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The Environmental Protection Agency solicited public comment, July 26, about whether to require new toxicity testing and environmental sampling of bisphenol A, an ingredient in many plastics and food-contact resins.

“A number of concerns have been raised about the potential human health and environmental effects of BPA,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Data from the proposed new tests, he said, “would help EPA better understand and address the potential environmental impacts of BPA.”

Moreover, the agency observes on its BPA Action Plan website, because this high-volume commercial chemical “is a reproductive, developmental, and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic, there are questions about its potential impact, particularly on children’s health and the environment.”

Past standardized toxicity tests used for regulatory decision-making had indicated that levels of BPA in people and the environment fall below levels of potential concern, EPA notes. “However,” it also observes, “results of some recent studies using novel low-dose approaches and examining different endpoints describe subtle effects in laboratory animals at very low concentrations.” Indeed, EPA acknowledges, some low-dose findings “are potentially of concern.”

Although EPA doesn’t mention which studies’ findings it’s referring to, several recent papers have pointed to impacts in animals (or people) that raise concerns about exposures during development.