highly absorbed, unlike the natural hormones that are degraded almost immediately in the stomach. And DES is highly absorbed. DES is, both structurally and functionally, very similar to BPA. There are lots of other, much more sophisticated, 21st century molecular assays that show BPA is actually as potent, and in some cases more potent, than DES.

Yale Environment 360: And why can’t we use BPA, for example, as a birth control hormone? 

vom Saal: For the same reason we can’t use DES. It’s a cancer-causing chemical. When fetuses are exposed to it, we now know that it is related to increasing body weight. Also obesity, diabetes, heart disease, immune dysfunction including asthma and allergy, damage to every part of the reproductive system, including uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts in women, breast cancer. In men, low sperm counts, prostate cancer, abnormalities of the urethra that as they age, men can’t urinate normally — a major reason men go to the doctor. We are talking about billions of dollars of medical costs. And then from a neuro-biological point of view, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, some learning disabilities, social behavior disruption. It causes the brain of a young animal to look like a senile, aged adult, old person, and is part of impaired memory. This chemical is related to many of the epidemics in the world — diabetes, obesity, neural behavioral problems, reproductive abnormalities, decreases in fertility, early puberty in girls.

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