BPA "health effects": Reductio ad absurdum?

While the previous post describes excellent work that pretty much sets the record straight on human exposure to BPA—at actual real-world levels—we note that the University of Illinois is touting an unpublished fear-mongering study, by the very aptly named Dr. Jodi Flaws.

Under the rather sensational headline "Plastics chemical retards growth, function of adult reproductive cells," the press release from the university goes onto say that "Their study is the first to show that chronic exposure to low doses of BPA can impair the growth and function of adult reproductive cells."

You have to get deeper into the article to find that Flaws really WAS testing the effect of BPA on cells. She used cell cultures, not whole animals!

Cell cultures cannot metabolize and eliminate BPA, and the BPA concentration used—10 micrograms per milliliter—is hardly a "low dose." In fact, such levels are orders of magnitude higher than normal human exposure.

The press release begins with the bogus contention that "Bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in plastics and known to cause reproductive problems in the offspring of pregnant mice exposed to it." We would remind the good Dr. Flaws that numerous studies on lab animals (not just their cells) have failed to show evidence of fertility issues even at doses one million times higher than typical human exposures.

Of course, I don't know exactly what she means by "reproductive problems," and she doesn't define what she means, either.

Let's see, normal human exposure to BPA causes no problems. Let's try mice at extremely high levels, and get dubious results. I've got it! Let's try mouse cells—separate from the animal—at even higher levels.

For those of you who forgot their Latin, reductio ad absurdum is the disproof of a proposition by showing that it leads to absurd or untenable conclusions. In this case the reductio ad absurdum refers to the lab work, itself.

Thank you Dr. Flaws, and maybe you'll get some hard questions when you present this work at your poster session on July 19th in Pittsburgh.