BPA Controversy

Raloff, Janet. "Blood Levels of BPA Become Source of Controversy." Science News. N.p., 17 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2013.

This article was about how the testing that was done for how much BPA humans actually ingest and encounter may have been inaccurate.  This was discovered at the February 16 symposium when new data was reported.  According to the new data, the old results appeared to be roughly 1,000 times higher than what most people actually encounter.  Toxicologist and symposium organizer, Justin Teeguarden, wonders if the high amount of BPA found on his first test was because of high exposure or contamination.  This is a big issue because studies have linked BPA exposures with cardiovascular changes, altered behavior in children, prediabetic symptoms and reproductive impairments.  To this day no one has identified what amount of exposure to BPA is safe and what isn’t.  So if you ask me, this issue is very, very important. 

Coming into this article I didn’t know what to expect.  I had heard about BPA before and how it’s supposedly bad for you, but never truly understood it.  After reading this article, I am well aware as to how much bigger of a deal BPA is.  You never really think about the things that you can’t see because you can’t see them.  BPA is one of those things.  It’s scary to think about a thing that we can’t see, in the everyday things that we use, that is causing these side effects in humans.  What’s even scarier is that the scientists don’t have a good handle on testing for BPA, so the amount of BPA we are exposed to everyday is unknown at the moment.