It’s official: Bisephenol A is REALLY BAD
20th April 2008
If you ever needed a(nother) reason to stop using and throw out your hard plastic/polycarbonate sippy cups, baby and drinking bottles, you have it now: Health Canada on Friday OFFICIALLY labeled bisephenol A dangerous.
Hooray! This is huge, huge, huge. Canada is the first country in the world to take this drastic step. I am so proud to be a Canadian today.
I actually did not know that retailers other than Mountain Equipment Co-op had pulled polycarbonate bottles from its shelves, but it turns out there are an impressive list of powerhouse organizations who have banned BPA products, including Sears, Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian Tire (interestingly, CT was advertising some hard plastic water bottles on sale in this week’s flyer. Interesting to see if they are still in stores).
In case you were looking for more to worry about, my sister-in-law (hi Jenni!) shared this scary story about high levels of BPA in canned foods such as infant formula, chicken soup and ravioli. Many cans have a liner made of BPA, and the study found being exposed to it this way is even more dangerous than through bottles.
Seriously, just when you think you’ve conquered one, there is another to contend with. We don’t eat a ton of canned foods, but beans in tomato sauce and soups are consumed at Chez McDougall-Foster weekly.
*sigh* Now what?
Possibly related posts:
yes it’s a good thing that it’s now considered a dangerous substance, however there’s no back-up for it. They’ve noted in several articles that companies who use bisephenol A will have no alternative and if they’re forced to not use it, it will considerably lessen the shelf life of food products. That and the fact that there is a difference in the lab reports come from the execessive quantities they give lab rats and not the minute quantities humans would receive by using every day items containing the substance, including baby formula.
How many adults today were given their milk/formula in polycarbonate bottles instead of glass ones? I used plastic bottles as a baby, so did my nieces, nephews, daughters, friends, neighbours, other relatives without adverse reactions. How many of us eat food from a can on a regular or infrequent basis? Ever eat take out? You can bet most of those ingredients come from a can of something that’s lined with a product that contains bisephenol A.
It’s great to get on the hype bike, but once reality sets in, it might make people scratch their heads and go … oh yeah … soon they’ll be telling us not to drink the water (they already did that in Walkerton) because it’s bad for you, don’t breathe the air because it might kill you, where does it stop? It’s getting ridiculous.
I guess we can all go live on a kibbutz …
Well, no, BPA won’t kill you the instant you consume it. It’s the cumulative effect of a lifetime exposed to carcinogenic substances (found not only in polycarbonates, but our air and cleaning products and various lotions etc. we use on ourselves each day). And remember that babies are the most vulnerable to substances such as BPA and phtalates and others the first few years of their life.
If I can make a pretty painless change to lessen my family’s — especially my baby’s — exposure to a known dangerous substance, why wouldn’t I?
And yes, many people (Lucy included) were given formula from BPA-lined containers and from BPA-containing bottles, and so far, they are fine. But look at our current cancer rates. I bet each one of the readers here knows someone personally who is (or has) battling it. Look how many people are experiencing infertility. I’m not for a second saying BPA is The Cause for these. But if study after study show there is a link between these and BPA, how can we not listen? Especially as parents? Do we not owe that to our children?
Health Canada does not label things dangerous and toxic unnecessarily. The fact that they have done this with BPA after a year of independent testing (not from environmental groups or the plastic industry who each have their own agenda) is nothing short of extraordinary. It is history in the making and will change things — for the good — beyond our comprehension right now.
[...] Bisphenol A, or BPA — the chemical used in various plastic bottles and can linings that Health Canada recently banned, consumers in Arkansas, California, and Ohio have filed lawsuits over, and Playtex and Nalgene have [...]
[...] As I’m sure many of you did, when the hoopla over BPA hit the proverbial fan, I tossed all the hard plastic in my house: Avent bottles, every sippy cup, anything made by Nalgene. Then I huddled in a corner wracked with guilt over heating Lucy’s plastic bottle in the microwave for more than a year, when quite clearly it was a very bad idea. [...]