Europeans Confirm Safety Of Bisphenol A

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced on Sept. 30 that it has found no new evidence to justify lowering its current tolerable intake of 0.05 mg/kg body weight/day for the plastics raw material bisphenol A (BPA). EFSA established that safety level for BPA in 2006 and reconfirmed it in 2008. But recent reports linking low levels of BPA to breast cancer and to adverse effects on the central nervous and immune systems prompted the European Commission to request a comprehensive review of BPA toxicity studies. That review, carried out by a panel of EFSA scientists, found no evidence that low levels of BPA increase the risk of neurodevelopmental effects in rats. The panel members concurred that recent studies on the toxicity of BPA have many shortcomings, particularly with respect to assessing human health, and agreed that they cannot be used as the basis for lowering the daily threshold. The announcement was welcomed by chemical manufacturers in the U.S., which are awaiting the results of a similar review being conducted by FDA.