Chinese Worker Study Links BPA and Defective Sperm

RoseTracker| Yet another study on human men has identified BPA as a chemical that appears to adversely affect sperm.

The study of Chinese factory workers, funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and led by De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Divion of Research in Oakland, Ca, , found that those with detectable BPA levels in their urine were two to more than four times as likely to have poor semen quality.

The workers were exposed to BPA at high levels, which explains their problems, according to Steven G. Hentges of the American Chemistry Council. Researchers don’t confirm this position but do agree the subjects worked in higher-level exposure to the chemical.

“What is important for consumers to know is that government agencies worldwide have examined the science on BPA, including a recent European Food Safety Authority review of 800 studies, and have concluded that low doses of BPA are not a risk to human health,” Hentges said in a statement. “This study of Chinese workers with high exposure to BPA is of limited relevance to consumers who, by contrast, are exposed to only very low levels of BPA.” via Washington Post

New Scientist wrote an opinion piece on BPA that seems balanced and fair.

If we’re reading correctly, the current assumptions about BPA are that it’s ‘inert’ in the body, rather than bioactive. Ninety percent of Americans show evidence of BPA in urine tests, but studies on humans aren’t extensive enough to prove that BPA is a danger to humans who absorb ‘normal’ amounts of the chemical.

Critics do not believe that BPA in ‘inert’ in the body.

In August 2010, researchers at Harvard also connected BPA to infertility in men, detecting higher probability for sperm damage with higher levels of BPA in urine. The press release doesn’t say whether the lower-level BPA men with infertility problems met the acceptable levels for BPA.

Researchers are committed to conducting the necessary research on humans to answer these questions.

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