A warning about a possible link with breast and prostate cancers from a hormone-like chemical found in everyday plastic products such as food containers and water bottles has been issued by an international expert group.

Earlier this week a study of animals concluded that exposure within the womb to bisphenol A (BPA), a bulk chemical used in the production of plastics and resins, could cause changes in offspring linked with diseases such as obesity, cancer and diabetes.

Now new evidence has been published linking the chemical to possible health effects as an expert group of 38 researchers from around the world studying BPA issued a “consensus statement” in the journal Reproductive Toxicology based on more than 700 studies.

The statement was on the potential human impact of this ubiquitous chemical, one that has effects similar to those of the female sex hormone oestrogen, drawn up after a meeting sponsored in part by the US Government.

Lead author, Prof Fred vom Saal of the University of Missouri, Columbia, said this work marks the first expert verdict on the impact, enough to warn the public: “BPA has become a chemical of “high concern” only in recent years, even though BPA was shown to stimulate the reproductive system in female rats and thus to be an “environmental oestrogen” in 1936,” long before it was first used in plastics and resins in the early 1950s…

Full Article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/03/sciplastic103.xml