Sensationalist BPA Study Should Raise Your Blood Pressure

A new study, “Exposure to Bisphenol A From Drinking Canned Beverage Increases Blood Pressure” was published today in the American Heart Association’s journal, Hypertension.

The study’s authors claim their research shows drinking or eating from cans containing Bisphenol A (BPA) may raise your blood pressure and that “this increase in blood pressure may pose a substantial health risk.” However, this assessment grossly overstates the study’s actual findings and raises unnecessary fears about the safety of BPA, which scientists have continually found does not pose a health risk to humans at normal exposure levels.

We’ve highlighted the study’s limitations in a shareable infographic, available here.

CAS Chief Science Officer, Dr. Joseph Perrone explains the problems with the study:

The data in this study clearly show that participants’ blood pressure readings were virtually identical whether they drank two servings of soy milk from glass, ingesting low levels of BPA, or whether they had a serving of soy milk from a glass container and a serving of soy milk from a can lined using BPA to protect the beverage from spoiling. It’s therefore amazing that the authors conclude that orally ingesting BPA may raise your blood pressure.

It’s simply irresponsible for researchers to take the weak findings of a very small study of 60, mostly female, participants and suggest that widespread use of BPA could increase cardiovascular disease. Most Americans don’t have the time or expertise needed to review this study in-depth and understand its limitations. Instead, they’re going to see a scary headline about how drinking from cans might give them a heart attack and begin to worry about nothing.

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