Sierra Blogging Post Archives

We told you awhile back about the concern of using hard plastic water bottles (like Nalgene) due to their bisphenol A, or BPA, content.

BPA is a chemical that's been found to adversely affect the nervous system and cause certain cancers.

BPA is also used to make other types of plastics, including the tubing hospitals use to feed premature babies (among other things). And apparently it also lines the cans used to package canned foods. If you frequently eated canned soups, vegetables or juices, you may be getting a large dose of BPA each time you do.


A >surprising report from Consumer Report's just found that almost ALL of the canned foods tested contained BPA -even the organic canned foods tested positive for BPA. Even worse, the canned foods labeled "BPA-free" tested positive for BPA.

So what does this mean (besides the fact that labels sometimes lie)? According to the report, if a child has several servings of canned food daily, he or she would ingest enough BPA to "cause adverse affects in animal studies." A 165-pound adult eating one serving a day could ingest more than 80 times the recommended daily maximum.

So while Nalgene has switched to BPA-free bottles and we've switched to either those or aluminum water bottles - we are still ingesting dangerous levels of BPA in the canned soups, tuna, juices, green beans and vegetables we eat. BPA has been linked to everything from breast and prostate cancer to diabetes, obesity, attention-deficit disorder, fertility problems and cognitive issues.

According to Consumer Reports: Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA.

Japan switched to BPA-free cans in 1997 because of the health risks and subsequent BPA testing in the general population showed BPA levels dropping by 50%. I'd say it's time we follow suit.

What do you think?