"REACH places the burden of proof on companies. To comply with the regulation, companies must identify and manage the risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market in the EU. They have to demonstrate to ECHA how the substance can be safely used, and they must communicate the risk management measures to the users."
Chemical companies in Europe of course are pushing for TTIP, to get rid of REACH.
Practically speaking, in this case, does this work better? Did the Eurozone cause risks associated with BPA and BPS to be identified faster, or prevent them from being used in consumer products?
I know that the FDA regulates prescription medication in that manner, but I don't think it has the same reach over things like food packaging, water bottles, dietary supplements, etc.
> Under sections 201(s) and 409 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act), any substance that is intentionally added to food is a food additive, that is subject to premarket review and approval by FDA, unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use, or unless the use of the substance is otherwise excluded from the definition of a food additive.
> (d) Substances that under conditions of good manufacturing practice may be safely used as components of articles that contact food include the following, subject to any prescribed limitations:
> (1) Substances generally recognized as safe in or on food.
> (2) Substances generally recognized as safe for their intended use in food packaging.
> (3) Substances used in accordance with a prior sanction or approval.
> (4) Substances permitted for use by regulations in this part and parts 175, 176, 177, 178 and § 179.45 of this chapter.
> (5) Food contact substances used in accordance with an effective premarket notification for a food contact substance (FCN) submitted under section 409(h) of the act.
[42 FR 14534, Mar. 15, 1977, as amended at 67 FR 35731, May 21, 2002]
When everyone started switching away from BPA, I asked one of my chemical engineering friends about it. He said that they switched from a chemical with known problems to one that hasn't been studied yet. This is how it always goes.
Exposure to BPA and similar substances from cans and bottles is probably inconsequential compared to exposure from receipts if you use any kind of hand sanitizer or lotion. A single exposure can equal hundreds of cans.
No, that was part of the experiment, but they concluded that the primary route was through skin absorption:
"These findings indicate that the primary route of BPA exposure was not via gastrointestinal absorption after eating the BPA-contaminated French fries"
Good reason to not use hand sanitizer and lotion, then. I have a highly sophisticated self-repairing, self-lubricating, self-renewing exterior on my person, and my ancestors needed neither lotions nor aerosols of alcohol in the millions of years prior to whenever those things suddenly became popular.
Also a good reason to pay cash, which was another long tradition of my people.
Although I agree that our own bodies tend to be pretty awesome and require less help than many people think, your argument in this case is a little shaky. We live in a very different environment to our ancestors and expose our skin to all sorts of things that they never could have. Even ignoring all the new compounds we interact with daily, just moving ourselves around the planet (to areas with different sun exposure, as a key example) can have a big impact on our health.
You won't see me hewing to some paleo diet or otherwise worshipping my bark-eating forebears. But I think people do themselves a disservice with all the crud they put in their skin. Some of these things are required only because of the previous thing applied to their skin. Hand washing is nice and I recommend it but equally important (in terms of disease transmission) are the discipline to not pick your nose and rub your eyes. Basic stuff.
Agreed, I'm a happy modern human that isn't particularly worried about potential harms from chemicals or GMOs. I do though use baking soda and vinegar for my hair and its so much better than using shampoo and conditioner. Aggressively stripping oil from your hair and then putting it back didn't make sense once I learned about it.
Thanks for the down-vote, but seriously do you have an argument here? Even Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" GMOs merely express a modified version of an enzyme that allows them to synthesize essential amino acids even in the presence of the pesticide. There is no rational argument for why modifications to the DNA region that regulate production of the enzyme or modifications to the enzyme could be dangerous in any way... Even when ingested, these macromolecules would be digested rather than absorbed, as in the case of a bioactive small molecule that is readily absorbed from consumer plastics (e.g. BPA).
Your assuming GMO's where modified in exactly the way intended. Realistically, attempting to insert segment X into something’s DNA and verifying the organism produces Y in no way insures that the only DNA modification was inserting X or that the only change from X is producing Y.
PS: My sister created GMO's for a while in her words the process is way less controlled than generally portrayed.
> Your assuming GMO's where modified in exactly the way intended. Realistically, attempting to insert segment X into something’s DNA and verifying the organism produces Y in no way insures that the only DNA modification was inserting X or that the only change from X is producing Y.
Both the processes and the regulatory compliance requirements around GMOs provide a lot stronger (though, still, not perfect) assurance of that for GMOs than the processes and (near complete lack of) regulatory clearance requirements around crop modifications that result in rapid genome changes but which are considered "traditional breeding" rather than "GMO" because they don't involve directly inserting genetic material from a different organism.
