BPA Replacements Harm Reproductive Health in Mice

Scientists discovered that the BPA-free plastic in their mouse cages was harming the animals' fertility. (Credit: unoL/shutterstock) Twenty years ago, Patricia Hunt, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University in Pullman, revealed bisphenol A, a chemical in plastic, caused reproductive problems in mice. Soon “BPA” became a household term and “BPA-free” water bottles and consumer packaging cropped up everywhere. Now Hunt and her same team of scientists are back with a new study that shows the compounds that replaced BPA to make BPA-free products are just as harmful. The discovery indicates bisphenols as a group are hazardous to human health. “Reproductive health is at risk with regard to bisphenols,” said Linda Giudice, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the new research. “This is disturbing but not unexpected,” she added. “The replacements are the same class of compounds and they have the same mechanisms of action.”