Endocrine disruption, diabetes, obesity — to the list of ills potentially associated with exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), you can add one more: childhood asthma.
In a new study presented over the weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Denver, researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine found that if pregnant women are exposed to BPA, their children may end up at a higher risk for developing asthma early in life.
In a study of 367 pairs of mothers and infants, researchers measured levels of BPA in the urine of pregnant women at 16 weeks of gestation and 26 weeks, as well as at the time of birth. Afterward, mothers were asked every six months for three years whether their child was showing symptoms of asthma. The results indicated, among other things, that BPA exposure was almost universal — 99% of children were born to mothers who had detectable levels of BPA at some point during their pregnancy.