Too bad I ate my lunch before I read Janet Gray's study.
It was a tasty yogurt/blueberry/granola mix I concocted. Problem is: I put it in a plastic container, where it stayed for at least four hours before I dipped my spoon into it.
All that time, the yogurt was probably absorbing bisphenol A, a chemical used in many plastics.
And then I ate it.
At least, because it was yogurt, I didn't heat the container. That would have been worse, since heating is thought to speed the leaching process.
But still, I can almost picture my body's burden of bisphenol A - or BPA - rising like mercury in an old thermometer.
Gray sympathized, but wasn't going to let me get away with it when a simple solution was available. "And now you're going to go home and buy some glass containers and forevermore do it that way," she prompted with a laugh.
Gray is a psychology professor at Vassar College. She's also a science adviser for the Breast Cancer Fund, a national nonprofit, and she and a team of researchers just completed a study involving the chemical.
BPA is getting a lot of attention now because of concerns about its hormone-disrupting effects.
According to fellow researcher Ruthann Rudel of the nonprofit Silent Spring Institute, which studies environmental effects on women's health, laboratory studies suggest that BPA might play a role in breast cancer, prostate cancer, infertility, early puberty, obesity, diabetes, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Europe has banned it in baby bottles. Canada has declared it a toxic substance. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking another look. And several states have moved to ban or limit it.
Gray, Rudel, and their fellow researchers know that the main way most of us are exposed to the chemical is through our food. BPA is used as a protective liner in cans. It's also in some plastic wrap and other plastics.
When I tried to parse it - maybe my lunch container wasn't as bad as most? - Gray wasn't having it. Her general rule is this: Minimize your use of plastic unless you really know something about it.
So back to the study. They studied five families - 20 people total - in San Francisco who either eat a lot of canned food or eat out a lot at restaurants (which presumably also use a lot of canned food).
Through urine tests, they assessed the family members' levels of BPA. With some variations, they were pretty much normal for the American public. About 90 percent of us have detectable levels in our bodies.
