The Discover of Bisphenol A's Deleterious Effects on Embryos

In fact, an early clue to the potential risks posed by plastic was discovered entirely by accident. In August of 1998, Washington State University geneticist Patricia Hunt found herself baffled by an unexpected development in her lab. Hunt was using experiments on lab mice to explore why the eggs of older women are more likely to produce children with chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. The research was coming along well when suddenly the eggs of her control animals—the normal, healthy, young ones—“went goofy,” she told me, spiking from 1 percent abnormal to 40 percent abnormal. Mystified, Hunt checked every variable she could think of: the food fed to the mice, the air circulating in her lab, the medium used to culture the mouse eggs.

The answer, when she found it, was startling. A temporary lab worker had mistakenly washed the mice’s plastic cages and water bottles with a harsh detergent, damaging the plastic and releasing small amounts of bisphenol A. At first, Hunt found it hard to believe that BPA could be the cause of the mice’s abnormal eggs. She checked and checked again, exposing a new set of animals to the damaged cages and bottles, even feeding bisphenol A directly to yet another group of mice. All the results pointed to BPA as the culprit. Still, she says, “I sat on the data for several years, because I wanted to make sure that I got everything right. I realized that what I would be saying was that low doses of this chemical could be dangerous. And that’s pretty serious stuff.”

Notes:

The story of how Patricia Hunt accidentally made this discovery.

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 Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Paul , Annie Murphy (2010-09-28), Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, Free Press, Retrieved on 2011-02-08
Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal obstetrics