Mice Harmed by Low Dose of BPA, Not High

Baby mice exposed in the womb to low doses ? but not high doses ? of bisphenol A were fatter and had metabolic changes linked to obesity and diabetes, according to a new study

By Brian Bienkowski and Environmental Health News

Sleeping mouse. Image: Flickr/Eddy Van 3000

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Baby mice exposed in the womb to low doses ? but not high doses ? of bisphenol A were fatter and had metabolic changes linked to obesity and diabetes, according to a new study published Thursday.

Building on previous studies that link the hormone-altering chemical to changes in body weight and glucose tolerance, the new research fuels an ongoing controversy over whether federal testing of chemicals is adequate to protect people from low doses.

?What?s scary is that we found effects at levels that the government not only says is safe, but that they don?t bother to test,? said Fredrick vom Saal, a University of Missouri, Columbia, professor and senior author of the study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology.

Many of the effects were reported in the mice fed daily doses ? just during pregnancy ? that were one-tenth of the amount that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for daily exposure throughout life.

Used in polycarbonate plastics, canned food liners and some thermal receipts, BPA is found in almost everyone?s body. Some earlier studies have linked it to obesity and diabetes in people.

Vom Saal said low doses of BPA caused a ?deranged metabolism? in the offspring of the exposed pregnant mice, suggesting that ?a component of the obesity epidemic and other metabolic diseases can be due to chemical exposure during development, when your cells are being programmed.?

In the offspring mice, BPA was associated with weight gain, increased abdominal fat and eating, impaired glucose tolerance and increased hormones that regulate glucose and appetite. Those outcomes, however, only happened when mothers were fed daily doses at or below 5,000 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. That amount is the EPA?s ?no effects? level ? the daily amount that the agency has concluded would not cause any human effects.

Of the doses fed to the pregnant mice ? 5, 50, 500, 5,000 and 50,000 micrograms per kilogram ? 500 caused the most metabolic changes, vom Saal said. The number of fat cells doubled at that dose. No effects were seen at doses higher than 5,000.

The study adds to the controversy over a phenomenon called ?nonmonotonic dose response,? which means that hormone-like chemicals such as BPA sometimes do not act in a typical way; they can have health effects at low doses but no effects or different effects at high doses.

The EPA frequently evaluates the safety of chemicals with tests that expose lab animals to high doses, then extrapolating to lower doses that people and wildlife encounter.

In a report last year, 12 scientists, including vom Saal, criticized that decades old-strategy, saying it fails to detect health threats from low doses of hormone-like chemicals. Pete Myers, founder of Environmental Health News and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, was the senior author of that report.

Last month, reacting to that report, the EPA defended its testing, concluding that current testing of hormone-altering chemicals is adequate for detecting low-dose effects that may jeopardize health.

In response to vom Saal?s new study, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies, said the findings had not been replicated and it ?presents conclusions that are not supported by the findings of EPA?s recent extensive review of the state of the science on low dose exposures.?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/o5ZuscGVs2I/article.cfm

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