Report Shows Dangerous Chemical Can Leach From Baby Bottles

Environmentalists want bisphenol A banned from products for infants

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, Feb. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Environmental health organizations in the United States and Canada are calling for a ban on the use of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles, toddler sippy cups, water bottles and other food and beverage containers.

"This is quite concerning. All 19 polycarbonate bottles [investigated in the study] leached BPA when heated. This is clearly showing that BPA is certainly leaching from popular and common consumer products," Judith Robinson, special projects director with the Environmental Health Fund, said at a Thursday teleconference. "We're calling for an immediate moratorium on the use of BPA in all baby bottles, as well as all food and beverage containers. It's not necessary, and we're calling for an end to it immediately."

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The call for a ban coincides with publication of a new study, Baby's Toxic Bottle: Bisphenol A Leaching from Popular Brands of Baby Bottles, commissioned by the same group of organizations, showing that BPA leaches from popular brands of plastic baby bottles when the bottles are heated.

This study comes just days after another study found that exposing plastic bottles in general to boiling water can release BPA 55 times faster than normal.

There is concern in many quarters that BPA, an environmental estrogen, may pose some risk to development and reproduction, although it's unclear at what level that harm begins to occur.

The fear has been that exposure to BPA can cause birth defects and developmental problems. In addition, exposure to BPA has been blamed for a variety of other problems, including cancer, diabetes, obesity and attention-deficit disorder.

Dr. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences at the State University of New York at Albany School of Public Health, said BPA taken into the body before birth and in the early years of life can alter the ratio of sex hormones and affect development.

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