(I have an immediate family member who works doing both kinds of crop modifications, and has been involved providing science support for regulatory clearance of products, as well.)
Who cares even if it's not well controlled and changes many things? DNA mutates all the time with little effect. Every human born has a few novel mutations. There's no argument from this to a comparison with bioactive small molecules.
Unlike normal mutations genetic modifications can change a lot of things at the same time and are often focused around biologically active chemicals. That's not to say that GMO foods are unsafe just that new modification are far from risk free and should have stringent review before using them to feed 100+ million people. If for no other reason than they can produce a lot of a completely unknown and unresearched chemical.
Consider a recent (1992) example that has nothing to do with DNA modification. Hedysarum alpinum is now known to be toxic, but was not noted to be so in a field guide which may have contributed to Christopher McCandless death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandlessEXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY.
I agree with what you say about pesticides -- note I said BPA is not comparable with GMO, not that BPA is not comparable with pesticide. In this case, the genetically modified organism would be safe, but chemicals used to treat the organism could be harmful.
> If for no other reason than they can produce a lot of a completely unknown and unresearched chemical.
I don't think this is true. Metabolic engineering is really hard. In other words, getting an organism to produce a new small molecule is really hard. If it weren't, we would have large scale biosynthesis of lots of stuff, instead of relying on chemical synthesis or isolation. Most enzymes have very specific functions. E.g. an enzyme will add a carbon at a particular location on a very specific substrate molecule. There's not really the possibility for unforeseen byproducts.
What you describe isn't really plausible, which is why biologists agree GMOs are safe. A plausible hypothetical for how something bad could happen, and then not be noticed until the product is fed to millions of people, probably doesn't exist (based on the fact that one has yet to be proposed).
The only exception I know is allergenicity, but this is a general risk. People are allergic to stuff. Any new product is potentially allergenic. All of a sudden quinoa is in vogue.... people could be allergic to quinoa. No unique risk.
The toxicity of _Hedysarum alpinum_ is an evolved trait, like most toxicities, that confers some benefit to the host organism. It's hard to accidentally create a beneficial new trait in organisms. It's even an academic problem in the field--evolution of novelty. Most genetic changes you make either break stuff or if you're lucky do one specific thing.
"In other words, getting an organism to produce a new small molecule is really hard."
A large part of why this is hard is they tend to produce something other than what you want. Getting a protean to fold the right way 95% of the time is a huge achievement, but it also means your producing something else 5% of the time. In point of fact quite a bit of your DNA is focused on getting other sections to fold correctly.
As to population risks Prion's are probably a risk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion For one thing there unlikely to be undetected in the food supply as normal toxicity tests will miss a novel one. (EX: Mad Cow Disease)
Anyway, all I am really just suggesting GMO’s are introduced more slowly. Something like food for 100k people in the first year, 1M the next, then 10M and then you’re good to go. Granted, that would be really hard to do with the way the current food supply works, but simple acreage limits could have a similar effect.
PS: The point about Hedysarum alpinum toxicity was it's not all that uncommon and people had been eating it, but it was not known to be toxic. The point being Toxicity can be more complex issue than is generally assumed.
Proteins misfold constantly, prion diseases are very rare, and creation of a novel prion would constitute a massive gain of function for a protein, therefore it is very unlikely to occur.
Food shortage is a real problem that affects a billion people.
Food supply massively outpaces needs. It's true that first world's desire to eat lots of meat is economically more powerful than 1+ billion poor people’s desire to eat something. But, increasing supply does little to change that equation.
Just the difference between people in the US eating beef and chicken costs aproximately enough to feed the entire US population a subsistance diet.
I actually did this experiment. I had the chance to be alone for 3 months so I accepted the challenge.
It actually worked. I used only and only water to wash. In the beginning hot, then slowly working to a quite cold shower. That helped out too.
The effect? My hair is since then never better. I have no more dandruff, no rash or other headskin condition.
The body took it very well. Using only water and a turkish rubbing cloth. I didn't smell. I even asked a few colleagues ( female too ) to tell me if they noticed something about me, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. My armpits were sweating but no unpleasant smell would be produced. Some women found me even more attractive ;), but this might be subjective.
Reason for the lack of smell is most probably the natural bacteria that eat all of my body output ( sweat, dead skin, etc ). The cold shower was keeping this bacteria alive, since hot water has some effect ( dilutuing fat and killing some of them ).
In the end, was a positive experiment. I stopp it after this 3 months, due to home arrival of my significant other :).
