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Why Is There So Little Data on BPA Exposure in Developing Countries?

Studies have measured BPA in people in some developing countries, but limited and inconsistent biomonitoring leaves major gaps in country-level comparisons and trends.
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There is limited and uneven evidence on human BPA exposure in developing countries—not a complete absence of data. Studies have measured BPA in people in some countries, but the available samples are too sparse and varied to establish reliable national exposure levels or compare most countries. A lack of measurements does not mean exposure is low.

What the available data can—and cannot—show

The clearest recent overview is a 2025 systematic review of studies measuring urinary bisphenol A (BPA) or bisphenol S (BPS) in people. It describes representative country-level biomonitoring data as unavailable outside the United States, Canada and Europe, and identifies major gaps in other regions. Its regional findings summarize eligible published studies, not every country, population or kind of BPA measurement.

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In the review’s analyzed dataset, Africa had one viable article and Latin America had five. These are counts under the review’s eligibility criteria, not totals of all publications or monitoring programs in those regions. The authors caution that the small African evidence base limits how well its findings represent the continent. Read the 2025 systematic review.

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A separate 2024 review reported that 10 of 54 African countries had researched BPA. That broader count includes environmental and biological matrices; it does not mean that 10 countries have human biomonitoring data. Environmental measurements in water, soil or food can show where BPA occurs, but they cannot substitute for measuring BPA in people. See the 2024 Africa-focused review abstract.

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Why measurements are difficult to compare

Urine is commonly used to assess BPA exposure, but a concentration from one study is not automatically comparable with a result from another. Studies can differ in who was sampled, when and where samples were collected, what chemical form was measured, and how results were analyzed and reported.

  • Who was sampled: A nationally representative population differs from a convenience sample or a study of a particular group, such as pregnant people or patients.
  • When and where: Collection year matters; publication year alone does not show when exposure was measured.
  • What was measured: Results from urine, blood and other biological materials are not interchangeable. Studies may measure free BPA or total BPA, which includes free and conjugated forms.
  • How results were reported: Detection limits, creatinine adjustment and the use of arithmetic or geometric means or medians affect interpretation.
  • How many samples and how often: A small set of spot samples may not represent a whole country or capture changes over time.

The 2025 review searched PubMed, Ovid and Web of Science for human urinary BPA or BPS studies published from 2000 through June 2023. It focused on non-occupational general-population studies with suitable concentration statistics and excluded the United States, Canada and Europe because representative national data were available there. These criteria help explain the review’s scope, but also mean its results should not be treated as a complete inventory of exposure evidence.

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Existing studies show that data are sparse, not nonexistent

A seven-country Asian study

A 2011 study analyzed 296 urine samples collected across China, India, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia and Vietnam. Researchers measured total urinary BPA using high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. BPA was detected in 94.3% of the pooled samples, and the geometric mean across that sample set was 1.20 ng/mL. Concentrations ranged from below 0.1 to 30.1 ng/mL.

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Those figures describe the study’s samples, not the prevalence or average exposure of each country’s population. The study was not a nationally representative survey. Among the reported country samples, Kuwait had the highest median concentration and Japan the lowest; the authors found no significant difference by gender or rural versus urban residence in this sample. These observations should not be used as a general country ranking. See the 2011 study.

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Do the studies show that exposure is increasing?

The 2025 review found positive nonlinear associations between time and urinary BPA concentration internationally and in Eastern and Pacific Asia. The results were not uniform across regions, and the authors report high heterogeneity and sensitivity to analytic choices, including how concentration statistics were harmonized. The reported international model coefficient—0.02 ng/mL/year², with a 95% confidence interval of 0.01–0.03—is a coefficient for a nonlinear time association, not a simple annual increase in an individual’s exposure or a forecast for every country.

The review specifically cautions that sparse evidence in Africa limits the generalizability of regional estimates. Its findings do not establish that BPA exposure is rising in every developing country.

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Why the gap matters—and what would improve the evidence

Without repeated, well-designed biomonitoring, it is difficult to estimate how exposure varies between countries or changes over time. The available studies do not establish whether exposure is higher or lower in countries with little data, and the sources summarized here do not provide a disease-burden estimate attributable to the gap.

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More useful monitoring would use representative sampling, document collection dates and participant characteristics, and report methods and statistics clearly enough for results to be compared. Repeated measurements would help distinguish short-term variation from longer-term trends. The 2025 review authors write that “LMICs need more support for biomonitoring to understand the growth of bisphenol exposure in their countries and regions.” They also note that fewer than half of the analyzed articles documented BPS exposure. BPS is a separate bisphenol, not another name for BPA; measuring it can help characterize exposure to substitutes without conflating the two chemicals. The review’s findings and recommendations.

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Background: BPA and environmental measurements

BPA is used in materials including polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It can be studied in environmental media and in people, but those approaches answer different questions: environmental occurrence shows where a chemical is found, while human biomonitoring measures concentrations in biological samples. A 2015 global review of environmental occurrence helps document geographic research gaps, but it is not evidence of human exposure levels. The joint FAO/WHO report published in 2011 provides background on analytical methods, food occurrence and migration, exposure routes, toxicology and risk characterization; it is not a current inventory of regional biomonitoring data.

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