Last month, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) weighed in on bisphenol A (BPA), saying exactly what we ve said all along, BPA poses no health risk to consumers because current exposure to the chemical is too low to cause harm. As Steve Hentges points out in his piece on Science 2.0, this assessment, like those of the U.S. FDA and other scientific bodies, relied on studies showing 1) low exposure, primarily from the diet; 2) efficient metabolism as BPA is absorbed in the gut; and 3) rapid elimination from the body. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the conclusion that BPA poses no health risks to humans at current exposure levels, the anti-BPA movement continues to unnecessarily scare consumers with unscientific information giving the incorrect impression that we don t know much about this chemical and that it can in fact have detrimental effects.
Hentges goes on to debunk the latest hypothesis that sublingual absorption (absorption through tissues in the tongue) would bypass the efficient metabolic process that occurs when BPA is absorbed through the gut, and therefore, would account for the levels of BPA seen in human blood. Yet, a study done by researchers at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in collaboration with the U.S. FDA and Ohio State University found that even when subjects were exposed to doses of BPA through food considerably higher than what an individual would be exposed to in daily life, absorption of BPA into the body was rapid and the dose was quantitatively eliminated in urine within 24 hours after ingestion, which confirms that BPA is not stored in the body.
Ultimately, this current study adds more evidence to the argument that measuring BPA in human blood is not actually a reliable method for exposure to BPA, since it s eliminated from the body so quickly, and further supports the conclusions reached by the EFSA and the FDA.