Chemical BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms

National Geographic: "Bisphenol-A, or BPA—a common, human-made chemical that enters most of our bodies everyday—has been linked to heart disease, a new study says.

BPA is commonly used in consumer plastics, particularly polycarbonate plastic items such as many sunglasses, reusable bottles, food packaging, and baby bottles. It also lines the inside of food cans.

In a sampling of U.S. adults, those with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were more than twice as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those with the lowest concentrations of BPA.

The findings almost perfectly dovetail with a 2008 study on the same topic, said study co-author Tamara Galloway, an ecotoxicologist at the U.K.'s University of Exeter.

'If you see it once, that's interesting,' Galloway said.

'If you see it twice in a separate population, it's a strong indication that what you're seeing is not just some chance finding.'

Frederick vom Saal, a BPA researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia, agreed that the two sets of 'data are compelling and demonstrate repeatability'—the point at which scientific findings move from preliminary to validated.

Study co-author Galloway cautioned, however, that no direct cause-and-effect had been found between BPA and heart disease. It remains possible that the two may be only indirectly linked."