"They are completely at odds with the findings of every governmental scientific body that has reviewed the same science," he said.
Two government scientific committees in Europe and Japan recently decided there was insufficient evidence to restrict the compound. Europe's food safety agency decided in January that the data were inconclusive, largely because of metabolic differences between mice and humans, and because it is uncertain that the amounts people are exposed to pose a health threat
Next week, a U.S. expert panel convenes to decide whether to declare BPA a human reproductive toxin, which could be a first step toward federal regulation. The review by the panel of the federal Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction, part of the National Institutes of Health, has been controversial. The Times reported in March that the center's preliminary report on BPA was written by a consulting firm with financial ties to the chemical industry that has since been fired.
Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive toxicologist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said the scientists' statement on BPA "is very different than any other approach to any chemical."
"We now have, without a doubt, the most comprehensive set of documents covering every aspect of bisphenol A, and the hope here is that government panels will actually look at this information, digest it and incorporate it into their decision-making," Vom Saal said.
No studies have been conducted looking for effects in people, and one goal of the scientists who signed the statement is to generate human research.
Jerrold Heindel, a scientist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who organized a meeting last fall to begin drafting the statement, said even though there have been no human studies of BPA, there is now so much animal data that the 38 experts believe that human damage is likely. More than 150 studies have found health effects in animals exposed to low doses.
"We know what doses the animals were given, and when we look at humans, we see blood levels within that range or actually higher, which is a cause of concern and should stimulate more human research," he said.
In their statement, the 38 scientists say they are confident that BPA, which mimics the female hormone estrogen, alters cells to switch genes on and off, programming a fetus or child for reproductive disorders later in life, and that the levels that harm lab animals "are well within the range of ... BPA levels observed in human fetal blood."
