When mice at Patricia Hunt’s lab at Washington State University began losing fetuses with devastating birth defects — facial deformities and missing hindquarters — or failed to reproduce at all, Hunt immediately put on her detective hat.
She had seen a similar mystery before.
Years earlier at her former lab in Ohio, chromosomes in mouse eggs and embryos began dividing in bizarre ways, creating the kinds of genetic errors that can lead to Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders.
Hunt and her team eventually traced the genetic changes to a new cleaning method eroding the polycarbonate cages that housed the animals. As the plastic decomposed, it exposed the mice to a chemical now known to mimic estrogen and disrupt the body’s hormones: bisphenol A, or BPA.
Inadvertently, Hunt had become the first scientist to uncover how BPA might lead to chromosomal and reproductive issues in people, including infertility, fetal abnormalities, low birth weight, and brain and behavior disorders in infants and children.
