In a report published Thursday September 14, the European Environment Agency (EEA) warns of the widespread risk of exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) above health safety levels. “As part of a recent human biomonitoring initiative, BPA was detected in 92% of adult participants from eleven European countries”, writes the agency in the document about one of the main endocrine disruptors.
Based on an April study by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which drastically lowered the maximum daily dose of bisphenol A considered safe for the consumer, the EEA, based in Copenhagen, considers that “in the eleven countries that participated in the BPA biomonitoring initiative, the level of exceedance varied between 71% and 100%”.
“We are able to see that bisphenol A poses a much more widespread risk to our health than previously thought”adds the report.
Bisphenol A, long omnipresent in many products, such as plastic bottles, is suspected of being linked to multiple disorders and diseases – breast cancer, infertility, etc. − due to the hormonal disturbances it causes. In some countries, such as France, BPA is now banned in food containers. The European Union (EU) and the United States have restricted its use and are considering a more drastic limitation, without this being implemented for the moment.
The debates concern in particular the dose at which bisphenol A is truly dangerous. However, for the EFSA, this is much lower than what we thought: it divided it by 20,000 compared to a previous evaluation, an opinion contested by another agency, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Thresholds exceeded in 100% of cases in France
For the European environmental policeman, however, there is no doubt that exposure to BPA “is well above acceptable health safety levels (…), which represents a potential risk to the health of millions of people”.
The product and two of its substitutes (bisphenol S and F) were measured between 2014 and 2020 in the urine of 2,756 adults across eleven countries − Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Poland , Portugal and Switzerland.
It is in Switzerland that the levels exceed the thresholds the least, with 7%, while they exceed them in 100% of cases in France, Luxembourg and Portugal, reports the AEE, noting that the reported exceedances are minimum figures.
“It is likely that in reality the eleven countries have rates of 100% exceedance of exposure levels above safety thresholds”warned the agency.