>>Reason for the lack of smell is most probably the natural bacteria that eat all of my body output ( sweat, dead skin, etc ). The cold shower was keeping this bacteria alive, since hot water has some effect ( dilutuing fat and killing some of them ).
But....this is exactly what produces the smell. Sweat, dead skin - they have absolutely no smell. Zero. Smell is produced by bacteria feeding off your sweat, and their waste is smelly - that's why you are very unlikely to smell straight away after intense physical exercise, where you are literally covered in sweat - but leave it on for a few hours and it turns super smelly.
and perhaps he/she also lives in a dwelling with some kind of heating, where the indoor relative humidity will be around 10% if you live in a cold climate.
I work in a radiology department. You would be surprised how many people store wads of cash rolled up in their underwear. One patient in particular comes to mind, as he was in for imaging relating to faecal incontinence. It's a close thing, but I'm going to say that cash is more disgusting.
Careful not to ignore the influence infant mortality has on average life expectancy.
Long lives were common among adults, but the average life expectancy was dragged down because many more children than today died. It was common to have many kids because it was expected and normal that a significant number would not live to adulthood.
Any fluid facilitates the trasfer, but the researchers state:
"The dermal penetration enhancing chemicals present in personal care products as well as hand sanitizers cause a breakdown of the dermal barrier leading to an increase in transdermal absorption"
Also worth noting that BPS was reported >10 years ago as producing endocrine disruption similar to BPA. I think it likely other bisphenol variants would do the same.
Part of the problem is not only the use of BP(A|S|.+) as plasticizers but also BP_ is a constituent of polycarbonates, epoxies and other industrially important materials.
The amount of free BP_ in a properly prepared and cured product is likely quite small, but heating, UV exposure, etc., can hasten decomposition or release of BP_. Used as plasticizer BP_ would be more easily transferred and ingested.
As others have said, the safest "plastic" containers are the low surface energy thermoplastics, polyethylene or polypropylene. They aren't pretty and clear like polycarbonate, but they are a whole lot less risky.
For adults, go get yourself a Hyrdro Flask. It's a double-walled (thermos-style) food grade stainless steel bottle. It comes with a 100 year warranty, and after your grandkids are done playing with it, it's fully recyclable. There are several products like this on the market, but I am a happy Hydro Flask owner/user.
Aluminum bottles are a non-starter: aluminum is toxic to humans, and has to be coated to not leak into your food. Often times there's a plastic liner to prevent the aluminum from coming into contact with your food/drink.
Some steel bottles are crap: they actually do stain/rust, and being non-transparent this can be hard to spot.
Glass bottles are nice, but obviously more breakable/dangerous than metal.
Personally, I don't trust any plastic bottles: not Nalgene not any other kind. Had a Nalgene bottle once; after it took on a stale water odor, I could not get it out with anything. This article particular finding is far from the last one in terms of which plastics do what to the organism.
For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.
> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.
Glass bottles for newborns as they can be easily sterilised, and be sure they have a silicone nipple that also forms the seal to the glass of the bottle.
Once they get old enough to use their own, use the playtex disposable liners. No sterilisation or cleaning required, so you only have to do the nipples, which by this age can be just soap and water.
The Think Baby non-polycarbonate bottles appear the best for a rigid bottle, but personally I wouldn't trust something that's going to be washed extremely frequently, scrubbed with brushes or thrown in a dishwasher. You use them for up to 3-4 years, so I wouldn't trust reusing a bottle as it will age.
The playtex liners was below the detection threshold on their test, which was to put boiling water in them and then hold the temperature at 60C for 2 hours. For me that's more than safe enough for the 35C milk I'm putting in it for my kid to drink within 2 minutes.
I honestly think disposable is the way to go, because it eliminates the risk of the materials degrading. These tests are on new, not 1 year old, so the only ones that are valid in every use scenario are the disposable ones.
the argument is chemical degradation with age, not physical abrasion. You leave plastic out in the sun and reactions occur that can depolymerize the plastic, releasing monomeric components. In the case of polycarbonate, those components include bisphenol.
I think you're right, people in third world countries use lots of aluminum in their cookware (Thailand, while not being third world) is a good example of a place which uses it a lot in cookery.
Just don't use aluminum citrus squeezers or cook your tomato sauce in aluminum pots (as their useful lifetimes will suffer, and the food might take on a weird taste.)
It would also seem that most of the danger from aluminum cookery, where there is such, comes from impurities in the recycled aluminum (lead, and other hazardous metals).
