BPA tied to Behavior of Children

A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives this month states that bisphenol-A has been linked to behavior in children who were exposed to BPA in utero: young girls display more masculine tendencies and young boys display more feminine tendencies.

The study was conducted by testing BPA levels in the urine of pregnant women. The behavioral abnormalities seem to be affected by BPA level (the higher the mother’s BPA count, the larger deviation from norm was found in the children), and are most pronounced in children of women with high BPA levels during the first 16 weeks of pregnancy.

Many questions still remain about the effects of bisphenol-A, and this study is the first to tie behavioral impacts with BPA.

In the meantime, bisphenol-A is being found in more and more products that are in the marketplace. Most cash registers that we encounter in day-to-day errands use “thermal imaging papers.” This month, it was reported that those receipts contain BPA. In ScienceNews, John Warner, Co-Founder of WarnerBabcock, the Institute for Green Chemistry says:

“When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out] ... The average cash register receipt that’s out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA.” By free, he explains, it’s not bound into a polymer, like the BPA in polycarbonates. It’s just the individual molecules loose and ready for uptake. Obviously, this is a risk for shoppers and store employees alike.

Bisphenol-A is a hormone disrupting chemical which has health effects including impaired brain and reproductive development in unborn babies, miscarriage in pregnant women, diabetes, obesity and cancer.

And bisphenol-A is everywhere. Discover Magazine this month reminds us that 93% of us have detectable amounts of BPA in our urine, and four million tons of BPA are produced each year.

The Safer States Coalition is working on a state-by-state basis to protect the most at-risk populations are protected from bisphenol-A and other harmful chemicals. Minnesota and Connecticut have already banned BPA from certain children's products, and we are working toward bans in states throughout the nation.

To protect your family, you can participate with your state and federal government to restrict and label use of harmful chemicals such as BPA. Nationally, you can get active with the Safer Chemicals website and ask Congress to create common sense limits on toxic chemicals.