Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It's a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies -- to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That's a lot of estrogen.

More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it -- though not conclusively -- to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

Now it turns out it's in our food.

Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.

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The Food and Drug Administration, which in the past has relied largely on industry studies -- and has generally been asleep at the wheel -- is studying the issue again. Bills are also pending in Congress to ban BPA from food and beverage containers. ...