Parent bisphenol A accumulation in the human maternal-fetal-placental unit.

By G. Schönfelder, W. Wittfoht, H. Hopp, C. Talsness, M. Paul, I. Chahoud. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2002

838 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor, is employed in the manufacture of a wide range of consumer products. The suggestion that BPA, at amounts to which we are exposed, alters the reproductive organs of developing rodents has caused concern. At present, no information exists concerning the exposure of human pregnant women and their fetuses to BPA. We therefore investigated blood samples from mothers (n = 37) between weeks 32 and 41 of gestation. Afer the births, we also analyzed placental tissue and umbilical cord blood from the same subjects. We developed a novel chemical derivatization-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry method to analyze parent BPA at concentrations < 1 micro g/mL in plasma and tissues. Concentrations of BPA ranged from 0.3 to 18.9 ng/mL (median = 3.1 ng/mL) in maternal plasma, from 0.2 to 9.2 ng/mL (median = 2.3 ng/mL) in fetal plasma, and from 1.0 to 104.9 ng/g (median = 12.7 ng/g) in placental tissue. BPA blood concentrations were higher in male than in female fetuses. Here we demonstrate parent BPA in pregnant women and their fetuses. Exposure levels of parent BPA were found within a range typical of those used in recent animal studies and were shown to be toxic to reproductive organs of male and female offspring. We suggest that the range of BPA concentrations we measured may be related to sex differences in metabolization of parent BPA or variable maternal use of consumer products leaching BPA.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1fe22310467633e70e611b268b723691e39ad14

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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. J. Rochester
2. S. Swan
3. John Meeker
4. A. Calafat
5. S. Sathyanarayana
6. F. V. vom Saal
7. H. Koch
8. B. Rubin

Citations in the corpus

• Human body burdens of chemicals used in plastic manufacture (2009, background): “In the case of BPA, special attention is required to avoid external contamination with the parent compound (Schonfelder et al. 2002; Volkel et al. 2005; Dekant & Voelkel 2008).”
• Global Assessment of Bisphenol A in the Environment (2015, methodology): “Bisphenol A has been measured in fetal cord blood (Ikezuki et al. 2002; Schonfelder et al. 2002; Tan and Mohd 2003; Lee et al. 2008; Unal et al. 2012; Aris 2014), fetal liver (Zhang et al. 2011; Cao et al. 2012; Nahar et al. 2013), and amniotic fluids (Ikezuki et al. 2002; Yamada et al. 2002; Engel…”
• Large effects from small exposures. III. Endocrine mechanisms mediating effects of bisphenol A at levels of human exposure. (2006, background): “However, there are a number of studies that report higher blood levels of BPA associated with elevated levels of testosterone in humans (10, 11, 101).”
• Human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA). (2007, background): “Several investigators have measured BPA levels in placental tissue and amniotic fluid [19,20,21,26] (see Table 1).”
• Urinary, Circulating, and Tissue Biomonitoring Studies Indicate Widespread Exposure to Bisphenol A (2010, neutral): “…studies that measured unconjugated BPA in umbilical cord blood (Table 4), two detected levels higher in fetal blood than in maternal samples (Ikezuki et al. 2002; Kuroda et al. 2003), and two detected levels higher in maternal samples than in fetal blood (Lee et al. 2008; Schönfelder et al. 2002).”
• In vivo effects of bisphenol A in laboratory rodent studies. (2007, background): “23 ng/ml), which is within the range of BPA detected n human fetal umbilical cord blood [23].”
• Urinary Concentrations of Bisphenol A and 4-Nonylphenol in a Human Reference Population (2004, background): “…sexual differentiation in the brain, long-term deleterious effects in the vagina, and accelerated growth and puberty in females (Howdeshell et al. 1999; Kubo et al. 2003; Markey et al. 2001; Nagel et al. 1997; Schonfelder et al. 2002; vom Saal et al. 1998; Welshons et al. 1998; White et al. 1994).”
• The Estrogenic Effect of Bisphenol A Disrupts Pancreatic β-Cell Function In Vivo and Induces Insulin Resistance (2005, background): “This dose of BPA results in levels of parent (unconjugated) BPA in blood of 3–4 nM after 30 min and maintained 24 hr later (Zalko et al. 2003), below the level reported in blood from human fetuses at parturition (Schonfelder et al. 2002).”
• Phthalates and other additives in plastics: human exposure and associated health outcomes (2009, background): “2002), umbilical cord blood (Schonfelder et al. 2002) and breast milk (Sun et al.”
• Bisphenol A and human health: a review of the literature. (2013, background): “In these cases, maternal exposure clearly represents exposures to the developing fetuses 13 [15-17].”