 16 Sep 2008 @ 18:57
ROCKVILLE, Maryland (Reuters) - A major study links a chemical used in many plastic products including baby bottles to human problems such as heart disease and diabetes, while U.S. regulators on Tuesday said they still believe it is safe.
The chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, is widely used in plastic food and beverage containers and in the coating of food cans.
Until now, environmental and consumer activists who have questioned the safety of BPA have relied on animal studies. But the study by British researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that among 1,455 U.S. adults, those with the highest levels of BPA were more likely to have heart disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities than those with the lowest levels.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said they would review the new findings, which were not taken into consideration when the agency issued a draft conclusion in August that BPA is safe at current exposure levels.
"We have confidence in the data that we've looked at and the data that we're relying on to say that the margin of safety is adequate," FDA official Laura Tarantino told reporters at a meeting of experts advising the agency on its BPA conclusions.
"There are things you can do if you choose to reduce your level of bisphenol A," Tarantino said. "But we have not recommended that anyone change their habits or change their use of any of these products because right now we don't have the evidence in front of us to suggest that people need to."
BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastic, a clear shatter-resistant material in products ranging from baby and water bottles to plastic eating utensils to sports safety equipment and medical devices.
It also is used to make durable epoxy resins used as the coating in most food and beverage cans and in dental fillings. BPA can mimic the hormone estrogen in the body.
People can consume BPA when it leaches out of plastic into liquid such as baby formula, water or food inside a container. Some retailers and manufacturers are moving away from products with BPA. Canadian officials concluded BPA was harmful.
Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry group, said the study's design did not allow for anyone to conclude BPA causes heart disease and diabetes.
"At least from this study, we cannot draw any conclusion that bisphenol A causes any health effect," he said.
"On the other hand, though, bisphenol A has been very intensively studied in a very large number of laboratory animal studies. And the weight of evidence from those studies ... continues to support the safe use of products containing bisphenol A," Hentges said in a telephone interview.
The British researchers, who acknowledged their findings are not proof that the chemical is causing the harm, analyzed urine samples from a U.S. government health survey of adults ages 18-74 representative of the U.S. population.
The 25 percent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease, including heart attacks or type 2 diabetes, compared to the 25 percent with the lowest levels.
At the FDA panel meeting, several scientists and activists said the FDA ignored animal studies finding health concerns and some called for it to be banned in food container products.
Senior Democratic U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who heads the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said the FDA has "focused myopically on industry-funded research."
In the British study, the researchers said the chemical is in more than 90 percent of people, suggesting there is not much that can be done to avoid it. More than 2.2 million tons of BPA are produced each year.
(Additional reporting by Michael Kahn in London; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen, Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)
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