

Ask HN: Feedback on a Startup Idea: BPA Testing - tocomment

I always hear how terrible BPA is but I can't seem to find out which products and foods have it and which don't.<p>So the startup woud just be a company that tests popular consumer items (food, products that come into contact with food) for BPA and publishes (sells?) the results.<p>What do you guys think?  Why has no one done this?
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tocomment
Hmm, usually ask HN has been much more helpful. Was my question too vague? Not
internety enough?

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hga
I don't think it's in the normal areas of HN reader's competence, plus only
people like me who look at every item are sure to see it.

What you propose would be pretty expensive to do, wouldn't be all that
reliable as companies change their packaging etc., and how would you get
(enough) people to pay for it.

I'm also pretty unimpressed with what I gather about the furor over it. I
haven't studies _this_ scare, but it smells a whole lot like others that I
have studied since the '70s and that were totally bogus. E.g. saccharin, and
someone I trust told me the cyclamate ban was based on feeding calcium
cyclamates to calcium sensitive rats ... which is particularly bogus when
sodium cyclamate is the type used; see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_cyclamate> where even Wikipedia admits
there's no problem with them.

One of these days the environmentalists will probably find something truly
dangerous ... but after crying wolf so many times, well, it will be too bad.

(For the record, while an appeal to authority shouldn't carry much weight, I
was a Chemistry major at MIT, although finances prevented me from finishing.)

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tocomment
Thanks for the feedback. You have some good points. It still seems strange to
me that no one has stepped in to report on what products have BPA.

