October 28, 2008 09:26 pm
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By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
SENECA, Mo. — Taylor Gaines, 13, loves her baby brother, Jace, 2.
But she feared her family was inadvertently poisoning him.
Taylor, a Seneca eighth-grader, has been fascinated with science since she was 7 years old. Her mother, Shannon Sample, is a science research teacher at Seneca High School. Her uncle works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
“I was surrounded by science,” Taylor said. “People would think I was so educated because I would listen to my mom talk at dinner.”
So when she heard reports that bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical compound that is a building block used in some plastics, could be hazardous to humans, she was concerned. BPA is used in a variety of plastic products, including Jace’s baby bottles and most brands of water bottles. Questions about whether it is harmful to human health have been around for years.
With her middle-school science fair coming up, Taylor decided to forgo the traditional solar system or volcano project, and instead do some BPA research that could directly affect her family.
Taylor was disturbed by what she found, and although the Environmental Protection Agency is standing by its estimated safe level of BPA, several recent national studies show the eighth-grader may be on the right track.
In her experiment, Taylor exposed planarian worms to different concentrations of BPA, including half of the EPA’s recommended safe level, as well as four times, 40 times and 400 times the recommended level.
Taylor said her experiment showed six abnormalities at all of the concentration levels. Those abnormalities include missing body parts, regeneration of too many body parts, tumor-like growths, undeveloped body parts and delayed re-growth of body parts.
She believes her research suggests that even federally recommended levels of BPA could be harmful to humans.
Suzanne Ackerman, EPA press officer, applauded Taylor’s research, and said she was amazed that an eighth-grade student took on such a weighty experiment. But Ackerman said the EPA’s safe level of BPA of 0.05 parts per million is safe for humans, but not for something as small as a worm.
“An oral reference dose is an estimate of how much of a chemical a human being could intake daily over a lifetime without harmful effects,” Ackerman said. “Besides the size comparison, the human metabolism is very, very different.”
But a study just released last month by the National Toxicology Program, an inter-agency federal research program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said that current human exposure to BPA is of “some concern” for its effects on the development of fetuses, infants and children.
The report is based on numerous laboratory-animal studies. National Toxicology Program officials are not sure the changes seen in the laboratory animals can be directly applied to humans, but conclude that the potential dangers cannot be dismissed.
The greatest concern identified in the study was that BPA exposure could affect development of the prostate gland and brain in fetuses, infants and children, or that it could cause behavioral changes in that group.
Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration released its “Draft Assessment of Bisphenol A for Use in Food Contact Applications.” The FDA recommendations in that 105-page document call for more testing to determine the effects BPA may be having on humans compared with laboratory animals.
An FDA advisory panel is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the report. FDA officials did not return a phone call placed to them on Tuesday.
But Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday that Congress is criticizing the FDA for potential conflicts of interest in the preparation of that report. The concern is that one of the FDA’s advisers has financial ties to a major manufacturer of BPA. In the Bloomberg story, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, is quoted as calling for Friday’s meeting to be canceled because of that connection.
Another recent study by the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a national environmental organization, called “Baby’s Toxic Bottle: Bisphenol A Leaching from Popular Baby Bottles,” reports that several popular brands of baby bottles, including Avent, Disney/The First Years, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, Gerber and Playtex, leach bisphenol A when heated, and the amount leached into the liquid is within the range shown to cause harm in animal studies, according to 150 peer-reviewed journal articles on the chemical.
Taylor’s middle-school research project drew so much attention, she was invited as one of the 30 Top Young Scientists in the nation to Washington, D.C., last week to show judges and a host of science-museum tourists her findings. The Top Young Scientist competition is sponsored by Discovery Channel parent company Discovery Communications LLC, and research and development company 3M. In order to qualify for the competition, Taylor had to take top spots in science fairs at her middle school, the regional competition at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin and state competition.
Taylor did not win the Top Young Scientist title, but said she is still thrilled that she made it that far and that her project may have brought the conversation of BPA safety into more homes. She said she hopes to return to the competition next year.
Career interests
As to the future, Taylor Gaines says she wants to pursue a career in biotechnology or microbiology.
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Photos
Globe/T. Rob Brown
Taylor Gaines, an eighth-grader at Seneca Middle School, takes a close look at a substance this week in a science class. Her research project on bisphenol A won her an invitation to a national science competition.