The American Chemistry Council (ACC) offers the following comments in response to queries regarding a study published on-line today in Environmental Health Perspectives and titled "Prenatal Bisphenol A Exposure and Early Childhood Behavior." Quotes from the following analysis of the study may be attributed to Steven G. Hentges, Ph.D. of the ACC's Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group.
"ACC and its member companies have long-supported research to advance scientific understanding about chemicals and promote public health. To achieve these goals, that research should be based on sound scientific principles so as to be meaningful to human health. There are significant limitations in the study design, highlighted by the authors themselves, which limit the utility of the study.
"Inherent in the design of this small-scale study is the inability to establish cause-effect relationships. The study can only evaluate parameters measured in the study for statistical associations, which may be neither real nor meaningful. The limited reliability of the associations reported in this study is characterized by the authors in their concluding paragraph: 'The reported associations and interactions...should be viewed cautiously since these results could be biased from exposure misspecification or residual confounding.'
"Regarding the technique used to measure maternal bisphenol A (BPA) exposure, the authors note it is 'difficult to accurately characterize exposure from a single measurement.' Statistical associations based on inaccurate exposure measurements cannot be meaningful. A further, and very significant, complication not noted by the authors is that BPA is efficiently converted to a biologically inactive metabolite after exposure. What was measured was not BPA, but the metabolite.