Chemical in Plastics Is Tied to Prostate Cancer

Bisphenol A, found in baby bottles and microwave cookware, permanently altered genes in newborn lab rats, a study finds.

By Marla ConeLA Times Staff Writer

Linking prostate cancer to a widespread industrial compound, scientists have found that exposure to a chemical that leaks from plastic causes genetic changes in animals’ developing prostate glands that are precursors of the most common form of cancer in males.
The chemical, bisphenol A, or BPA, is used in the manufacture of hard, polycarbonate plastic for baby bottles, microwave cookware and other consumer goods, and it has been detected in nearly every human body tested.

Scientists and health experts have theorized for more than a decade that chemicals in the environment and in consumer products mimic estrogens and may be contributing to male and female reproductive diseases, particularly prostate cancer.

The new study of laboratory rats suggests that prostate cancer, which usually strikes men over 50, may develop when BPA and other estrogen-like, man-made chemicals pass through a pregnant woman’s womb and alter the genes of a growing prostate in the fetus. One in every six men develops prostate cancer, a rate that has increased over the last 30 years.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Cincinnati exposed newborn rats to low doses of BPA and found the structure of genes in their prostate cells was permanently altered, a process of reprogramming in early life that promotes cancer in adulthood.

“The present findings provide the first evidence of a direct link between developmental low-dose bisphenol A … and carcinogenesis of the prostate gland,” ...
Exposure to the chemical “may provide a fetal basis for this adult disease” in humans, the report said.

Prins, Ho and other researchers cautioned that the study was conducted on rats, which sometimes reacted differently to chemicals than humans did. Replicating the work in humans is virtually impossible because 50 or more years usually pass from exposure in the womb to the onset of prostate cancer.


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