That's true, but aluminum cookware is not as pervasive as it is in 3rd world countries, also, I'm willing to bet, the aluminum in US cookware does not have as much in terms of impurities --not guarantees on cheap imported cookware though.
So do we eventually go back to wooden or leather water vessels?
I wonder if those will see a comeback of sorts by the 'lets go back to the past for inspiration' folks. Not that the past does not have good things but lots of paleo things are just not that scalable... I mean, imagine all the leather we'd need..
I'd guess that more people own leather shoes and/or gloves than Nalgene bottles, and couches / jackets / automobile interiors surely use more leather than a canteen would.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've bought myself a glass bottle and I've never looked back. I'm going to be purchasing larger ones for water/juice storage in the fridge and probably a hydro flask for movement.
The transition from plastic to glass isn't that hard at all, you just have to be slightly more careful when it comes to carrying one. Simply throwing the bottle across the room to somebody becomes dangerous as compared to throwing a plastic water bottle.
This year I'll be moving to storing my leftover food in glass jars, [0] le parfait do really good ones (they are expensive but worth it in my opinion). I'm still figuring out how I will store frozen meat I get from the farm.
I own a Klean Kanteen, which is also stainless steel, and I really like it. But when I bought it and looked into the matter, a lot of people were talking about how stainless steel water bottles made in the far east could contain traces of other metals that may not be as safe.
> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.
Use stainless steel baby bottles. There are couple different companies that make them, we use Klean Kanteen. There is some plastic (the ring to tighten the nipple down) but the liquid never touches anything but stainless steel and silicone.
It's a minor point but bottles that provide any insulating value are sort of worrying to use as the risk of giving a baby a hot drink increases and glass baby bottles are sometimes thick glass. It turns out that getting up for the 9th time, totally exhausted, makes reliably noticing anything hard. Disclaimer: I have only used one glass baby bottle ever
If your child is tolerant, just don't heat the bottle. After trying various warming schemes with screaming twins waiting for food, we just began giving them their food right from the fridge and they didn't complain. Haven't warmed a bottle since.*
* for various reasons we fed with formula only and premeasure formula and water before bed for quick mixing in the middle of the night.
This was exactly the solution we got to. The do-gooders were incensed at the system. Not having to heat it up or fart about at night (once the child is trained) is excellent. And as a bonus, our tap water is very clean, so sterilized bottle and tap water for formula. Refrigerated is even better, well done! Question. Twins, have you ever slept?
With my first two children, they took it at room temperature. Third was born in the winter and tap water was considerably colder and he wouldn't take it.
I would heat an exact amount of water for a specific time in the microwave to get a specific temperature. I started reducing the time in the microwave by one second a day and he never noticed.
How much would you kill for a barista style formula dispenser? :-) First world problem, I know, but I always imagined, 'click-click' and getting exactly the right amount. New fridges have water dispensers where you can set the ounces on the door, and they dispense exactly that amount. I wonder if they can set the temperature precisely too? I guess just another way our kids will not face the same set of challenges. (Not necessarily 'have it better' just applying their energy differently with a whole different set of expectations to go along with it)
Why do you heat drinks for the baby? I never understood why. It's the same nutritional value, and it becomes really messy when you're outdoors if they expect it.
We have about 10 Life Factory bottles on rotation for twins. They have silicone sleeves, and have only had one break over the course of a year (it fell from a small distance without a cap and hit the exposed top and shattered; others have fallen without incident).
On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects.
There are early rumblings (e.g. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm ) that there might be something similar going on with the replacement of trans-fats with palm oil. Palm oil behaves similarly to trans-fats, which makes it attractive to industry, but then it isn't too surprising that those same similarities might also make it similarly unhealthy.
> On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects.
Don't rely on intuition for toxicology. If there's one field where there's a strong lack of Science (and I mean predictive Science), that's this one. There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity. Or, take chirality for example. The same exact chemical formula, but the spatial arrangement being the mirror of each other's. This caused major issues back in the 20th century, when some drugs were synthesized without chiral specificity, and led to one chiral version being harmless and effective to improve a certain condition, and the other chiral version attacking the central nervous system.
> There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity.
Your point not to rely on intuition is a good one, but I think that's not quite what the GP was doing. That is, I think the claim wasn't that a chemically similar compound should behave similarly, but rather that a behaviourally similar (in some ways) compound should behave similarly (in other ways)—stated which way it is almost a tautology, no?
As bad as the original? Can someone link to evidence of the dangers of people exposed to BPAs through plastics?
