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Bisphenol A can alter genes, study finds

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 7:00 AM EDT 23/04/08

Widely used compound can alter activity of genes in normal breast cells in ways that resemble what is found in extremely dangerous breast cancers ...Read the full article

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  1. Just Asking from Canada writes: Perhaps someone with some knowledge on the subject can comment on the dangers of those plastics already out there making their way into the food stream a la "The World Without Us" scenario. The chapter on plastics was the most eye opening for me. Is BPA floating around in minute particles throughout our oceans? I'm not trying to be alarmist, I am, as the moniker says, just asking.
  2. David K from Guelph, Canada writes: We seem to be realizing that some of the methods used to test chemicals in the past left much to be desired. Back then it was a matter of seeing how much of substance "A" had to be fed to a rat before it died, now it would appear that we should have also been checking how small a quantity it would take to begin to alter the growth of a test subject. Pesticides and herbicides immediately leap to mind as items that should be retested ASAP.
  3. Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: I feel better knowing BPA is leaching into the contents of the plastic lined tin cans in my cupboard as we speak.
  4. The Natrix from Toronto, Canada writes: Does anybody know if the water bottle (those 18L ones used for home dispensing) have these chemicals?
  5. michelle eldstrom from Victoria, Canada writes: Thank you to the Globe and Martin Mittelstaedt for bringing this to my attention a year ago. I only wish I'd know BEFORE both my pregnancies, and the years my kids used sippy cups.

    I wonder what will happen with all that rage felt by mothers who used sippy cups, fed their babies from plastic bottles, with formula from tins coated with BPA, not to mention what ever else...

    You'd think that the Bisphenol A website would be taken down, or saying something about this warning. They had better take precautions, or they may just find themselves the focus of all that rage.
  6. tim bulger from ?, Canada writes: Let us not stop at BPA! If altering genes is the criteria for a chemical to be labelled as hazardous then Oxygen will have to be given such a label. Oxygen is killing you (slowly) as you read this!
  7. Bob Lawblaws from Canada writes: Yes, BPA is used in the 18L water cooler jugs. Look for recycling symbol # 7 on the bottom.
  8. Little Dickie from Beautiful Downtown Port Dover, Canada writes: As I mentioned on earlier post on this subject BPA is in the PEX piping which is now been used as the potable water piping in new homes and apartments in lieu of copper piping

    Has anyone out there got the knowledge that the BPA is not leaching out of these plastic pies....or haven't any studies been done so far
  9. Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: PEX piping is made from PVC, not from polycarbonate plasitic. Generally speaking, products that contain BPA are clear hard plastics.
  10. Stephen Harper from Canada writes: My wife was in a high end Baby store in Toronto. They had taken all of the BPA plastics (bottles, etc) and put them 50% off.

    This enrages me that a company would try to sell products that they know will harm children.
  11. Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: All plastics that contain BPA will have the recycle symbol number 7, though not all plastics with the 7 necessarily contain BPA.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resinidentificationcode
  12. Justa Guy from Toronto, Canada writes: Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: All plastics that contain BPA will have the recycle symbol number 7, though not all plastics with the 7 necessarily contain BPA.

    ugh. so, what do we do? throw out anything with the 7?
  13. Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: "ugh. so, what do we do? throw out anything with the 7?"

    I'd throw out or recycle any hard clear plastics with the recycle symbol 7 to reduce your exposure to BPA.

    If you do decide to recycle BPA products they'd probably end up in the third world... or a dollar store.
  14. S. P. from Cape Breton, Canada writes: What about our canned food? Should we throw it all out? How soon will they be replacing the can liners? As a three-time breast-cancer survivor, I can't be too cautious!
  15. michelle eldstrom from Victoria, Canada writes: This is what I have been relying on for the last year.

    http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=77083

    Don't eat canned food, particularly canned tomatoes. Acidic food leach the BPA more than others.

    Watch for 3, 6, and SOME 7's...7 is the catch all number. Also, Born Free baby bottles are labelled as BPA free, and they are recycling number 3...so could it be more confusing!?!

    This is why we need Health Canada to help us sort this out.

