Here’s some bad news for people who like functional erections, Health.com says that a new study has linked erectile dysfunction to the controversial chemical BPA.
From Health.com:
Researchers compared the rates of sexual dysfunction in two groups of workers in China — 230 men who worked at factories that produce BPA or epoxy resin (which contains the chemical), and some 400 men, including workers in other industries, who were not exposed to abnormally high levels of BPA. Epoxy resin is used in the lining of canned foods and is another potential source of BPA in addition to hard, clear plastic.
The men who worked in the BPA and epoxy-resin factories were exposed to levels about 50 times higher than average.
The greater a worker’s exposure to BPA — which was measured using spot air and urine samples — the more likely he was to have sexual dysfunction. Yet the dysfunction was apparent even in workers who had worked in a BPA factory for one year or less.
Well, that’s troubling.
Study links BPA in plastics to erectile dysfunction [CNN]
(Photo:frankieleon)
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I’ll wait until there’s some real hard evidence.
@gp1138: Well, you won’t GET hard evidence with that problem
Oh man, well I guess I guess my chances of having are fun have now softened.
** YEAH YEAH I KNOW!**
OMG the picture! It is perfect.
@Raekwon: I guess the blue balls are spreading.
@Raekwon: At first I thought it was a photo of the penectomy of a Hummer driver.
@Raekwon: I laughed inappropriately loudly at this. Agreed.
I guess BPA really stands for Buy Penile Appliance
I guess no more sticking your mangina into baby bottles for all you men out there.. =P
@AndroidHumanoid: [www.collegehumor.com]
It’s all LOLs, until…AHHHHH!!!
I’m afraid of BPA, but these guys were in a BPA factory, so they were breathing it and getting it on their skin and lunches and then eating it, so this case is really extreme. We need some really good studies on this though.
@Triterion: this. I don’t know how BPA is made, but I’ve worked with epoxy resin and the gasses that stuff gives off when curing are dangerous and require adequate ventilation. But once it hardens, unless you’re eating the stuff, it’s harmless.
@wickedpixel: Yeah… that’s the problem though, we are eating this stuff
@thompson: But you’re not eating it in such large quantities as these men in the factories were. You’re not breathing it in. If you eat a salad and your vegetables are fresh and not taken from plastic bags, you’re not consuming BPA. These men worked day in and day out with BPA.
@Triterion: Yeah, like some not paid for by the industries involved, and some governmental bodies with balls of their own to not rely on only those industry studies.
“Ornery wives and girlfriends linked to erectile dysfunction.” Sounds a lot more plausible to me.
I predict Congress will be putting the whole healthcare bill on hold to immediate vote to have the EPA ban BPA.
I doubt that this tells us anything about BPA in our everyday lives: This was in a factory that exposes them to levels millions of times higher than we are exposed to BPA… And as any scientist knows, the effects of chemicals vary widely with concentration… taking 2 sleeping pills is fine but taking 2 million will definitely kill you. To my knowledge it hasn’t been shown that 1 ppb of BPA has any physiological effects. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t continue researching the effects of compounds such as these.
@Sbrools: Actually, if you read the article, it says ’50 times higher’. And there were results in people that hadn’t been working there that long. This is something we’ve been ingesting for decades. There’s not been a ton of research done on long term exposure, but there is evidence that there could be something seriously bad about getting it in our systems.
[en.wikipedia.org]
(Yes, wikipeida, but I’m not going to link the original articles, since they’re so neatly gathered there).
Lead and mercury won’t hurt you in small quantities, either, but it’s long since been decided that we’re better off being exposed to as little of it as possible. Of course, it took millions of people suffering life-time consequences from exposure before the government acted. It’s good to learn from history. I don’t have a problem with tackling these products preemptively.
I support ANY research that will get those stupid commercials off my TV.
Watch how fast Congress moves now!
@MedicallyNeedy: My thought exactly. You can kill babies and cause breast cancer, but OH MY GOD DON’T MESS WITH AMERICA’S PENISES!
@MedicallyNeedy: How about when big pharma realizes their #1 cash cow (ED drugs) would be jeopardized by banning EPA. Then Congress would be faced with a serious ethical dilemma: Protect the peckers or the pocketbook!
@mianne: Banning BPA that is…
Rocket Pops cause impotence?! OMG!!
Ya, because it couldn’t possibly be that maybe the factory that uses BPA is also a crappier place to work than the non-BPA using factory, and the stress leads to ED. There are more pigeons in Venice now than when it was built, and the city is sinking now: the expanded pigeon population must be causing the city to sink.
This is the worst kind of science, with no controls and very faulty cause and effect logic. Even Dr. Sokol, the study director agrees:
“”It’s not cause and effect, but when you have the kind of ambient air quality assessment that they made, it comes pretty close to cause and effect.”
Pretty close? This isn’t f#@%ing horseshoes, this is peoples’ lives. You need to get it right before you start publicly conjecturing.
Notice this isn’t a news report based on a recent published peer-reviewed article. This is just this doctor spewing out some preliminary results and trying to gain media attention, and CNN happily obliging.
There may or may not be a problem with BPA, but this kind of fear-mongering media-whoring bad science is not going to help us find out.
@tereckkincaid: I totally agree! Why can’t the media distinguish between correlation and causation?
Also, “50 times higher than average” bothers me. Than average what? Average factory worker? Average resin factory worker? Average ubangi tribesman? I can’t fathom how the person working in the factory could possibly be exposed to only 50x higher concentration of a chemical that is leeched at an amount around 30 parts per billion into food that comes in contact with it.
According to this article ([www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]) the average adult injests less than .1 microg/kg bw/per day from food and water. For an average adult male, who is 86.6kg, that’s 8.66 microg/day. These factory workers are only exposed to ~450microg of BPA each day? Seriously?
The lesson here, folks, is don’t be tempted by those ads promoting the glory of factory jobs in China.
Correlation != Causality, right? Is it possible that they slaved away in a chinese factory, and just didn’t have the energy or the willpower to make things happen when they got home? Something about a really crummy job will take a lot out of a man.
Irony = Putting Viagra in a bottle laced with BPA
And the fear train rolls on.
Water, in excessive quantities, is toxic, people.
There is such a thing as safe exposure.
This isn’t to say I’m a fan of using dangerous chemicals when there’s no need for them. But to scare parents senseless that they are poisoning their children at each feeding is the worse kind of journalism and, ironically, encourages the kind of unnecessary consumption cycle that a consumer-advocacy site should be discouraging.
between the BPA and erectile dysfunction link and america’s medical business in pushing circumcision without medical need it almost seems like they want people to have erection difficulties. maybe that is why the U.S. needs so many more erection producing drugs
@thisistobehelpful: Really? I want to throw out the rest of my box now.
@Coles_Law: Dude, rocket pops are awesome. Also I’m less afraid of penis implications so that could be a factor.
Still want a rocket pop.
@subtlefrog: I seem to remember hearing that BPA does build up in your body over time…