The
headline almost jumps out at you – “BPA
Substitute Could Cause Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes.”  That alarming headline appears in an industry
publication, but the same story was widely reported in
the popular media, which tends to cover science only when they can create scare
stories.

The
article reports the results of a new study
from a group of Chinese researchers on health effects associated with a
substance named fluorene-9-bisphenol (BHPF), which the authors claim is now a
common alternative to bisphenol A (BPA).  According to the researchers, and amplified
by the media, BHPF is now used in a wide variety of plastic consumer products
including baby bottles and water bottles that are labelled as BPA-Free.

But
if you see the media articles, you really need to read beyond the scary headlines.  What you read may be closer to fake news than
real “news that you can use.”  The reason
was touched upon by Popular
Science, which noted that “none of this matters if we’re not coming into contact with BHFP (sic) –
it’s only a potential problem if humans are exposed to it.” 

As
it turns out, the evidence that BHPF is used in consumer products is
surprisingly thin.  But in spite of the
shortcomings of the research, and the media coverage that lacked much
fact-checking, the theme of the study nevertheless reveals two underlying
truths.

First,
as suggested by the study, replacing BPA may be counter-productive if the replacement
is not well-tested and found to be safe for its use.  Second and more importantly, BPA is one of
the best tested substances in commerce.  Based
on the extensive scientific data available for BPA, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) answers the question “Is
BPA safe?” with an unambiguous answer – “Yes.”  If we listen to the science, there’s no need
to replace BPA at all, especially with something of uncertain safety. 

So,
should you be concerned about BHPF?  In a
word, no.  You’ll probably never even
come into contact with it.

A
better question is whether you should be worried about products that contain
BPA or are labelled as BPA-Free?  The
choice is yours, but keep in mind that BPA is well tested and confirmed to be
safe.  The replacements, maybe not so
much.

The Story Behind the Story

As
a result of recent attention to BPA, many consumer products are now labelled as
BPA-Free, implying they are better or safer than a product made with BPA.  Scientifically speaking, that implication
might best be described as a hypothesis that requires scientific data to know
if it is true or not.

The
scientific process is designed to test hypotheses and that’s exactly what many
scientists are now doing with various BPA replacements.  New studies are regularly published in the
scientific literature on chemicals that are said to be substitutes for BPA. 

The
recent study
from these Chinese researchers examined the potential for BHPF to cause
reproductive effects.  The substance was
reported to exhibit anti-estrogenic characteristics and the researchers noted
that “[s]erious developmental and reproductive effects of BHPF … were observed
in this study.”

The
results are certainly novel.  A search of
PubMed,
which is a comprehensive biomedical literature database, revealed no other
health effect studies on BHPF.  And, as
reported by the researchers and the media, the results of this particular study
are also alarming.

But
are the results important for consumers? 
As noted by Popular Science, the results only matter if people are
actually exposed to BHPF.  If not, the
results are only of academic interest.

Are You Actually Exposed to BHPF?

According
to the researchers, BHPF is used to make a variety of plastics and resins that
are used in a wide range of products.  The
San
Francisco Chronicle bluntly stated that the plastics industry
is “manufacturing so-called ‘BPA-free’
water bottles made with an alternative compound called flueorene-9-bisphenol
(BHPF).”

Suspiciously
though, the researcher’s claim of widespread use is not supported by any
reliable references.  Of the four
citations provided in the study, none verify any commercial use of BHPF and one
doesn’t even relate to BHPF at all.

The
researchers also report the presence of BHPF in water held in various plastic
water bottles and baby bottles, which may seem to offer proof that BHPF is used
in these common consumer products.  But
these results are questionable at best as the actual bottles were never tested
for the presence of BHPF.

The
analytical method for BHPF in water is reported to have an extraordinarily low
limit of detection of 0.1 ng/L (0.1 parts per trillion!), but data to validate
the method are suspiciously sparse. 
Making it even more dubious, that limit is 2 to 3 orders of magnitude
lower than the limit of detection for BPA, which has been the subject of well
over a hundred studies by analytical chemists worldwide.  Are these researchers really good, just
lucky, or perhaps mistaken about BHPF?

Claims
that BHPF is commonly found in human blood suffer from the same problems with
the analytical method.  A more plausible
explanation for the reported findings of BHPF in water and blood was reported
in the Popular Science article:  “It’s more likely that the detected
substances were contamination from their lab equipment … or the substances were
misidentified.”

So What Can We Learn From the Study?

The
claims that BHPF is in widespread use and that people are commonly exposed to
BHPF are simply not credible.  In spite
of the alarming headlines about serious health effects from BHPF, there is no
sound, scientific basis for alarm.

Nevertheless,
the new study can be instructive. 
Although BHPF is not a concern, the researchers, as highlighted in Popular
Science, have identified an important underlying issue:

“We think,” wrote Hu to PopSci, “that toxicity of substitutes should be
assessed comprehensively, and regulations for substitution of chemicals should
be developed in the future.” 

More
eloquently, Professor Richard Sharpe, Group Leader of the Male Reproductive
Health Research Team at the University of Edinburgh highlighted
the two underlying truths behind this new study: 

“As far as regulatory bodies such as EFSA and
FDA are concerned there is no convincing evidence for replacing use of
bisphenol A by substitute chemicals, though environmental pressure groups
continue to press for a ban on use of bisphenol A and its replacement.  This study highlights that such replacement
may be jumping ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, by showing that one
of the suggested replacement chemicals may itself have potential to cause
adverse endocrine effects, although it is unclear from the studies if humans
would be exposed sufficiently for this to cause harm. 

“A huge amount is known about bisphenol A in
terms of its activity, human exposure, metabolism etc, and it is this level of
understanding that has enabled regulatory bodies to determine the risks that
our exposure poses to our health.  In
contrast, we have very little understanding about the suggested replacement
chemicals.  Therefore this study, which
appears generally well-designed and executed, reminds us that replacing use of
one chemical by another needs to be an evidence-led process, otherwise we may
do more harm than good.” 

Perhaps
the most important lesson to learn from this recent study and the alarming
media coverage that ensued is to not take scary headlines at face value.  The story behind the story may be far more
important than the story itself.