Primordial Helium Production in a Charged Universe

We use the constraints arising from primordial nucleosynthesis to bound a putative electric charge density $\mathrm{\mid }e\mathrm{\mid }{n}_q$ of the universe. We find $\mathrm{\mid }{n}_q\mathrm{/}{n}_{\gamma }\mathrm{\mid }\lesssim {10}^{-43}$, four orders of magnitude more stringent than previous limits. We also work out the bounds on $n_q$ in models with a photon mass, that allows to have a charge density without large-scale electric fields.