By Jerome Taylor
A Coalition of some of the world's leading scientists has called for a ban on a widely used chemical linked to breast cancer, heart disease, obesity and hyperactivity.
The scientists from the US, Britain and Italy say bisphenol-A (BPA) in any plastic used for baby bottles or baby food containers should be banned because of the growing body of evidence suggesting it is dangerous.
Their call coincides with the publication of four new scientific studies that have contributed yet more evidence towards the potentially harmful effects of BPA. Last week Denmark became the first European country to ban BPA in food containers for children under the age of three. Canada and three US states have also brought in bans and the French are considering following suit.
In contrast, Britain's Food Standards Agency and the European Food Safety Authority have resisted calls for a ban, citing the minority of studies - some of which have been paid for by the plastics industry - which find that BPA is safe.
But the scientists, who are leading toxicologists and cancer specialists studying the effects of BPA, say failing to ban is failing to protect the public's health and make sure that manufacturers use alternative plastics.
"To protect vulnerable populations, we believe it would be both prudent and precautionary in public health terms if products containing BPA used for baby and children's food and liquid packaging were withdrawn," they write. "BPA should be replaced by less hazardous substances."
BPA is widely used in the plastics industry to strengthen food containers. But it has been classified as an "endocrine disruptor" and is thought to interfere with the body's delicate hormone system. Last week it was exposed how leading retailers were still selling baby bottles containing BPA even though most mainstream manufacturers have abandoned their BPA lines.
After years of insisting that BPA posed no risk to health, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now advising that "reasonable steps" should be taken to minimise exposure.
The four new studies lend weight to research suggesting that BPA is harmful in much lower doses than previously thought. The first is a paper from the University of Michigan which found how endocrine disruptors, including BPA, have a harmful impact on men's health, specifically in reproduction, development and metabolism.
Research using mice at the Italian Endometriosis Foundation in Rome linked BPA to endometriosis, a chronic gynaecological disease. The third study, from Tufts University in Boston, was critical of two previous studies that had suggested human BPA exposure was negligible.
A fourth study, to be published by the University of Auckland in New Zealand later this month, has discovered that even very low doses of BPA can pass across the human placenta, damaging children in the womb. - The Independent