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may 27 
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Is Your Plastic Safe?Bisphenol A (BPA) is a hormone-disrupting chemical that in animal studies has been associated with reproductive abnormalities such as lower sperm counts, hormonal changes, enlarged prostate glands, abnormalities in the number of chromosomes in eggs, and pre-cancerous changes in the breast and prostate. So why is it in a lot of everyday products like baby bottles, reusable water bottles and canned soda?
The lack of BPA safeguards is representative of the broken chemical regulation policy in the United States. Without a system for testing classes of chemicals, such as hormone disrupters, toxics are put on the market as consumer goods before they are fully tested for reproductive effects. BPA has been approved for use in food containers since the 1950s -- despite the dangers revealed in animal studies and the fact that a similar estrogen chemical was removed from the market because it caused cancer and infertility. The federal government has consistently failed to implement any protective regulatory framework for hormone-disrupting chemicals, despite recommendations from the scientific community since the early 1990s. Tests have shown that more than 93 percent of the general population has some BPA in their bodies. Although we don't yet know whether BPA causes exactly the same health problems in humans, the serious health effects and the weight of the scientific evidence mean that we should be thoroughly testing and regulating BPA. Recently, a U.S. government panel expressed concern for the potential health threats of BPA, and the FDA is once again evaluating its position. (The previous evaluation only considered two industry-funded studies.) But parents aren't waiting for the FDA to follow Canada's lead and ban BPA from baby bottles. They're tossing out polycarbonate baby bottles and switching to safer alternatives. But avoiding BPA isn't that easy. BPA isn't just in polycarbonate plastic, it's also used in the lining of soda and food cans.
U. S. health agencies should immediately begin comprehensive testing of the health impacts of BPA and other non-pesticide chemicals, and develop a regulatory framework for keeping dangerous materials out of consumer products.
1. 05/30/2008 08:08:53 AM Thanks for the information on plastics. Its quiet helpful. But what bottles can we use for babies, those preventative lables are not placed on the bottles for us to aviod? How do we choose the correct ones? Can you give a list that we can choose from? 2. 08/15/2008 09:08:08 AM  Polycarbonate plastic, marked with a number 7, is the only kind of plastic that contains BPA. Look for bottles made of other types of plastic like polypropylene, which is marked with a number 5, or styrene acrylonitrile. The Z Recommends blog has compiled a very helpful list of infant feeding products and whether or not they contain BPA. Thanks for commenting! 3. 07/18/2008 05:37:32 PM People, you are asking the wrong question here. Instead of relying on bottles to feed our babies, mothers should seriously consider the option of breastfeeding and do all they can to gather as much accurate information and support about it as they can. The whole hoopla about toxic plastics is just one more reason that the majority of mothers should consider breastfeeding their babies and not use bottles. In general, breastfeeding is overall safer than bottle-feeding for babies, because mothers are not exposing their babies to as much plastic when they nurse. Furthermore, breastfeeding is far more ecological than bottle-feeding because of many hidden costs in the latter: the petrochemicals used in plastic bottle and nipple manufacturing; fossil fuels used to transport the bottles and nipples to warehouses and later to retain stores; electricity used to milk the cows and gasoline used to transport from dairy to formula factory; fossil fuels used in the machinery to dehydrate cow's milk and add the nutrients and chemicals to it to make it "more like" human milk; fossil fuels used to manufacture the cans formula comes in; fossil fuels used to bring the formula cans by truck to the warehouses and stores where it (and bottles and nipples are sold), and fossil fuels used by the parents to go to the store to purchase the formula, bottles, and nipples for their babies. There are very few women who are truly incapable of breastfeeding; most of the obstacles to successful breastfeeding are either management problems; e.g., developing sore nipples; or cultural perceptions some women have about breastfeeding as problematic, difficult to learn, and a "hassle" to maintain. In many more enlightened societies, mothers are given paid maternity leave for up to a year, and rates and duration of breastfeeding are far higher in countries like Sweden or the Netherlands than they are here in the United States. For the few women (less than 2%) who have a genuine anatomical or physiological reason for being unable to lactate and the even fewer babies for whom breastfeeding is contraindicated (e.g., babies born with galactosemia, a RARE genetic metabolic defect in digesting galactose, a milk sugar), formula could be available by prescription only, as it is in Papua New Guinea today. So the question should not be which plastics are safer to expose our babies to; probably none of them are completely risk-free. The question should center around how to reduce exposure and how to make a smaller footprint on our environment by bypassing bottle-feeding as much as possible. 4. 07/20/2008 09:19:58 AM i think specific examples of such things should be shown for us to know and avoid.i want to know if soda in brewery bottles should also be avoided.All the same thumbs up,it's a good education you are giving to the world as a global village.waiting for the answer to my question. 5. 07/20/2008 10:48:00 AM It's so frustrating to know how contaminated food is. I try so hard to make sure I keep myself and my family away from toxins and then I find out that not only is plastic harmful but that the bhp is also inside food cans. I just don't understand why this is even there in the first place. Does anybody know? 6. 08/14/2008 07:57:54 PM The Link in "The Z Recommends blog has compiled a very helpful list of infant feeding products and whether or not they contain BPA." ( list of infant feeding products - is the link. It does not work. 7. 08/15/2008 09:11:27 AM Thanks, Thomas! The link is http://zrecs.blogspot.com/2008/02/z-report-on-bpa-in-infant-care-products.html and Z Recommends even has a text message service. If you text "zrecs" plus a company name and/or a product category to 69866 you'll get a text back providing the BPA status of products by that company and/or in that category. For more info go to http://zrecs.blogspot.com/2008/02/use-z-report-at-store-with-text.html. New Comment | |||||||||||||||||||||
Posts from Switchboard, NRDC's Blog
- Environmental Regulations? What Environmental Regulations? posted by NRDC News
- EPA denies NRDC petition to cancel bee-toxic pesticide carbaryl posted by Jennifer Sass
- FDA continues to ignore BPA science, has another shot Friday posted by Sarah Janssen
- Breast Cancer Awareness: From Pink Ribbons to a Right to Know Law posted by Frances Beinecke
- NRDC to FDA: Ban BPA from our Food posted by Sarah Janssen