My understanding is that the whole BPA craziness is the same as the Phthalates nonsense. The problem is if you want to avoid these things, make sure you don't get sick and end up in hospital because then you will be in contact with these like crazy.
No it is not nonsense. BPA is a kniwn endocrine disrupting chemical. Endocrine disruption is when a chemical interferes with many of the hormones in your body. Hormones which regulate cell growth, differentiation ajd overall cell behavior.
I am aware of endochrine disruptors causing problems, but is there evidence of the average level of BPA exposure causing negative effects to be concerned about. I can't find any studies that show this.
Chemists of HN: Why does this keep happening? Why is BPA or something close to it seemingly required to manufacture plastics? Or to put it another way, why has it been so difficult to come up with an alternative that's distinct enough to avoid BPA's effects on the human body?
I can try to provide a (late) serious, long-ish response.
First of all there is no "the plastic atom" they are chemically more diverse than anything in computer-land. So the concerns of polycarb plastics have no relationship with polyethylene or teflon or whatever other than coincidentally having been industrially developed around the same decades so people call them all plastics, although its actually worse than calling anything green a plant and assuming they're all the same.
Here's your analogy: Plastics are tangled up strings. Like a crazy nanoscale 3-d composite. The strings are mfgr in place by dumping a bunch of wanna-be string pieces and crazy reactive hyperactive catalyst in a form and then waiting, maybe heating, to convince the catalyst to bond wanna-be string chunks into a long string.
The mechanism or turning pieces of string into a long string is surprisingly common and boring, which is the source of the whole problem. You have a chunky molecule with a finger or whatever sticking out containing a double bond. Just a plain old boring double bond like you'd find all over the place, like unfortunately in your innards. The crazy catalyst has the unusual ability to snap open double bonds and fall off to repeat maybe a few thousand times. Then the opened double bonds sometimes snap right shut, but sometimes grab a neighbor.
Think of a clown car with 20 people squashed into it, clasping their left and right hand together, and "magically" their hands unclasp for a moment, maybe, and due to crowding, their hands snap shut on a neighbors hand instead of their own. Now instead of having 20 separate clowns in a clown car, you got a conga line of 20 attached clowns wedged into place and you can't remove just one anymore because they're all stuck together. They've polymerized into a car shaped brick with a molecular weight of about 20 clowns. So now you know why some plastics are industrially sold based on molecular weight.
The "trick" to making plastics is making a shelf stable substance, preferably liquid-ish, that won't spontaneously polymerize, but has crazy molecule sex with all its neighbors at the drop of a catalyst hat. The catalyst is like a little monster than hands out to everyone little molecule-condoms coated with superglue instead of lube. (don't take this all literally, but figuratively it kinda works) Its actually quite tricky chemistry which is why it took till the last century to really kick off plastic production "for real" rather than just screwing around.
Plastics stereotypically, on average across the field, are super boring biochemically. Pure polyethylene is about as chemically exciting and reactive as asphalt, for example. Probably because it vaguely resembles asphalt chemically, you can make synthetic oil out of little bits, and polyethylene is close to what synthetic asphalt would look like. Kinda. Unpolymerized polyethylene is just a simple flammable gas, a very close cousin of propane / butane. The reason why nobody owns a ethylene cigarette lighter or has an ethylene grill in their backyard to grill burgers is it all goes into plastics not lighters and grills... So the world is full of really boring plastics. But not all plastics are boring.
Unfortunately, BPA makes a totally awesome and non-biologically reactive plastic once it cures and links up to the neighbors in a big chunk, but by itself, uncured, its fairly nasty stuff. It really wants to grab hold of another molecule, which is awesome if it successfully grabs hold and never lets go of another BPA molecule, but kinda bad if it mistakenly grabs onto your DNA (or whatever) like a bear trap.
There are also interesting "green" implications such that if BPA based plastics ever decay, its just like dumping a tanker car of monomer out in the landfill. Kinda nasty if it ever happens. On the other hand, never breaking down is kind of ecologically nasty too. Generally speaking the "green" plastics like PLA or PE have non-toxic monomers and are not nearly as durable as the "non-green" plastics like polycarb family, speaking generally, etc.
I don't understand why so many people on HN are worried about BPS or BPA. So far studies have shown that it has detrimental effects on the developing brain (in extremely limited animal trials!). Presumably everyone on here is not an infant and their brain has developed... so why are you buying BPA/BPS free bottles?
A lack of evidence that a substance is harmful does not corroborate the claim that it is safe. Personally, I'd rather not buy any products containing these relatively unknown substances, and completely avoid the risk of them being harmful.
