As part of a laboratory experiment, Rebecca Holmes examined water bottles that had been acquired from abroad expecting to find bisphenol A (BPA), a human-made component commonly found in polycarbonate plastics used to make consumer products.
As part of a laboratory experiment, Rebecca Holmes examined water bottles that had been acquired from abroad expecting to find bisphenol A (BPA), a human-made component commonly found in polycarbonate plastics used to make consumer products.
What she found, however, was that those water bottles were just fine, yet some control bottles purchased in the United States and supposedly BPA-free actually contained traces of the chemical now thought to negatively impact heart health.
Holmes, a researcher formerly in the laboratory of Hong-Sheng Wang, PhD, professor in the University of Cincinnati Department of Pharmacology and Systems Physiology, was working on her master’s degree in molecular, cellular and biochemical pharmacology in the College of Medicine at the time.
“We believed that it likely was BPA contaminant on the surface of the bottle,” says Holmes, who is now clinical research coordinator at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. “I thought there is something here. I was thinking people are buying those bottles off the shelves, and they are taking them home and probably not washing them. They are using them so they are consuming BPA.”
Read more at University of Cincinnati
Image: Hong-Sheng Wang, PhD. (Credit: University of Cincinnati)
