carcinogens from plastic

Bisphenol A (BPA) is something we've been keeping an eye on for a while now. Even to the point where we cancelled our bottled water service for home. It was a really great service, but when we brought up our concerns and the research findings to the company, they were very dismissive.

Personal choice here, but we prefer to err on the side of caution... especially when it could be family health at risk.

The report below has been getting press for the last couple of days, and is interesting. The way I'm reading it (and it's only my unscientific interpretation of an article about a report) it looks like the most BPA is going to leach while either the plastic or the substance inside the plastic is hot. if it's cooled back down again, it may be less dangerous. The way I had understood things before, once a plastic container had been heated up for sterilization... the structure was weaker and it was more likely to leach BPA from that point on. Still not cool either way (weak pun weakly intended) and a good argument for (readily recyclable) aluminum and glass.

globeandmail.com: Boiling water spikes bisphenol A levels:

"The finding suggests that parents sterilizing polycarbonate baby bottles by heating them in water or in a microwave may be inadvertently increasing the amount of the estrogen-mimicking chemical leaching from the containers. It also indicates hikers who use the bottles as a thermos to store hot tea or liquids may be doing the same.

The addition of boiling water increased BPA migration rates by up to 55-fold compared with water at room temperature, according to experiments run at the University of Cincinnati. A paper outlining the findings is being released today in Toxicology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal.

The researchers tested both new bottles and old, scratched bottles whose plastic had turned opaque, and found age of the containers didn't influence how much BPA they leached in an hour, but adding hot water to them did."