Bisphenol-A, a hormone-disrupting chemical linked to cancer, diabetes, early puberty and neurological problems, might now be lurking in your wallet.

Twenty-one out of the 22 $1 bills tested in California, 17 other states and Washington, D.C., carried small amounts of the chemical, which is commonly used in plastic bottles as well as in food can liners, adhesives, sports safety gear and dental sealants, according to a report being released today by the group Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

The findings from the Washington, D.C., coalition of public health advocates, environmental groups and green businesses stretch BPA's ubiquity even further. BPA has now been detected in paper - heat-activated receipts from cash registers and dollar bills - in three studies this year.

"Companies are using large amounts of BPA on receipt paper and now it's winding up on our hands and on our money," said Erika Shreder author of "On the Money: BPA in Dollar Bills and Receipts." "Congress really needs to pass legislation that reduces exposure to chemicals that can cause cancer and other diseases that are on the rise in this country."

Manufacturers of bisphenol-A insist the chemical is safe and shows up in only trace amounts in people. Nonetheless, BPA has come under increasing regulatory pressure in other industrialized nations. In September, Canada declared BPA a "toxic substance;" and just last month, the European Union voted to ban the compound from baby bottles.

FDA: 'Some concern'

Legislative efforts to curb BPA in California and nationwide have failed due largely to heavy lobbying by business groups such as the American Chemistry Council, according to Shreder. Still, seven states and the city of Chicago prohibit the chemical in baby bottles, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration early this year listed it as a chemical of "some concern" after previously calling BPA safe.

First synthesized in the late 1800s but not utilized in plastic production until the 1950s, BPA is one of the most widely manufactured industrial chemicals in the world. As its use has exploded, however, so have the number of surveys on BPA's health impacts.

Hundreds of studies show that rats and mice exposed to BPA in utero are more likely to grow obese, develop cancer, reach reproductive maturity at an early age and exhibit neurological problems such as hyperactivity and aggression.

Transfer to skin

Most people probably ingest BPA as it leaches out of drink and food containers. But the chemical's ability to transfer from paper to skin is a new arena of investigation. It is unclear whether BPA passes through skin and into the bloodstream in a typical person. However, a Swiss researcher this summer demonstrated that, after regular contact, BPA can no longer be washed off and can lodge in deep layers of the skin.

Many product makers, bowing to consumers' BPA anxiety, have started ditching the chemical and slapping "BPA-free" labels on everything from pacifiers and disposable forks to gym water bottles.

Those warnings aside, the biggest BPA producers maintain that concentrations in people remain extremely low.

"Typical exposure from all sources is about 1,000 times below safe intake levels set by government bodies in Europe and the U.S.," said Steven Hentges, director of the Polycarbonate/BPA group at the American Chemistry Council. "In comparison, the trace levels of BPA claimed to be present in dollar bills are insignificant."

But some of the first human-BPA research suggests the compound might affect the building blocks of human life.

Scientists at UCSF last week revealed that BPA exposure might harm the eggs of women undergoing in-vitro fertilization. Even such preliminary results alarm many public health experts, given that 93 percent of subjects in a large-scale 2004 study had BPA in their urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Safer Chemicals group reported one newer dollar bill had no BPA. The highest quantity - 11 parts per million - came on a dollar bill from Massachusetts. The rest fell somewhere in-between, including the California sample, which bore less than 1 part per million (The $1 bills were collected from the group's advocacy partners around the country). The amounts were far lower than those detected in cash register receipts, where BPA is a key component of thermal paper.