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BPA sends false signals to female hearts
Science News ^ | December 19th, 2011 | Janet Raloff

Posted on 12/21/2011 11:30:56 AM PST by neverdem

Ingredient of some plastics and food packaging can interfere with cardiac rhythm

Bisphenol A toys with the female heart, a new study finds. And under the right conditions, its authors worry, this near-ubiquitous pollutant might even prove deadly.

BPA is a building block of clear hard plastics, dental sealants and the resins lining food cans. Studies have shown that throughout the industrial world, nearly everyone regularly encounters the compound, albeit at trace concentrations.

That’s small consolation, says Laura Vandenberg of Tufts University in Medford, Mass.: In the new BPA study, “the most effective dose was very close to — if not completely overlapping — what’s been reported in humans,” she says.

Parts-per-trillion concentrations of BPA triggered heart-muscle cells to begin beating to their own internal drummers. These cells should instead hold off beating until they receive signals from a central pacemaker, explains Hong-Sheng Wang of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, whose team conducted the new study. The resulting arrhythmia caused by unsynchronized beating can potentially trigger sudden cardiac death, Wang says.

BPA mimics the hormone estrogen in the body. In 2009, the Cincinnati team showed that both estrogen and BPA could alter contraction rates in heart cells — but only those from female animals. The researchers recently linked this finding to estrogen’s effect on calcium, which plays a pivotal role in heart-cell contractions. Both estrogen and BPA — especially together — fostered a leakiness of calcium within female heart cells, the team reported in the Sept. 27 PLoS ONE.

Those researchers have now linked this gender-specific effect to cell-surface estrogen sensors that come in two flavors: alpha and beta. Triggering the beta sensors when a cell is stressed stimulates inappropriate autonomous cell contractions, Wang’s team reports online in the February 2012 Endocrinology. Alpha sensors inhibit such activity. Differences...

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Testing
KEYWORDS: arrhythmia; bisphenola; bpa; endocrinedisruptor; endocrinedisruptors
Science News usually provides the citations and references. You just have to go far enough down the left sidebar like here:

Rapid Estrogen Receptor-Mediated Mechanisms Determine the Sexually Dimorphic Sensitivity of Ventricular Myocytes to 17β-Estradiol and the Environmental Endocrine Disruptor Bisphenol A

Urinary, Circulating, and Tissue Biomonitoring Studies Indicate Widespread Exposure to Bisphenol A FReebie

Bisphenol A and 17β-Estradiol Promote Arrhythmia in the Female Heart via Alteration of Calcium Handling FReebie

Ventricular arrhythmia is a quick way to die. This is disconcerting, to say the least.

1 posted on 12/21/2011 11:30:58 AM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem

>>Bisphenol A toys with the female heart<<

One thing it and I have in common... ;)


2 posted on 12/21/2011 11:32:08 AM PST by freedumb2003 (Spoiler Alert! The secret to Terra Nova: THEY ARE ALL DEAD!!!)
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To: neverdem

Been watching stories on BPA here and there. It’s def. cause for concern if you’re a man. There are studies linking it to so many diseases and complications that it makes one wonder if going back to drinking from glass makes sense.


3 posted on 12/21/2011 11:37:57 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: neverdem

No wonder vibrators and snap on tools are gaining ground on men, the plastic mess’s with womens hearts.


4 posted on 12/21/2011 11:40:02 AM PST by Venturer
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To: neverdem

It appears Chaz Bono saved herself just in time.


5 posted on 12/21/2011 11:44:49 AM PST by donhunt (Certified and proud "Son of a Bitch".)
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To: neverdem

Wow, so you could use a concentrated amount of this put in food to kill only the females in the house hold....

Don’t let the honor killing ROPers find out about this....


6 posted on 12/21/2011 11:44:59 AM PST by GraceG
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To: rarestia

An article discussing the relative BPA risk of various types of containers...

http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/the-real-bpa-risks/2011/05/20


7 posted on 12/21/2011 11:52:46 AM PST by deks ("...the battle of our time is the battle of liberty against the overreach of the federal government")
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To: freedumb2003
heart-muscle cells to begin beating to their own internal drummers

The plastic turns them Democrat

8 posted on 12/21/2011 12:08:48 PM PST by frithguild (Restricting access to capital - Liberalism: The sharpest tool of big business.)
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To: neverdem
BPA imitates estrogen in the body

That explains a lot.


9 posted on 12/21/2011 12:23:36 PM PST by SargeK
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To: rarestia
that it makes one wonder if going back to drinking from glass makes sense.

