A 'Safe' Chemical in Plastic Bottles Could Reduce Insulin Responsiveness, Increase Diabetes Risk (independent.co.uk) 44
A new study "has found direct evidence linking a key chemical ingredient of plastic bottles to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes," reports the Independent:
The study, published in the journal Diabetes, found that the chemical BPA used to make food and drink packages, including plastic water bottles, can reduce sensitivity to the hormone insulin which regulates the body's sugar metabolism. The findings, to be presented at the 2024 Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, call for the US Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the safe limits for exposure to BPA in bottles and food containers. Previous studies have already shown that the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) used to make plastic and epoxy resins could disrupt hormones in humans. While research has linked BPA to diabetes, no previous study has directly assessed if administration of this chemical to humans increases this risk in adults.
The researchers administered the dosage considered safe by America's FDA to about 20 individuals — and discovered they became less responsive to insulin after 4 days. The article includes this warning from the researchers:
"These results suggest that maybe the U.S. EPA safe dose should be reconsidered and that healthcare providers could suggest these changes to patients."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
The researchers administered the dosage considered safe by America's FDA to about 20 individuals — and discovered they became less responsive to insulin after 4 days. The article includes this warning from the researchers:
"These results suggest that maybe the U.S. EPA safe dose should be reconsidered and that healthcare providers could suggest these changes to patients."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
Since when is BPA "Safe"? (Score:4, Informative)
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Observations (Score:4, Informative)
1. Plastic chemicals like BPA banned from baby bottles and baby food containers.
2. Restaurants cooking things in plastic bags like Panera bread macaroni and cheese - https://www.today.com/food/how... [today.com]
3. Other countries banning more plastic chemicals than the USA.
BPA and similar chemicals in plastic -> reproductive system damage
- Lower sperm counts
- Earlier puberty in girls
- Increased breast cancer
- Increased testicular cancer
From: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/... [nzherald.co.nz]
The problem with chemicals like BPA is that they are great pretenders - similar in their molecular structure to hormones, particularly the female hormone estrogen.
So good is their disguise, they can fool the body into believing it is reacting to a natural hormone. The sort of health problems that can result from such an interaction include reduced sperm count, early puberty in girls and increased incidence of breast and testicular cancer.
"Safe" (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/... [europa.eu]
And this is why I get nearly all my beverages from glas bottles, that are used multiple times due to possible return at store and the use a deposit system.
Fight - at least - oneway plastic bottles!
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> And this is why I get nearly all my beverages from glas bottles
I'd love to as well, although we have no issue with BPA in the UK as it's banned we still have the problem of plastic waste. Unfortunatley over here glass bottles died a death a long time ago. PLastic was lighter and saved the kids from the smashed glass shards (as well as my bike) on the paths etc. Nowadays glass bottles are used for beer and cider. I havnt seen a glass bottled coke for a long time, I think you can still buy them in ca
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I suspected as much but a thin lining is a far cry from a pepsi bottle. Also during recycling that plastic layer is not going to end up in the environment, it will turn into slag on top of the molten metal and will be scrapped off mixed with all the remains of the label and other "non-metal" bits. Very different from having a pepsi bottle floating around in the plastic islands in the sea.
One thing that annoys me much however is the fact that only bottle glass is accepted for recycling. Drinking glass is
Not safe, prohibited (Score:4, Informative)
Prohibited in baby bottles in US/EU/Canada as early as 2011. Prohibition in all food containers in an increasing number of countries (prohibition in all EU was approved this year).
Re: Not safe, prohibited (Score:3)
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Liquid Death Commercial (Score:1)
Are we sure this isn't just another Liquid Death advertisment?
Those guys get creative. :Q
Regulation is backward (Score:3, Informative)
Labs are creating thousands of new chemical combinations each year and adding them to all kinds of consumer products. Those products are perfectly legal and they only get pulled off the market years later after someone figure's out they're dangerous. The law ought to work the other way around. New chemicals should be subject to testing before they can be used.
The precautionary principle (Score:3)
That's what you are endorsing. It's fashionable in 'green' circles - but can be argued to be too fear driven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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According to the wikipedia page you linked to it's not just fashionable within "green" circles. It's a principle that underpins EU law, the regulatory systems of many democratically governed countries, and international treaties. It's also how the FDA regulation of drugs works. There may be an economic cost to regulating products, but there's also an economic cost to injury, disability, and premature death.
