Chemical In Plastics Found To Cause Damage To Women's Eggs

More bad news about Bisphenol A, the all-but-ubiquitous chemical used in plastic bottles and other products:

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital report today that Bisphenol A may contribute to  female infertility, based on their findings that in the lab, unfertilized immature human eggs exposed to high concentrations of BPA are significantly more likely to mature abnormally.

"What we found is that exposing immature human eggs in vitro to Bisphenol A disrupted the way they undergo maturation," says lead researcher on the study Dr. Catherine Racowsky.

Earlier research suggested that BPA may also be bad for male fertility: A 2010 paper in the journal Nature found that it could damage the DNA in sperm.

But Racowsky says the research is still in very early stages and much more work still needs to be done. Eventually, she says, the findings may help shed light on why 20 percent of couples' infertility is unexplained.

Dr. Catherine Racowsky, Director of  Assisted Reproducitve Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital