Justin Teeguarden of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory presented the most comprehensive study to date on the affects of bisphenol A (BPA) on humans at the Feb. 15, 2013, session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.
Teeguarden confirmed that BPA in sufficient quantities can mimic estrogen activity the human blood stream. The researchers found that the binding capacity for estrogen to estrogen receptors is so much greater than the binding constant for BPA that there is minimal chance that BPA can be the cause of assorted birth defects claimed by media and some researchers.
Teeguarden examined 130 different studies of BPA and human health and found that the majority of studies used concentrations of BPA that far exceeded the normal exposure levels expected by normal people and most exceeded the exposure levels expected in people that work directly with BPA on a daily basis.
“The results showed that a small fraction of the "low doses" used in these studies are within the range of human exposures, with the vast majority being at least 10 to thousands of times higher than what humans are exposed to daily. In addition, the range of concentrations spans from upwards of 10 grams per kilogram of weight per day down to 100 picograms per kilogram of weight per day (a picogram is one millionth of a gram).”
Teeguarden further examined the research records of over 30,000 individuals, including women and infants, and found no person had a high enough level of BPA in their system to claim any kind of toxicity.
The research does not claim that BPA is safe. BPA used properly is safe. High levels of BPA exposure can cause serious health problems. Most people will never be exposed to a toxic level of BPA according to the research.
The levels of BPA used is the majority of testing that claims BPA toxicity in humans is reminiscent of the 1960s testing of LSD where animals were exposed to 50 to 5000 times a normal human dose of LSD and the result proclaimed throughout the nation was that LSD caused psychosis and a variety of mental disease. The actual fact was that if a human consumed that much LSD they would die just like the animals used in the experiments did.
The majority of the BPA studies examined in this new survey were funded at least in part by some taxpayer money through some branch of government research grants.
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