• Posted October 7, 2024

Phenols, Found in Many Products, Could Upset Heart's Rhythms

Chemicals called phenols include food preservatives, plastics ingredients such as BPA and the parabens in shampoos, so they are ubiquitous in everyday life.

Now, research suggests that higher exposure to phenols might trigger changes in the heart's electrical system and rhythms.

“This is the first study to look at the impact of phenol exposure on cardiac electrical activity in humans,” said study lead author Hong-Sheng Wang, a professor of pharmacology, physiology and neurobiology at the University of Cincinnati.

His team relied on data from the Fernald Community Cohort. It involves health information on nearly 10,000 people who lived near the former U.S. Department of Energy uranium processing site at Fernald, outside Cincinnati. Their exposures to uranium and other chemicals was tracked between 1990 and 2008.

Wang's team only included data on those residents of Fernald with uranium exposures that were similar to people in the general population, so any effect of uranium was factored out of their analysis.

Each participants' urine samples (to measure phenol levels) and electrocardiograms (EKGs) were collected on the same day. Urine samples were assessed by experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the EKG heart activity patterns were assessed by trained physicians.

The end result: High exposures to phenols did seem linked to altered cardiac electrical activity.

That was especially true for women: Females with high exposures to three phenols -- BPA, BPF and BPA+F -- was tied to what cardiologists call a longer PR interval. That's a delay in the time it takes for electrical signals to move from the atria at the top of the heart to the ventricles, the researchers explained.

Weight also seemed to play a role, since this relationship "was particularly pronounced in women with higher body mass indexes," Wang said in a university news release.

Men weren't off the hook though. In males, higher exposure to the phenol triclocarban (TCC) was associated with another aberration -- longer QT intervals in the heart. This means the heart’s electrical system waits too long to recharge, a phenomenon that can prompt heart rhythm dysfunction.

The findings were published recently in the journal Environmental Health.

There's no need to panic just yet, since Wang stressed that all of the changes in heart activity "were not dramatic changes that we observed, but moderate changes to cardiac electrical activity."

“However, they were particularly pronounced in certain subpopulations," he noted.

He believes phenols may not be the only chemical culprits affecting the heart in this way.

"There are new chemicals out there, so the next step would be to examine these newer environmental chemicals and to focus on their impact on an individual level in those who are predisposed to heart disease,” Wang said.

More information

Find out more about phenols at the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program.

SOURCE: University of Cincinnati, news release, Oct. 3, 2024