Goodbye Polycarbonate Bottles!

I mentioned last week that we are no longer ordering polycarbonate bottles for our clients. Like so many products before them, polycarbonate bottles, baby bottles and food containers had found a unique place in our homes, kitchens and sports due to the apparently safe recycling capabilities. Only now do we find that they can leak Bisphenol-A, an estrogen-like substance when washed in ordinary detergent (as you do).

On April 18, Canada announced that it would ban baby bottles containing bisphenol A beginning in mid-June. The action would make Canada the first country in the world to set exposure limits on the chemical. The U.S. National Toxicology Program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, also recently concluded that there is “some concern” (don't you love that legalistic nom de guerre) that fetuses, infants and children may be harmed by the amounts of bisphenol A that leach out of many brands of baby bottles, hard-plastic water bottles and food cans lined with epoxy resin.

I've added a link to an interview with David Feldman, MD, emeritus professor of endocrinology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who identified this risk... are you ready?.. in the early 1990'S.. over a decade ago!

The interesting thing is that he found the Bisphenol-A by accident while looking for steroid hormone receptors in yeast. His lab was using “autoclavable” polycarbonate flasks for his research work, and this is where, after a little deep detective work, Dr Feldman realised the Bisphenol-A had come from. He says: "At that point we realized that we had identified a molecule that was leaching out of the plastic that, because of its estrogenic hormone-like properties, had the potential to be important and perhaps even dangerous to people who were eating or drinking out of containers made of this type of plastic, polycarbonate. Since polycarbonate has so many uses as a clear and strong plastic, it is ubiquitous in packaging food and beverages, and epoxy resin is used in lining metal cans."

He readily admits that there's work to be done to find 'acceptable' levels of BPA for humans, but adds that "..in the 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, 93 percent of about 2,500 people ages 6 and above had detectable levels of bisphenol A in their urine. So almost everyone is exposed. We also know that bisphenol A is similar in chemical structure to diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to the development of vaginal cancer and other toxicities in the daughters of women who took the drug during the ’50s and ’60s to prevent miscarriage. So we know that it is possible for some of these synthetic estrogenlike compounds to have bad effects many years after initial exposure. We also need to remember that the effects of these so-called “environmental estrogens” or “endocrine disrupters” are additive. There are many different ways we can be exposed to these various compounds and they are cumulative."

We are on the job already, chasing up alternatives, but the bleeding obvious for almost all uses is that old family friend, glass. Amazingly, as a society, we smash and trash millions of bottles every year so they can be refilled with alcoholic beverages, rather than washing and re-using them.

Here's a link to the site of a more moral supplier of Polycarbonate wares that will show you what you may have in your own cupboard.