I think people are generally hesitant when it comes to filling their bodies with unknown chemicals.
Animals avoid this by instinct (rats only eat small amounts of something they've never tasted before, in order to test its reaction in the body), humans mostly use science to try to gauge which chemicals are detrimental to the body.
Of course, as with all activities involving the human mind, sometimes it can get out of hand (eg. parents not vaccinating their child because they believe it causes autism). But, all in all, I think the fundamental resistance to filling our bodies with unknown substances is quite healthy.
Your reasoning seems sound to me. That said, can we really rule out the possibility that stainless or glass or silicone will have problems found in them? We may have been using (some of) them for hundreds of years, but we haven't been scrutinizing them scientifically for that long.
> That said, can we really rule out the possibility that stainless or glass or silicone will have problems found in them?
No. We can't completely rule out anything, if you ask me.
But, glass and stainless steel have been used in sensitive environments (eg. chemical synthesis) for around a century, so we'd most likely have discovered if harmful substances leak from these materials. It would show up when a substance has been synthesized, and some sort of chromatography/mass spectrometry is performed on the resulting substance.
No one is more susceptible to an expert’s fearmongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. A parent, after all, is the steward of another creature’s life, a creature who in the beginning is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species. This leads a lot of parents to spend a lot of their parenting energy simply being scared.
The problem is that they are often scared of the wrong things. It’s not their fault, really. Separating facts from rumors is always hard work, especially for a busy parent. And the white noise generated by the experts — to say nothing of the pressure exerted by fellow parents — is so overwhelming that they can barely think for themselves. The facts they do manage to glean have usually been varnished or exaggerated or otherwise taken out of context to serve an agenda that isn’t their own.
That's great and all until you consider that all parents are doing here is managing their buying decisions, so even the "threat" is low, so is the solution.
I'm pretty sure that quote was aimed at parents worried about e.g. third party kidnappings (which are insanely rare). Or who consider inoculations to be "dangerous" (without examining the danger of the other side).
Switching from one type of bottle to another may do "nothing" in the medium to long term, but it also costs the parent an inconsequential amount. As long as you aren't exchanging one somewhat unsafe bottle for a much more unsafe bottle (e.g. bottles made of lead) you're likely fine or breaking even.
I should have clarified I meant why are adults buying them for themselves (as many people are) - obviously it makes sense to avoid BPA for kids' bottles!
> The concentrations of BPA in this study, while low, are still much higher than humans would be exposed to. It is a bit difficult to relate the exposures of the fish to those of humans, as humans typically do not swim immersed in solutions of BPA day in and day out, but let us look at it from a variety of perspectives.
I'll second the vote for Klean Kanteen - I love mine. Also worth looking at is LifeFactory. They have glass bottles with silicon sleeves, that are quite sturdy. I've dropped mine a number of times and it hasn't broken.
They also make baby bottles and food storage containers, if that's something you need.
They can, but in my experience, they don't. I'm not sure if it's the silicon sleeve around it, or what, but I've dropped mine a number of times and it's been fine.
What stainless bottle do you have? My Klean Kanteens are unlined stainless. If you get the right lid it'll be stainless lined with a silicone seal too.
They went back to the old plastics with a different plasticizer than BPA, but it's best to just use a plastic that doesn't need a plasticizer in the first place.
I recently bought a 22oz Lifefactory glass bottle. Mostly covered with silicone for durability. It's a bit heavy, but otherwise great.
Only downside is that the cap is made out of polypropylene, but polypropylene is apparently BPA, BPS, and phthalate free. (May still have other issues, of course.)
Do the klean kanteen or whatever steel ones smell in a day or two like the SIGG ones I used to get? They were the reason I switched to plastic. You had to constantly scrub them and put cleaning pills in them.
Bike bottle interior coatings are not very durable. They're OK for a while if you only drink water and do not scrub the inside with anything abrasive at all. But one good scrubbing with a stiff brush and a few days drinking juice out of that thing, and it will taste bad, probably until you throw it out.
Most people want their bike bottles to be squeezable, so some tradeoffs are made. Everyday bottles can be rigid, so stainless steel (or glass) makes more sense.
Just to be clear i'm talking about the "Purist" bottles made by Specialized the company which use a proprietary coating that seems to work well, not bike bottles in general. See for example [this review](http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/product-review-specializ...). I only recently discovered the bottles so can't give a long term review, the manufacture does recommend against scrubbing them.
