BPA lingers in body, study finds

[Karlheinz]

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/38515489.html

A study released today finds that bisphenol A, a chemical widely used to make plastic and suspected of causing cancer, stays in the body much longer than previously thought.

The findings are significant because the longer the chemical lingers in the body, the greater chance it has of doing harm, scientists say.

Researchers from the University of Rochester in New York also say the chemical may get into the body from sources such as plastic water pipes or dust from carbonless paper and not only from food containers that leach the chemical when heated.

The study results, published today in Environmental Health Perspectives, have sparked a flurry of concern and renewed calls for regulation.

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The research indicates for the first time that people are either constantly being bombarded with bisphenol A from non-food sources, such as receipts and plastic water piping, or they are storing the chemical in fat cells, unable to get rid of it as quickly as scientists have believed.

"It provides evidence that we are being exposed to more BPA than we think - and that contaminated food and beverages may not even be the main source" of our BPA exposure, said Patricia Hunt, a professor at Washington State University who pioneered studies linking BPA to cancer. "Scary, huh?"

Scientists previously thought that BPA metabolized quickly, with half the concentration eliminated between four and six hours and all of it gone by 24 hours. Instead, Stahlhut, Shanna Swan, also of Rochester, and Wade Welshons of the University of Missouri-Columbia found that the levels dropped but then leveled off after eight hours - and never disappeared.

"They hang in there like a London fog," Stahlhut said.