    I started canning last summer. It's not nearly as hard as I expected! Unfortunately, I only did a dozen litre jars of tomatoes, not realizing we'd need double that to get through the year. Time to learn the lessons my grandparents took for granted. Too bad they're not around to help me with this now. But they were both victims of the last cancer causing plague on society...cigarettes.
  16. R. M. from Regina, Canada writes: Water bottles and baby bottles scarey.....all the tin cans out there...very very very scarey........how do they propose to handle those????
  17. Terry Maurice from Guelph, Canada writes: Where are the manufacturers in all of this? It brings to mind the old DuPont slogan "Better Things for Living...Through Chemistry" that they used from 1935 to 1982. After 1992 they dropped the "Through Chemistry" part of it. They probably knew something back then that we are only finding out now. I don't believe DuPont is involved in bisphenol A production, but the chemical industry has not been as forthcoming with this kind of information nor have they been diligent in testing of chemical compounds that have their way into our environment and bodies as they should have been.
  18. Political Junkie from Canada writes: If you really want to know where the hazards in your diet are, look here:

    http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.103/pub_detail.asp
  19. Little Dickie from Beautiful Downtown Port Dover, Canada writes: Dave Roberts from Toronto, Canada writes: "PEX piping is made from PVC, not from polycarbonate plasitic. Generally speaking, products that contain BPA are clear hard plastics"

    Dave, you are totally wrong...PEX is not a PVC. It is a cross linked polyethelene

    Here is what is in PEX and other PE's

    Polyethylene, HDPE, PEX. Acetophenone; 2,4-bis (dimethylethyl)phenol; benzene; benzothiazole;
    bis-(dimethylethyl)benzene; bisphenol A; BHT (methyl di(t-butyl)phenol);
    carbon disulfide; cyclohexadienedione; cyclo-hexanone; cyclopentanone; diazadiketocyclo-
    tetradecane; dicyclopentylone; dimethylhexanediol; di-t-butyl oxaspirodecadienedione;
    hydroxymethylethylphenyl ethanone; isobutylene; methanol; methyl butenal;
    methyl di-t-butyl hydroxyphenyl proprionate; methyl (di-t-butylhydroxy-phenyl)propionate;
    methylbutenol; nonylcyclopropane; phenolics; phenylenebis-ethanone; propenyloxymethyl
    oxirane; t-butanol; tetrahydrofuran; trichloroethylene.

    So if you got a PEX potable plumbing system...you got bisphenol A leaching into your potable water
  20. harry schmidt from near Shanghai, Canada writes: I trust boiling meats and water before consumption or preparing dishes with it should eliminate most if not all harmful substances. As well, one should not live off canned foods, but get fresh veggies . . . .
    Now, about fruits - I would hate to boil a banana.
  21. Political Junkie from Canada writes: Harry, if you choose to live on boiled meats, go for it. Boiling will deal with bacteria but has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. If you are worried (and you shouldn't be) about chemicals leaching out of plastics, heating will make the problem worse.

    Assuming that "organic" fresh foods are a solution is also incorrect. Mother nature provides 99.9% of your pesticide intake. Man made pesticides are a tiny portion of compared to the natural ones. And yes, natural pesticides are just as carcinogenic as the artificial ones.
  22. andre michaels from Leamington, Canada writes: Thank you Political Junkie for the only well thought comment on this thread. I would be much more worried about eating too much broccoli than BPA leaching into our foods. The carcinogens in broccoli are much more dangerous and tests have shown that. Chill out people. Breast cancer rates are actually falling (look at the REAL stats!) and people are freaking out over BPA. Incredible. People have way too much time on their hands.
  23. Eric Hunter from Kingsville, Canada writes: Welcome to the bird flu of 2008, we'll have a story every few hours now. Writers are busy producing as many slightly different articles about BPA to feed the frenzy
  24. K W from Vancouver, Canada writes: If there is even a slight chance that BPA causes breast cancer, it is only prudent to eliminate exposure. I'm not willing to take the risk, and I would bet there are quite a few women out there who feel the same. While many things in life come with risks, like riding a bike, suscepting our bodies to harmful chemicals is unnecessary and borders on sheer stupidy.

    It's certainly not about frenzy, and I think it's insensitive to suggest otherwise. People are getting cancer, and dying from it. We need to find out why, and take steps to protect our health, communities, and our families.

    We'd like to believe that everything governments do is on our behalf and for our good. But sometimes through misguidance or simply a lack of proper information, governments can make mistakes. Health Canada has taken corrective action here, and now the onus is on the public to demand change.
  25. C J from Canada writes: What's interesting is now that everyone is scared of BPA in products, the industry came up with BPA-free products at higher (rip-off?) prices of course!
    Question is why couldn't they make it BPA-free in the first place??!
  26. Mister G. from Canada writes: There is absolutely no proof from anybody the BPA causes cancer in humans. None, sip, nada, nothing remotely conclusive. This stuff has been in use for decades. Where is the rise in breast cancer predicted in those inconclusive studies?

    Now all the concerned parents will start using glass bottles and I would venture a guess that those are much more hazardous to a child's safety. How many more children will end up in the emergency department with life threatening lacerations from shattered pieces of glass?

