Scientists have linked exposure to chemicals found in BPA-free plastics and cans with obesity in kids and teens.
Animal studies have linked obesity and other health problems with exposure to bisphenol A (BPA). That’s a common ingredient of many clear, hard plastics and the resins that line food cans. Concerns over BPA health impacts led manufacturers to start phasing out the chemical in products that make contact with foods and drinks. Now a study in children and teens suggests that even some BPA substitutes may foster weight gain.
Those substitutes — BPS (bisphenol S) and BPF (bisphenol F) — are now used as a lining in some aluminum food cans. They’re also found in the paper used to print cash-register receipts.
Scientists Say: Obesogens
Melanie Jacobson works in New York City at the New York University School of Medicine. Her team’s new study finds that overweight kids tend to have higher levels of BPS and BPF in their bodies than do normal-weight kids. That would suggest that like BPA, these chemicals are obesogens (Oh-BE-suh-genz).
The group described its findings on July 25 in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
Some pollutants act like hormones
Hormones control many of the body’s activities. At least in animals, BPA can mimic estrogens, a type of hormone. In fact, animal studies had shown BPA could cause harm by interfering with the body’s natural hormones. The new data suggest some BPA substitutes also may be hormone mimics.
Explainer: What is a hormone?
“It’s not surprising,” Bruce Blumberg says of the new findings. Previous research had linked BPA to obesity in both kids and adults. A cell biologist, Blumberg studies obesogens at the University of California in Irvine. He notes that a chemical’s structure, or shape, determines how it acts. And the chemical structures of both BPS and BPF, he notes, closely resemble that of BPA.
Exposure to obesogens “make us more likely to get fat than we otherwise would,” says Blumberg. Studies in rodents, he notes, show that BPA makes fat cells larger. That can encourage the body to store more food energy as fat.