Nope.

The last thing our government wants is for citizens to have unfettered access to glass containers.

Plastic bottles make lousy Molotov Cocktails...

10 posted on 12/21/2011 12:31:18 PM PST by null and void (Day 1064 of America's ObamaVacation from reality [Heroes aren't made, Frank, they're cornered...])
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To: neverdem
Yes, it would be a concern if it is true. So far, according to the article, the only tests they have done are on animal cells. There are no deaths reported from this stuff as far as I can tell.

IMO, it is just another scare tactic by the left in order to regulate something in order to destroy jobs and control people.

11 posted on 12/21/2011 12:49:15 PM PST by calex59
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To: SargeK

That’s a polyester bottle he’s drinking from. It’s not Polycarbonate which is the only clear plastic that has BPA in it.

Now there’s a study that fed monkeys 400 times the dose level that is currently considered safe. The result was that the monkeys had blood levels that were lower than the average US adult, so maybe you can’t get BPA from ingestion at all. Maybe it’s naturally there to begin with. After all it is very similar to endocrine chemicals that the body makes.

The source that would concern me is the dental use. I used to make a dental material that was made from BPA. Dentists still use it for bonding.


12 posted on 12/21/2011 12:53:51 PM PST by JeanLM (Obama proves melanin is not enough)
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To: SargeK

That’s a polyester bottle he’s drinking from. It’s not Polycarbonate which is the only clear plastic that has BPA in it.

Now there’s a study that fed monkeys 400 times the dose level that is currently considered safe. The result was that the monkeys had blood levels that were lower than the average US adult, so maybe you can’t get BPA from ingestion at all. Maybe it’s naturally there to begin with. After all it is very similar to endocrine chemicals that the body makes.

The source that would concern me is the dental use. I used to make a dental material that was made from BPA. Dentists still use it for bonding.


13 posted on 12/21/2011 12:53:59 PM PST by JeanLM (Obama proves melanin is not enough)
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To: calex59
Yes, it would be a concern if it is true. So far, according to the article, the only tests they have done are on animal cells.

You couldn't do a double blind placebo controlled trial in women. IMHO, it would be unethical, and now we're not supposed to use chimps! You would have to use thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of portable cardiac monitors and rule out other causes of ventricular arrhythmias like coronary artey disease. Getting autopsies is not easy. There's an estimated 300,000 cases of sudden cardiac death annually.

14 posted on 12/21/2011 1:18:00 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: JeanLM

I bow before your scientific acumen, but...

t’was a joke, you see. I make a leetle joke with you.


15 posted on 12/21/2011 1:29:06 PM PST by SargeK
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To: deks

I was a Men’s Health subscriber for over 10 years, and they’ve been portending the BPA issue for a long time now.

Glad it’s getting serious scrutiny.


16 posted on 12/21/2011 1:47:00 PM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: El Gato; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Robert A. Cook, PE; lepton; LadyDoc; jb6; tiamat; PGalt; Dianna; ...
Spare Parts for Humans: Tissue Engineers Aim for Lab-Grown Limbs, Lungs and More

Seeing Terror Risk, U.S. Asks Journals to Cut Flu Study Facts (Bird Flu)

Self-regulation of the immune system suppresses defense against cancer

Scientists identify an innate function of vitamin E

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

17 posted on 12/21/2011 3:06:59 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: calex59

Yeah, if you check the article linked to in #7, they state that pop/soda cans contain a lining with BPA in it. But, ooooops, they also let slip that you’d have to drink *** 940 *** CANS A DAY to get the gov’t. max limit amount.

Plus, as someone else has noted, “a study that fed monkeys 400 times the dose level that is currently considered safe. The result was that the monkeys had blood levels that were lower than the average US adult”.

But the sky is falling!!! Hurry and ban BPA and screw the economy just a little bit more using scary stories.

“Remember, IQ is distributed on the bell curve. At any point in time, 50 percent of the people walking past you are morons.” — Gallagher


18 posted on 12/21/2011 3:28:15 PM PST by hadit2here ("Most men would rather die than think. Many do." - Bertrand Russell)
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To: neverdem; DvdMom; grey_whiskers; Ladysmith; Roos_Girl; Silentgypsy; conservative cat; ...

Ping


19 posted on 12/21/2011 3:34:13 PM PST by decimon
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To: freedumb2003

Nicely played sir... nicely played.


20 posted on 12/21/2011 8:40:52 PM PST by Walkingfeather
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