Uncoated stainless and glass are great options as well but not practical for some uses.
we buy a lot of these as promo/schwag materials for our business (ridewithgps.com, a bike software website/apps) and they certainly do wear out. I end up rotating mine our after 6 months, and i do not wash them with anything but the soap + water + shake method. the lining wears off and you are left with a plasticky tasting bottle. even new, if you let them sit with water in them for a couple days they'll taste slightly of plastic, so it's not perfect.
much better than any others we have tried though, so worth it.
We have a kid on the way, and now that BPA and BPA free are considered estrogen leaking, what are we meant to buy? However it should be noted that the kid is meant to be a girl, so for girls is this a non-concern since obviously estrogen won't be unusual within their bodies.
Glass. It's expensive and fragile, but good old silicon oxide is as inert as you can ask for.
Extra estrogen in a female baby is absolutely a concern.
I was part of an investigation that dosed nursing rats with BPA and investigated the effect on female offspring. I left for graduate school in polymer chemistry, but you can read the results here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q
It's no blockbuster paper, but the whole of the evidence gathered suggests you shouldn't expose your baby to BPA just because it's female.
There's also a link between post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (older women taking estrogen after their body ceases production) and breast/uterine cancer.
Glass is not that fragile. We've been using tempered glass bottles (the fancy lifefactory ones with a silicone sleeve) for more than a year and have yet to break one despite many drops onto floor, pavement, etc. Cost is a little higher than plastic, but absolutely down in the noise when looking at total costs of having a kid.
I think we spent ~$150 on bottles, nipples, and tops; Including lids for these bottles to covert them into a sippy cup. There are cheaper tempered glass options available. Glass also doesn't age like plastic--our stuff has many more years of useful life in it.
Estrogen isn't unusual within a man's body, either. An excess or lack of either estrogen or testosterone can have adverse effects in both men and women.
Boobs. Seriously. You'll likely need to freeze some milk, which will end up in plastic bags, but for the most part just breast feed. It's free, it's good for the kid, and it's good for the mom. When your kid is old enough for water bottles get good quality stainless.
Oh, and hey, congrats! Ignore the tales of despair, raising kids owns.
Fwiw, it's not always good for mom.... it's a time sink, can cause painful nipples, prevents her (if she's considerate) from returning to adult activities such as drinking, and if she's unproductive, low self esteem. Natural != best or even good, it's just a particular strategy that nature has provided. Not to say it's bad either (it's obviously worked for millions of years), but its appropriateness depends on their particulars.
@jwc, Sorry to harsh your vibes man, just wanted to provide some counterpoint. There's a significant chance you're right in this case.
As for cups... I've never seen them in baby format, but what about ceramics or bamboo? Glass shatters just like ceramic, so glass is not obviously better on the face of it. I guess bamboo can splinter, but the right kind of cup might be hardened enough for it to not be a significant factor.
I don't get how anyone does it, personally. Never getting more than ~2.5 hours of sleep at a whack, because you have to get up to feed or pump every 3 hours? After three or four days of that I'd be approaching the dangerously-negligent-of-responsibilities-and-poor-decision-making state I hit when I go too long without proper sleep, and would be a liability to all around me.
I guess (some?) women have some sort of temporary hormonal advantage that lets them pull it off. My wife couldn't, and I don't blame her.
I'd guess it's far easier in states with more humane leave policies than the US, where fathers and mothers both can take several months of paid leave. Without both parents home it's damn tough, and approaches impossible if you already have one or more older ones to take care of (so, few or no day naps for the mother).
People short on time will not find rearing children to be a pleasant diversion. Low self esteem doesn't seem rampant in the mothers around here. Could just be Oakland/Berkeley yuppies though.
Every "tin" can I have opened, for as long as I can remember, has a plastic coating inside. I've always wondered what material is being used for this coating. Plastic of one kind or another seems to be inescapable.
I emailed Amy's Kitchen recently to ask what's in the lining of their soup cans. (I saw that they recently started labeling them as 'BPA free,' but I was concerned about BPS, etc.) Here's what they replied with:
"The inside of our cans are lined with a double-coated acrylic and polyester protective barrier made without BPA, BPS, BPF, BADGE or NOGE. It complies with the FDA requirements for direct food contact under the Code of Federal Regulations. You'll be glad to know that as of March 2012, all of our canned foods have this non-BPA lining."
I don't know enough to judge whether there's anything still worrisome in a "double-coated acrylic and polyester protective barrier" - but they didn't substitute BPA with BPS, at least.
Source? This sounds very urban legend. Most stores won't sell it as 'damaged stock' but they also reject many other products based entirely on external appearance regardless of whether they are fit for purpose or not.