Fair comment (Score:2)
I guess I was painting those groups as 'greens' in a rather too simplistic sense.
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As a former software tester I can tell you that testing only tests for the tests you know you can test for.
Once the code, or in this case the chemical, is out in the wild world you find all the test cases you never thought could even exist. You find the PDF files that have such strange and odd issues that cause totally unexpected errors in the code that simply were unpredictable.
Alan Turing himself invented the concept of the Turing Machine, what we today call a "computer" (well our computers are actually
TFA headline does not say "safe" (Score:5, Informative)
The actual headline is "Drinking from plastic bottles can raise type 2 diabetes risk, study warns". And, and others have already pointed out, BPA is being phased out by most manufacturers.
However we don't actually know if the BPA replacements are any better... research may indicate they are not [oup.com].
Re: TFA headline does not say "safe" (Score:3)
They might even be more intense. I notice one of the replacements is bisphenol AF.
Not news for me (Score:1)
Most of the stuff I drink from plastic bottles raises my diabetes risk no matter what container it's in:
Ingredients: Carbonated water, sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, ....
If "you are what you eat/drink" then I am diabetes waiting to happen.
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It's like people claiming they're fat because of genetics while having their grocery cart full of cookies, chips, packaged meals, and several containters of soda, but not a vegetable in sight.
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Jail Time When? (Score:3, Insightful)
When will we put behind bars all those industrials that used BPA in anything vis à vis human food?
"But but but, the poor traitors couldn't know BPA would have bad health effects"
Uh?
Do you even know what BPA is?
It acts as a synthetic Hormon. A Freaking synthetic hormon.
HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THAT BEFORE MAKING IT INTO FOOD PRODUCTS CONTAINERS?
This isn't incompetence.
It is Malevolence.
wiki excerpt:
"The British biochemist Edward Charles Dodds tested BPA as an artificial estrogen in the early 1930s.[29][30][31] Subsequent work found that it bound to estrogen receptors tens of thousands of times more weakly than estradiol, the major natural female sex hormone.[32][16] Dodds eventually developed a structurally similar compound, diethylstilbestrol (DES), which was used as a synthetic estrogen drug in women and animals until it was banned due to its risk of causing cancer; the ban on use of DES in humans came in 1971 and in animals, in 1979"
Maybe some lunatic congressmen can fix it? (Score:1)
Right after they deal with the Jewish space lasers and vaccine conspiracies.
America is fucked.
SCOTUS Will Say It's Safe (Score:3)
2nd Amendment (Score:2)
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Beer Can lining, too? (Score:1)
BPA as epoxide coatings used to be ubiquitous with soft drink and beer cans (also tomatoes, and anything acidic really).
Is the current class of BPS coatings all that different? My sense is no.
Yes, the world *is* trying to kill you (Score:5, Insightful)
The question posed to you is not if but how.
Do you take a it slow with potentially toxic food containers, or do you take it faster with spoiled food or metal leached in to your food?
Or do you roll the dice on glass and take your chances with an occasional swallowed glass shard and overall higher transportation and food handling costs?
Wont someone think of the children? (Score:3)
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C'mon. I've been born in the era before plastic bottles, and currently continue to (re)use glass containers for food and drink as much as possible. Which is quite a lot, even if not exclusively (yet). I've broken plenty of them (clumsy or shaky from old age, who knows?). I have yet to swallow a single glass shard, however.
Yes people of the world are trying to kill you (Score:2)
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As a bicyclists, I am sick of smashed glass bottles all over the sides of roads, in bicycle lanes, and on sidewalks.
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Re: Yes people of the world are trying to kill you (Score:2)
Here it's like 5 or 10 cents off a product that costs 2 dollars or more. Stores are required to have bottle return machines, but it's honestly not worth most people's time. Maybe back in the day it was, but it isnâ(TM)t now.
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Huh... (Score:2)
Do they still really make bottles with BPA in?
Tax the harm (Score:1, Flamebait)
Tax petro-chemical products to the wazoo if we want to reduce petro-chemical (oil, plastic, etc) consumption and waste.
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The cost of all those taxes will get passed on to the consumer, so don't complain when food prices rise faster than they already are.
Can we realistically live without BPA? (Score:2)
It's everywhere. I think it's even coats the inside of cans. Want to save your food in a Rubbermaid or Tuperware container? Drink bottled water? Have a can of soup? What about frozen foods?