Startling Study: 91% Canadians have BPA in their Urine

August 19th, 2010. By Hunter West

It may be the title and a line from a romantic Peter Frampton song, but in this context it is anything but endearing. 

I’m In You… 

In this case, you’d rather the suitor not—especially Canadians who learned on Monday that according to a national survey through the analysis of thousands of representative samples, 91 percent of the population of Canada is found to have bisphenol A (BPA) in their urine. 

The good news is that BPA is excreted from the body after about six hours. But here’s the bad news: such a high percentage suggests that Canadians are exposed to BPA on a regular basis and from a variety of sources. What’s more, according to a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the findings mirror those of other international studies. 

So it’s something we all have to fret about. 

BPA was banned from baby bottles some time ago—and therein lay the most serious concern over the man-made substance. Some studies on animals suggest that low levels of exposure to BPA very early in life can affect brain development and behavior, but scientists are unsure how these findings might be relevant to human health, according to Statistics Canada. 

But baby bottles aside, BPA lurks in a lot of other stuff, too: water bottles and other drink containers, linings in canned food, automobile parts (that passengers touch and handle), electronics, even compact discs. 

You could move out to the country, grow your own food without using pesticides, live in a tent and commune with the crickets. But if you take a call on your cell phone, you’re handling something that was likely made with material containing BPA. How often do your fingers fly over the keys of the computer keyboard, or your palms rest on the laptop surface? 

How much time does your kid spend on video game consoles? They may contain BPA too, and you don’t simply have to actually ingest something to acquire it. The skin is a sponge and a device of transference—just look at the various trans-dermal medication patches out there. 

Professor Miriam Diamond, who operates the Diamond Environmental research Group at the University of Toronto, told the CBC in a statement that BPA comes off your hands. 

“The next question is how much is actually getting into you as a result of handling all these devices?” 

The chemical community, not surprisingly, is urging caution and advising people not to panic. 

“Thanks to advances in analytical chemistry, researchers are able to measure extraordinarily low levels of natural and man-made substances in human fluids and tissues—often as little as one part per billion [a single drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool],” the group said in a statement. 

“Of course, health researchers know that the simple presence of an environmental chemical in a person’s body does not mean that it will cause health effects or disease.” 

And professor Linda Campbell, Canada Research Chair in aquatic ecosystem health and an environmental expert on mercury and metals based at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario stresses BPA levels that are more of a concern are those “at the higher concentrations,” she said in a statement, “but since it is not persistent in humans, we should be able to see an immediate reduction if we can limit this compound.” 

Much like lead, levels of which were found to have dropped in Canadians over previous decades. 

But what is this BPA that is in the food we eat, the water we drink, the cash register receipts we cram into our pockets and all those consumer electronics and other products that contain the stuff? 

Individually, the concentrations are extremely low. But combined, just how much are we getting? Animal studies have found that once ingested, BPA may imitate estrogen and other hormones. 

And every time you turn around, people are getting sick. How many people do you know who have asthma? Do you ever recall this many people having asthma when we were kids? 

How many people do you know whose kids have nut allergies, or just allergies in general? Where does this all come from? 

And while the scientific community says there is nothing to panic about, it remains disconcerting when you see a learned individual show up on network TV and say, in spite of some 4,000 studies on bisphenol A worldwide… 

…We still don’t know its definitive affect on human health.

Tags: BPA

This was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 11:53 am and is filed under Drugs/Medical, Environment . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.