Bisphenol A: new danger again?

Barely a month after a notice reassuring the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on bisphenol A (BPA), two new studies again raise doubts about the safety of this compound already banned for baby bottles.

This component of plastics and resins, present in many food and beverage containers, had been accused of favoring male sexual dysfunction, decreased libido or impotence. The scientist, Dr. De-Kun Li of the Kaiser Research Institute in California, said today that it can impair concentration and quality of the sperm.

In collaboration with Chinese researchers, for five years a cohort of 500 factory workers have been followed, some of whom were occupationally exposed to bisphenol A. Of these, 218 underwent examinations of urine and semen. The results of this study, recently published in Fertility and Sterility, are troubling.

Men with detectable levels of BPA in urine have a risk three times higher to have decreased sperm concentration and a decrease of sperm vitality. "The same type of dose-response association was observed among men with only environmental exposure to BPA at levels comparable to that of the general population in the United States," says Dr. Li

Meanwhile, a French team of the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA) in Toulouse has demonstrated that BPA can also enter the body through the skin. The work, published in the journal Chemosphere, was the first conducted on fragments of pig ear grown in the laboratory and on a comparable model of human skin. About two thirds of BPA deposited on the surface has crossed the skin barrier.

Related to the fact that food contamination can not explain alone the levels of BPA found in some people, these new data "strongly suggests that this molecule is able to enter the body through the human skin," the researchers conclude .

Recently, an American study had found high levels of BPA in the body of persons who are in regular contact with receipts or credit card receipts. These "thermal paper" actually contain free form of bisphenol.

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