A chemical widely used in food packaging may be a contributing
factor to women developing breast cancer, scientists have
suggested. The study links the compound to the development of
hormone sensitive tissue in mice and has prompted environmental
campaigners to call for far tighter regulation of such
chemicals. Experiments at Tufts University School of Medicine in
Boston, Massachusetts, have potentially worrying implications
for human health since they suggest mammary glands of female
mice grow in a way that makes them more likely to develop breast
cancer and also to respond unusually to oestrogen, which fuels
most breast cancer in humans. The compound involved is called
bisphenol-A or BPA. It is used in plastic food containers, cans
and dental sealants and other research suggests it leaches from
products and is absorbed in low concentrations by the human
body, The scientists behind the latest findings say in the
journal Endocrinology that they are involved in further work to
test the hypothesis that exposure