    The G&M is on a crusade. All so politically correct.
  27. Mister G. from Canada writes: I wonder how many smokers will trow away their plastic bottles.
  28. lotusland maritimer from Canada writes: Babies should be breast fed anyway so thats one way of reducing plastic bottle use. If you are surprised you dont know much chemistry and less medicine. We have known for ages that a lot of man made chemicals are unfortunately carcinogenic or promoters or inducers especially plastics of all descriptions and mostly estrogenic. These hormones are steroids. These polycyclic hydrocarbons benzene hexane phenol derivatives, without exception are suspect. Some are proven some not. The prudent thing is of course to limit exposure of all these substances but especially in foods and even more so in anything to do with babies. So I am not in the least surprised I expected it. Also it goes without saying that canned food is survival food not fit for human consumption except in emergencies say floods when you are stuck in a house for a week. Clearly you cant consume fresh produce, so it's time to use up the bomb shelter canned food. Its all a matter of dose and frequency you are very unlikely to get cancer from one can of food but if you ate nothing but for decades you are asking for some dire consequences. So there is no need to panic it takes an awful lot of exposure even to a well known carcinogen before you would get cancer. For instance I had a patient die of a very unusual form of pancreatic cancer. He worked with photographic chemicals all his life. It took nearly half a century to kill him. He wasnt an alcoholic so that wasnt the cause. So you dont get cancer if you are a hobbyist photographer but if thats all you do in industrial amounts then it will take several decades. Or another one with mesothelioma well known to be caused by asbestos. He worked with the stuff for years and it took decades to show itself. I was exposed for only a year maybe a few score hours so I dont expect to get it. A golfer needs fifty plus years of golfing to get malignant melanoma from sun, not one summer. So it takes a long time and prolonged exposure to get any cancer usually.
  29. mini maestra from Canada writes: I am hoping this is just the tip of the iceberg and other hormone mimics will get banned. The one good thing about Bisphenol A, if there is a good thing is that it is easily metabolized and does not accumulate in the body which means if we stop introducing it to our system it will go away. I just hope they ban the other persistent hormone mimics soon.
  30. Jason Thorne from Vancouver, Canada writes: Little Dickie from Beautiful Downtown Port Dover, Canada, you are the one I tried to rebut recently. I made a mistake a few days ago (too many pages opened at once) and made a comment against R M from Canada about it and asked for the proof and in my rebuttal provided a link to a Virginia Tech page about PEX and other piping, then R M from Regina pointed out my link was actually a blog and not the true article itself and then went on to comment about MEC pulling their bottles last year, which I knew, but that was what R M from Canada had commented. Finally the record is straight though.
  31. Jason Thorne from Vancouver, Canada writes: Little Dickie from Beautiful Downtown Port Dover, Canada here is most of the post I made before, minus the reference to R M from Canada:

    ...having trouble finding sources to back up your claim, can you please provide some? However I did come across an article that may interest you. "Specifically, CPVC performed consistently higher when compared to copper, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), epoxy lining and the PEX piping selected for the study." Source - http://www.todaysfacilitymanager.com/facilityblog/labels/Virginia%20Tech.html

    In the article it mentions HDPE and epoxy lining both leach bisphenol-A, but nothing about PEX doing the same.
  32. Jason Thorne from Vancouver, Canada writes: Little Dickie from Beautiful Downtown Port Dover, Canada can you please provide some links to your information as my Google search came up with nothing proving what you are claiming, but that is how I came across that blog entry. I am not saying you are wrong, at this point, but I can't verify your claim either.

    Some other information, the BPA lined cans I was told are the ones with the white lining inside (it may be wrong, but it was what I was told), but you don't know which ones those are until you open them.
  33. Jason Thorne from Vancouver, Canada writes: One last thing, there should be the letters PC on the number 7 plastic containers that are made with BPA.
  34. Justa Guy from Toronto, Canada writes: .

    perhaps you two guys could enlighten us as to what you mean by natural pesticides and how they constitute 99.9% of our pesticide consumption? and please explain what natural carcinogens are in broccoli and tell us more about these tests that have shown that broccoli is dangerous.

    on the surface, your claims seem utterly ridiculous.