That's more about the attractiveness of the product than safety. Those dented cans are sold somewhere else. Here's such a place near where I grew up: http://www.npsstore.com/about
I don't know if they still do it now, but years ago I noticed that the major super markets will actually sell any canned item that has a dent at a reduced price.
Possible easy DIY fix: line your bottles with a clean plastic bag, the clear transparent type. That will almost certainly be polyethylene, which doesn't contain any plasticizers like BPA or BPS.
In case you haven't noticed, we have surrounded ourselves with chemicals that our bodies never evolved to deal with, and the list is growing. And as a society we are still dealing with chemicals known to be dangerous. Take asbestos as an example. Everyone knows it is bad, and yet you can still find in the walls of old school buildings, houses, and places of work. Worse, the ban on asbestos was lifted in the USA allowing for materials to contain up to 1% of it.
Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down.
> I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down.
I suspect you’ve never spent time in rural peasant villages. Many rural peasants (still today, but even more in the past) eat a simple and often poorly balanced diet punctuated by occasional periods of near starvation, do demanding physical labor from an early age until their bodies break down, catch all sorts of diseases that suburban office workers are never exposed to, sometimes get serious bacterial infections when they suffer any kind of laceration, have vastly inferior treatments for pretty much every medical condition, even something simple like a broken ankle used to be permanently crippling, etc., and you find it "amazing" that life expectancy has improved?
If you want to talk about exposure to various carcinogenic compounds, any family who cooks on a wood fire in an open hearth in the middle of their house is breathing more smoke than all but the heaviest of cigarette smokers, worse than the worst air pollution Beijing has to offer.
lol. Salt Lake City has some of the worst smog I've ever lived in out of Chicago, LA and Atlanta. I remember reading an article about wood burning stoves causing equal pollution to all the vehicles in the entire valley.
Huh, you should stop using computers immediately if you care a little bit about what you said, because that's one hell of a cocktail of various plastics, heavy metals and the like. And you are constantly breathing dust containing who knows what coming from it.
You're totally right. Not only are computers laden with a lot nasty chemicals, but the insides can become really hot, which could help the chemicals leak out. At the same time, computers have become indispensable to our lives.
Asbestos isn't a problem if it's non-friable, like what you see with old house siding. My house has that stuff and it's a pain in the butt because it needs to be treated specially even though it's harmless.
The problem is many people are getting exposed to quite a bit all day long by eating and drinking a lot of canned/bottled stuff. I wouldn't freak out about what a water bottle is made of if you don't have chronic high exposure.
More important than freaking about minor exposure is supporting a strong metabolism, immune system, and liver function. The body can clear stuff like this fine if running well. You want to be running a high metabolism on plenty of sugar and starch.
Yes. The liver burns through a ton of glycogen. Allowing glycogen to get low by way of long periods of fasting or insufficient carb intake will inhibit the liver's effectiveness at clearing out estrogens, xeno-estrogens or otherwise. The immune system is also very glucose intensive. This is of course why hospitals put sick patients on dextrose drips.
> Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up.
“A lot of the alternative chemicals have not been adequately tested because they don’t have to be,” said lead author Deborah Kurrasch. “A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.”
I'm no healthcare policy expert but this sounds like the FDA has it backwards.
“A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.”
That's a ridiculously untrue statement. Try and add a chemical with unknown safety to a food product/cosmetic/medical device and see how long it takes the FDA to shut you down.
The FDA does have GRAS designation (generally recognized as safe) for many chemicals, but that is based on a large body of evidence that has demonstrated no (or manageable) safety concerns.
Can we change this title to something closer to the original title of the article? The current title is inflammatory and will likely just bring out all the conspiracy nuts.
"BPA alternative disrupts normal brain-cell growth, is tied to hyperactivity, study says"
Fwiw, BPA isn't in most plastics, generally only in polycarbonates, plus some epoxy linings. Most plastic bottles, for example, are made of various kinds of polyethylene instead. A useful (but not exact) rule of thumb is that almost all BPA-containing plastics have resin code 7 (Other); plastics with codes 1-6 typically don't have BPA.
In contrast, in Europe, there is REACH
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Autho...
- http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/reach/index...
- http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach)
"REACH places the burden of proof on companies. To comply with the regulation, companies must identify and manage the risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market in the EU. They have to demonstrate to ECHA how the substance can be safely used, and they must communicate the risk management measures to the users."
Chemical companies in Europe of course are pushing for TTIP, to get rid of REACH.