Research Report

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a toxic chemical commonly used in plastic bottles, in spite of its links to several serious health problems like heart disease and liver failure. That alone is reason enough to support banning its use in products. Manufacturers who use BPA in their products have been able to downplay the risks by citing research indicating that levels of BPA declined quickly.

A new study released by researchers at the University of Rochester challenges those findings, showing that newly-consumed BPA declines initially, but then remains in the body:

[Environmental health scientist Richard] Stahlhut says that it appears that the amount of BPA in the body drops relatively rapidly from four to nine hours after exposure, but then levels out. "After the nine hours or so," he says, "it stops doing what it's supposed to and the decline goes flat."

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"This suggests substantial nonfood exposure, accumulation in body tissues such as fat, or both," the researchers wrote in their paper released today by Environmental Health Perspectives.

That may explain why 93 percent of Americans carry BPA in their bodies, according to the CDC, or it could be that exposure is coming through different routes than food, such as the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes often used for water lines in modern homes.

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The U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program—a government program that coordinates federal studies of chemicals' adverse effects—warns that BPA exposure may lead to abnormal development in infants and the Canadian government last year banned its use in baby bottles. But the American Chemistry Council, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintain that BPA is safe.

Click here to learn more about the risks of BPA exposure, and what we need to do in Connecticut to protect against them.