Plastic bottles may be more dangerous than previously thought

BPA can interfere with hormone, egg production in women

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WKBT) — An ingredient many times found in plastic bottles could be more dangerous than you might think.

Some studies show BPA, or bisphenol A, can be toxic to women’s ovaries.

The chemical can interfere with hormone and egg production along with egg potential of surviving. Because of how much BPA is used in every day products doctors say expecting mothers should be aware of the side affects.

“BPA is common, it’s everywhere. Studies show that more than 90 percent of all American people have BPA in there blood, its hard to avoid 100 percent, but they should be conscious to kind of decrease exposure to BPA,” said Gundersen Health System Fertility Specialist Dr. Sana Salih, M.D.

Two years ago the FDA revised regulations on bisphenol for use in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups at the request of the American Chemistry Council, in part to reduce confusion among consumers, since BPA was already phased out of products by manufacturers because of a drop in consumer demand.

According to the FDA, with the support of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), scientists at FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) have been studying BPA.

They found the level of BPA from food that could be passed from pregnant mothers to the fetus is so low that it could not be measured. Researchers fed pregnant rodents 100 to 1,000 times more BPA than people are exposed to through food, and could not detect the active form of BPA in the fetus eight hours after the mother’s exposure.

The FDA also found exposure to BPA in human infants is from 84 to 92 percent less than previously estimated.