In October 2016, the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) published its risk assessment of BPA in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Environmental Research. The MFDS is a government agency that is responsible for promoting public health by ensuring the safety of foods and other products.
MFDS concludes: “There is no health concern for any age group from current levels of exposure to BPA.”
To reach this clear conclusion, the MFDS researchers followed well-established scientific procedures to assess potential risks from exposure to BPA. In broad terms, this involved measuring the Korean population’s exposure to BPA and comparing these exposure levels to a Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) level, which they derived from extensive animal testing data on BPA.
Based on their analysis, the researchers found that “[e]ven conservatively estimated BPA exposures were less than 2% of the TDI,” which supports their conclusion that “there are no health concerns for the general Korean population.”
The MFDS researchers also evaluated BPA exposure data from North America and Europe for comparison to the Korean data. They found that populations in each region are exposed to similar levels of BPA. With similar exposure, the MFDS safety conclusion can be extrapolated to further conclude that there are no health concerns from exposure to BPA in other regions of the world, either. Other government bodies around the world, notably the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have conducted their own assessments and independently reached similar conclusions. As a straightforward and representative example, FDA, based on its own assessment, answers the question “Is BPA safe?” with a single unambiguous word: “Yes.”
Learn more about what other governments are saying about BPA safety.