BPA May Raise Kids' Asthma Risk, Study Finds

Bad News About BPA

More bad news for the plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

A new study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology shows an association between BPA exposure in kids and an increased risk of asthma.

Specifically, Columbia University researchers found an association between exposure to BPA in early childhood and an increased risk of wheezing and asthma.

But while the researchers found that more than 90 percent of the children examined in the study did have BPA in their bodies, not all of them went on to develop asthma -- "Just as smoking increases the risk of lung cancer but not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, not every child exposed to BPA will develop asthma," study researcher Dr. Kathleen Donohue, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at the university, said in a statement.

The study included 568 women who were part of the Mothers & Newborns study. The researchers examined the women's BPA levels in their urine during their third pregnancy trimester, and then examined the BPA levels in their children after birth at ages 3, 5 and 7, as well as the kids' wheezing and asthma symptoms.

The Boston Globe reported that asthma risk was 40 percent higher in the kids who had the highest BPA levels. However, the Globe also reported that because the study was conducted in inner city children, other factors -- such as obesity or nutrition -- may have also influenced asthma risk.

BPA is already banned from kids' sippy cups and baby bottles by the Food and Drug Administration, and has been linked in observational and animal studies to a host of health issues, including reproductive and developmental problems, as well as obesity, narrowed arteries and -- most recently -- possible effects on brain development.

For more on the potential effects of BPA, watch the HuffPost Live segment below:

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