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As Concerns Grow, BPA-Free Items In Demand
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Published: June 13, 2008
TAMPA - Word starting spreading like wildfire last month on mommy blogs, in play groups and at day cares.
Babies R Us was exchanging used plastic baby bottles and other items containing bisphenol A, a controversial chemical deemed dangerous by some health advocates, for safer products. That followed news this year that Wal-Mart and other retailers will phase out plastic baby products made with BPA.
For Madelyn Oquendo, whose daughter is 36 weeks pregnant, the moves confirmed her worst suspicions about BPA, which is used to make hard, clear polycarbonate plastics found in many bottles and which is linked to cancer, reproductive disorders and diabetes in laboratory animals.
"Now I'm concerned," Oquendo said while shopping for baby items recently at Wal-Mart. "I feel like there's something to this."
The Food and Drug Administration has said that products made with BPA are safe and that exposure is well below the amount that may cause serious health concerns. New scientific research recently put BPA back in an unfavorable light, however, and spurred the FDA to create a task force to re-evaluate previous findings.
Some health advocates warn that BPA, which can be absorbed through food and drink containers, causes testicular and breast cancers, early puberty, hyperactivity and autism. Expectant mothers and infants are of special concern.
The problem, though, is that testing mostly has been limited to lab animals.
Taking Action Against BPA
The National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health, released a draft report in April that concluded there may be some health concerns associated with products containing BPA, which is also present in the lining of canned foods and drinks.
The possibility that BPA may alter human development could not be dismissed, researchers said.
That same month, Canada became the first country to ban the sale of baby bottles and other products with BPA. The U.S. Senate, California and New Jersey are considering similar bans.
Florida hasn't acted yet, said Liz Compton, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. "We're taking our cues from the FDA," she said. "There's only so much you can look at."
Babies R Us, a division of Toys R Us, went one step further last month with its offer to exchange used items with BPA for a credit toward the purchase of BPA-free products.
On a recent day, Westchase mom Christine Rogers noticed the tiny red signs on the shelves touting BPA-free bottles at the baby warehouse on Hillsborough Avenue.
"I'll definitely look into it," said the 35-year-old chiropractor, who was shopping for a friend's baby shower with 2-year-old son Ethan. On the gift registry: a BPA-free Dr. Brown's bottle.
For Ethan, Rogers used Playtex bottles with disposable drop-ins considered safer than others because of the individual lining. But some bottle parts contain BPA, and Playtex is now giving away BPA-free bottles to parents. The company has said it will stop using BPA in all of its products by year's end.
Best Option Is Not Always Possible
Rogers and other mothers have been turning to blogs and Web sites to try to decipher the latest findings and protect their children and themselves.
"Nursing is best," said Susan Dunn, a 40-year-old mother who participates in a playgroup with Rogers and about eight other mothers.
For some women, however, nursing isn't not possible. And for many parents, bottles are a necessity. Glass ones are seeing a resurgence in popularity, retailers say, but aren't always the most practical.
The popular new plastic BPA-free Born Free brand, made in Florida, has experienced a recent increase in sales. The bottles cost about twice as much as other BPA-free brands, though. Manufacturers of less expensive lines including Avent and Dr. Brown's also have come out with BPA-free products.
Ami Gohil, a 34-year-old day care worker whose young daughters used to attend the same playgroup, said she used original Dr. Brown's bottles and followed instructions to sanitize them in the dishwasher.
Heating plastics that include BPA could cause the chemical to leach into contents, advocates warn. Now Gohil worries what that might mean for her girls, ages 2 and 5.
"I'm not freaking out," she said. "What can you do now after the fact?"
Dunn recently surveyed the contents of her refrigerator and warily informed her husband, "About 80 percent of our refrigerator is plastic!"
"What can you do?" she said. "You take every precaution you can."
That's exactly what pediatrician Gilbert Pitisci of St. Joseph's Children's Hospital advises parents to do.
"I tend to be very pragmatic," he said. "If it's easy to avoid, I'd avoid it."
Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( gbittner ) on July 15, 2008 at 2:48 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Consumers should be asking for a bottle free of chemicals that have estrogenic activity (an EA-free bottle), rather than a BPA-free bottle. Our data show that this statement applies to all types of plastics in all the recycle categories, bar none.
Plastics containing BPA and phthalates have been in news recently because they leach chemicals with EA into the water we drink. While estrogens (the female sex hormones) occur naturally in the body, many scientific studies have shown that significant health problems can occur when chemicals are ingested that mimic or block the actions of these female sex hormones; the fetus, newborn, or young child is especially vulnerable. These health-related problems include early puberty in females, reduced sperm counts in males, altered functions of reproductive organs, obesity, altered behaviors, and increased rates of some breast, ovarian, testicular, and prostate cancers.
However, BPA and phthalates are just two of several thousand chemicals that exhibit EA. These chemicals having EA leach from almost all plastics sold today, including polyethylene, polypropylene, PET, etc. That is, plastics advertised as BPA-free or phthalate-free are not EA-free; almost all these plastics still leach chemicals having EA – and often have more total EA than plastics that release BPA or phthalates. In fact, our data show that all the plastics listed in this article release chemicals having EA. NOTE: This includes PET.
Various plastics manufacturers are now attempting to solve this problem by removing chemicals having EA (BPA, phthalates) one at a time. For example, the consumer can now find an abundance of BPA-free products on the market. But are these products really the solution?? This is a marketing-driven solution, not a health-driven solution. The appropriate health-driven solution is to manufacture safer plastics that are EA-free. This is not a pie-in-the-sky solution, as the technology already exists to produce EA-free plastics that also have the same advantageous physical properties as the EA-releasing plastic products that are on the market today. In fact, some of these advanced-technology EA-free plastics are already in the marketplace. If consumers demanded EA-free plastics, many hundreds of different EA-free plastic products could be quickly produced that cost pennies more than existing products that release chemicals with EA.
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