Urinary, Circulating, and Tissue Biomonitoring Studies Indicate Widespread Exposure to Bisphenol A

By Laura N. Vandenberg, I. Chahoud, J. Heindel, V. Padmanabhan, F. Paumgartten, G. Schönfelder. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2010

1,286 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the highest-volume chemicals produced worldwide, and human exposure to BPA is thought to be ubiquitous. Thus, there are concerns that the amount of BPA to which humans are exposed may cause adverse health effects. Importantly, results from a large number of biomonitoring studies are at odds with the results from two toxicokinetic studies. Objective We examined several possibilities for why biomonitoring and toxicokinetic studies could come to seemingly conflicting conclusions. Data sources We examined > 80 published human biomonitoring studies that measured BPA concentrations in human tissues, urine, blood, and other fluids, along with two toxicokinetic studies of human BPA metabolism. Data extraction and synthesis The > 80 biomonitoring studies examined included measurements in thousands of individuals from several different countries, and these studies overwhelmingly detected BPA in individual adults, adolescents, and children. Unconjugated BPA was routinely detected in blood (in the nanograms per milliliter range), and conjugated BPA was routinely detected in the vast majority of urine samples (also in the nanograms per milliliter range). In stark contrast, toxicokinetic studies proposed that humans are not internally exposed to BPA. Some regulatory agencies have relied solely on these toxicokinetic models in their risk assessments. Conclusions Available data from biomonitoring studies clearly indicate that the general population is exposed to BPA and is at risk from internal exposure to unconjugated BPA. The two toxicokinetic studies that suggested human BPA exposure is negligible have significant deficiencies, are directly contradicted by hypothesis-driven studies, and are therefore not reliable for risk assessment purposes.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8aa829700d60b01c9bf7e730976b1502a48818f9

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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. A. Proto
2. P. Bianco
3. Luigi Montano
4. M. Ricciardi
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1. M. Jawaid

Citations in the corpus

• A review of dietary and non-dietary exposure to bisphenol-A. (2012, methodology): “Urinary concentrations of total (free plus conjugated) BPA have often been used to evaluate exposure to BPA from all sources (Vandenberg et al., 2010).”
• Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds: An Overview on Their Occurrence in the Aquatic Environment and Human Exposure (2021, background): “However, the detection of BPA through ELISA is specially challenging because this method is less specific than others due to the fact that it can also detect other bisphenols [111,112].”
• Global Assessment of Bisphenol A in the Environment (2015, background): “However, concerns have been raised about these conclusions, including the limits of detection (Vandenberg et al. 2007, 2010; Chahoud et al. 2010; Rubin 2011).”
• Recent advances in epoxy resin, natural fiber-reinforced epoxy composites and their applications (2016, background): “Current estimates indicate that more than 4 million tons of BPA are produced annually and approximately 100 tons get released into the atmosphere each year.(34) The negative impact of BPA on human health includes alterations in both immune and reproductive systems along with the modification in brai”