On the far right, a zebrafish embryo breaks free from a group of unhatched sibling eggs. Credit: Zebrafish Lab

Companies advertise “BPA-free” as a safer version of plastic products ranging from water bottles to sippy cups to toys. Many manufacturers stopped used Bisphenol A to strengthen plastic after animal studies linked it to early puberty and a rise in breast and prostate cancers.

Yet new UCLA research demonstrates that BPS (Bisphenol S), a common replacement for BPA, speeds up embryonic development and disrupts the reproductive system.

Reported in the Feb. 1 edition of the journal Endocrinology, the animal study is the first to examine the effects of BPA and BPS on key  and genes that control the growth and function of organs involved in reproduction.

“Our study shows that making  with BPA alternatives does not necessarily leave them safer,” explained senior author Nancy Wayne, a reproductive endocrinologist and a professor of physiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Using a zebrafish model, Wayne and her colleagues found that exposure to low levels of BPA and BPS—equivalent to the traces found in polluted river waters—altered the animals’ physiology at the embryonic stage in as quickly as 25 hours.

– University of California, Los Angeles

Source: ‘BPA-free’ plastic accelerates embryonic development, disrupts reproductive system