{"id":2522,"date":"2013-01-17T18:04:27","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T23:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2026-03-14T13:48:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T18:48:46","slug":"regrettable-if-predictable-bisphenol-s-mimics-estrogen-just-like-its-better-studied-cousin-bisphenol-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2013\/01\/17\/regrettable-if-predictable-bisphenol-s-mimics-estrogen-just-like-its-better-studied-cousin-bisphenol-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Regrettable, if predictable: Bisphenol S mimics estrogen just like its better-studied cousin, bisphenol A"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em>, is a Senior Scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n

A rule of thumb in chemistry is that chemicals that look alike will more often than not act alike.\u00a0 (If it looks like a duck \u2026 .)\u00a0 Indeed, when chemical companies are faced with testing requirements for one of their chemicals, they routinely argue that they should be allowed to submit test data on a structurally related chemical instead.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So when it was revealed that companies making products (such as thermal receipt paper) that contain the estrogen-mimicking compound bisphenol A (BPA) were switching to another chemical called bisphenol S<\/em> (BPS), many scientists\u2019 eyebrows quickly arched.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Take a look at these two chemical structures:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a chemist to see they\u2019re close cousins.\u00a0 The one on the left is BPA, and the one on the right is BPS.\u00a0 If there\u2019s reason to worry about exposure to one, odds are there\u2019s also reason to worry about exposure to the other.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now a new peer-reviewed paper in Environmental Health Perspectives<\/em> (<\/span>Vi\u0148as and Watson, 2013<\/span><\/a>) confirms suspicions that BPS, too, is an estrogen-mimicking chemical.\u00a0 (Two earlier papers published by Japanese researchers in <\/span>2002<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>2005<\/span><\/a> found similar results.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The new paper reports that BPS, like BPA, acts at low doses and, at least in studies conducted on cultured cells, alters cell proliferation and accelerates cell death at doses similar to those to which the human population is exposed.\u00a0 (If anything, exposure to BPS may be even more widespread than exposure to BPA:\u00a0 testing of urine samples collected from residents of Albany, NY found <\/span>BPS in 97% of the samples<\/span><\/a>, compared to a <\/span>93% occurrence for BPA in CDC biomonitoring<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A very informative news article on the new findings is available <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Add this example to the long list of so-called \u201cregrettable substitutions\u201d \u2013 or the more vernacular \u201cwhack-a-mole\u201d \u2013 whereby companies under scrutiny for their use of one toxic chemical rush to use a less well-studied or less-regulated but closely related chemical.\u00a0 Often, as in the case of the BPA to BPS switcheroo for <\/span>\u201cBPA-free\u201d thermal paper made by Appleton Paper<\/span><\/a>, this is accompanied by prominent marketing claims that the product is now free of the offending substance.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the solution to avoiding these \u201cregrettable substitutions\u201d?\u00a0 I delved into that question in an <\/span>earlier blog post<\/span><\/a> that discussed two other egregious such cases.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. A rule of thumb in chemistry is that chemicals that look alike will more often than not act alike.\u00a0 (If it looks like a duck \u2026 .)\u00a0 Indeed, when chemical companies are faced with testing requirements for one of their chemicals, they routinely argue that they should be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56100,5009],"tags":[39187,5019,39171],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-science","category-health-science","tag-bisphenol-a","tag-consumer-products","tag-exposure-vs-hazard"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13640,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/13640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}