WHEN does a female mouse behave like a male? When you give it small doses of bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics the hormone oestrogen. The “gender bender”, which masculinises the brains of female mice, is the base chemical for making polycarbonate plastics, often used in bottles and food containers.
When Ana Soto and colleagues at Tufts University in Boston constantly infused bisphenol A into the tissue of pregnant and breastfeeding mice, the female pups displayed the masculinised effects. The doses were equivalent to concentrations found by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in samples of human urine.…
