BPA Risk to Newborns May Be Smaller Than Previously Believed
Apr 23, 2015
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say that while a large majority of newborns are exposed in their earliest days to bisphenol A (BPA), a much-studied chemical used in plastics and in food and soda can linings, infants can chemically alter and rid their bodies of it.
The findings, published April 23 in The Journal of Pediatrics, challenge the current thinking on BPA toxicology. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that more than 92 percent of Americans ages six and older have BPA in their bodies, most likely through the consumption of food stored in packaging made from it. There have been no published studies about BPA levels in healthy newborns, but it was assumed that their immature livers would have a difficult time processing the chemical, which would mean increased health risks due to BPA.
“Even though we’ve removed BPA from bottles, this work shows infants are still exposed to it,” says lead author Rebecca Massa Nachman, PhD, MPH, a post-doctoral fellow in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences and a former CLF-Lerner Fellow. But the good news is that our study also shows healthy newborns are better able to handle that exposure than we thought."
To find out more about the study, read the full Bloomberg School of Public Health release here.