The hard truth

When Canada became the first country in the world to ban plastic baby bottles with bisphenol A in April 2008, after concluding that the widely-used chemical is toxic to newborns and infants, then Health Minister Tony Clement went out of his way to convince adults that they “need not be concerned” about their own health. It might be time to reconsider that position. A newly published U.S. study has found that BPA appears to cause erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems in men. Researchers tracked 634 employees from four factories in China that use the chemical in their products over a five year period. The men handling BPA were four times as likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction and seven times as likely to have difficulty with ejaculation than the regular population, they concluded. True, the levels the Chinese workers were exposed to were 50 times what an average American male faces. But with BPA, which coats the inside of everything from food cans to water pipes, so ubiquitous that it is found in the urine of 93 per cent of US residents, that’s going to be cold comfort to many.

The Washington Post