    Political Junkie from Canada writes: Assuming that "organic" fresh foods are a solution is also incorrect. Mother nature provides 99.9% of your pesticide intake. Man made pesticides are a tiny portion of compared to the natural ones. And yes, natural pesticides are just as carcinogenic as the artificial ones.

    and

    andre michaels from Leamington, Canada writes: Thank you Political Junkie for the only well thought comment on this thread. I would be much more worried about eating too much broccoli than BPA leaching into our foods. The carcinogens in broccoli are much more dangerous and tests have shown that.
  35. Iain's Opinion from Canada writes: This is arather alarming to me. I read about estrogenic mimicking compounds about 10 years ago. Why the big delay?
  36. D K from Canada writes: So can sunlight. Quick hide!
  37. Raw Comment from Canada writes: Now a piece of information is available, and people can choose how it impacts them.

    The lining in cans, the lining of bottles etc is good to know - now choose what you buy and consume based on it.

    Every year it is something, and the doctors/scientists reverse some of their initial findings eventually - sometimes for the better (not a real problem) sometimes for the worse (bigger problem than initially thought).

    One point of concern is that Health Canada will ban this compound and raise alarms to the point of sounding like a ban is imminent, but not stoppin the sale of cigarettes.

    I know the difference in revenue generation is a factor that all will bring up as a reason, but the time it takes to develop an illness based on smoking is a valid point of comparison for why this may not be a horrible problem.

    One other idea, and this is just a non scientific person asking - why not test things suspected of truly being a problem on monkeys instead?
    I have seen animals at countless zoos fed with baby bottles - were they exposed? What is happening to them, have they been tested.
    They may give more insight as to the true impacts of short and long term exposure.
  38. shawn fraser from Edmonton, Canada writes: This is another classic health scare. Look at the panic in these posts. In terms of this particular study, you might be concerned if you are directly injecting BPA into your breast tissue. Otherwise, ingestion of BPA will not affect tissues as described in this study or in the news story. Ingested BPA is rapidly metabolized and is excreted from the body quickly. I don't know why scientists are not invited to comment on stories like this. Or, how about the Canadian Cancer Society? This seems like an obvious place to start.
  39. Scrappy Doo from Canada writes: Hey Globe editors!!!!

    Get a new headline on your health section already. This story has been the top of the health section for over 3 days now, something must have happened in the realm of Health in that interval....
  40. Sue City from Ottawa, Canada writes: Geezus, what are we doing to ourselves?
  41. A skeptical MD from Canada writes: Yet more sensationalist and icompetent reporting from the G&M's science and health section. Bisphenol A has not been shown to "alter genes". It has been shown to alter gene expression. There is a HUGE difference between the two.

    Since bisphenol A is known to have a weak estrogen effect, it's a given that it can alter gene expression. That's the mechanism that all steroids act by. Cortisone creams alter gene expression too, as do many asthma inhalers. Yet the implication is made in this article that "altering genes" is somehow automatically bad.

    Perhaps the G&M should hire some editors or reporters with an adequate science background.
  42. Dwide Schrude from Canada writes: I don't know what the big deal is. I drank from a Nalgene bottle for the last five years and short of the giant foot growing out of the side of my neck, I'm perfectly fine. Gosh!
  43. Adrian . from Edmonton, Canada writes: As a student of Materials Science, I had some doubts about this BPA scare. I did some research, and talked with a guy who holds a PhD in chemistry. The final result is this: research has shown that it is possible to leech BPA out of polycarbonate plastics -if you try hard enough-, and other research has shown that it is possible to alter cell behaviour (NOT DNA as the headline suggests) with BPA. The link between BPA in our waterbottles and health problems is so extraordinarily tenuous that the rampant panic over BPA is completely unreasonable. Until much better research confirms a likely link, I would have no problems feeding myself and my family from BPA-containing containers.

    Adrian
  44. Patrick Kirk from Calgary, Canada writes: When they say that BPA is used to line tin cans, do they mean food cans? Or what kind of cans? Does anyone know?
  45. A skeptical MD from Canada writes: Adrian.

    You are correct. The actual scientific evidence driving this whole process is very shaky indeed. There is a theoretical basis for potential harm, whatever that means. The declaration of bisphenol A as a "dangerous substance" is a political one, made by a government agency that would rather be seen as proactive than dithering. Think about it: it's now acceptable for infant formula to be stored in BPA lined cans for months, but not fed to the child in a BPA containing plastic baby bottle. It makes no logical sense.
  46. Antonio San from Canada writes: Think with APB, intelligent North American became Canadians...
  47. Jorly fuster from Canada writes: oh give me a break, I've been getting my jeans altered at Lee Ho Fook's for 10 years now. He's great and a good price plus he will replace zippers too.
  48. guy tozer from Saskatoon, Canada writes: Not to worry........ we have a lawyer group in Saskatchewan here, just waiting to jump on, and proceed with the class action lawsuit bandwagon.

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