Bisphenol A with your groceries?

Now that the US and other countries are getting serious about reducing the BPA in everyday items like plastic bottles, we hear that BPA is is some places we'd never suspect. let's think of where we wouldn't expect to find this chemical used to make plastic harder.. er.. let me see.. paper!

Good guess, Ian! Paper does indeed have BPA in it in a most unlikely place; in our supermarket receipts!

A new report by the Environmental Working Group shows that paper receipts from grocery stores as well as restaurants, gas stations and automated teller machines contain the chemical bisphenol-A. The EWG said it found varying amounts of BPA in 40 percent of the receipts it tested.

Concern over the chemical has primarily centered on food and beverage containers. But scientists from the University of Missouri Division of Biological Sciences “found that the total mass of BPA on a receipt is 250 to 1,000 times greater than the amount typically found in a can of food or a can of baby formula,” the report said.

The report said that scientists had not determined how much of a receipt’s BPA coating can transfer to people’s skin and from there into the body by ingesting BPA through food or by touching their mouths.

The EWG said retail workers carry an average of 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than other adults, but that it is “unclear how much BPA-coated receipts contribute to people’s total exposure.”

The highest level of BPA was found in receipts at Safeway supermarkets. The highest concentration, 41 milligrams, was found in a store in Washington, D.C. A Safeway spokesman told the Washington Post the store was researching the issue and consulting with its paper receipt suppliers.

Scientists found 10.8 milligrams of BPA on a receipt in a Whole Foods Market store in Superior, Colo., according to the report. The EWG said it was one of 16 receipts (out of 36 tested) containing a "substantial" amount of BPA. Whole Foods had not responded to a request for comment by press time.

Receipts from a Sunflower Farmers Market in Boulder contained 0.145 milligrams, not considered a substantial amount in the report. The report said substantial amounts ranged from 41 milligrams to 2.98 milligrams.

"This is the first that we have heard of this,” said Chris Sherrell, president & chief operating officer of Sunflower Farmers Market. “Sunflower Farmers Market is and always will be committed to providing our customers and their families with the very best. We are concerned about this matter and are investigating the situation.”

Daniel Fabricant, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Natural Products Association, said from a scientific perspective, “there are still some questions. One study doesn’t make any conclusive decisions. We want to make sure the science is really done in total.”

But because of the concern over BPA now, he expects the market to respond. “I think you’ll probably see some folks coming out with BPA-free receipt paper.”

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.