Posts Tagged ‘ BPA ’

BPA on Cash: Reason to Give Your Daughter The Credit Card

December 21st, 2010. By Hunter West

It’s enough to make you want to give your daughter the credit card.

“Here…please…TAKE it…don’t spend your cash.”

That’s because a recent study has found that Bisphenol A (BPA) can now be found on paper money.

Not that your dollar bills are manufactured with BPA. But researchers are suggesting that the BPA found on some cash register receipts is rubbing off onto paper money.

There is some debate as to whether, or not this is really harmful, however…

For example, Kathryn St. John, a BPA specialist with the American Chemistry Council noted in comments to CNN earlier this month that BPA levels in some thermal papers are low, and research shows that it’s safe.

“To the limited extent BPA is absorbed through the skin, it is converted to a biologically inactive metabolite that is rapidly eliminated from the body,” St. John said.

“Biomonitoring data from the US Centers for Disease Control shows that consumer exposure to BPA, which would include any exposure from receipts, is extremely low. Typical exposure from all sources is about 1,000 times below safe intake levels set by government bodies in Europe and the US In comparison, the trace levels of BPA claimed to be present in dollar bills are insignificant.”

But critics aren’t so sure—and lately they’ve been getting some vindication from the likes of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which issued a statement earlier this year admitting that recent studies “provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children.”

Ericka Schreder, a staff Scientist with the Washington Toxics Coalition (WTC) and author of the report “On The Money: BPA on Dollar Bills and Receipts” that was also published by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, noted that it only takes ten seconds for BPA to transfer to skin from a cash receipt.

In other words, the time it takes for you to accept the receipt and either jam it in your pocket or, like most people, fold it up and stuff it into your wallet or purse. You now have BPA on your hands.

What’s more, if that receipt is stuffed in along with your paper money, you now have BPA on your money, too.

“Levels on dollar bills were lower than on receipts, but the fact that our currency is contaminated with a hormone-disrupting chemical illustrates how our current chemical law is failing us,” Schreder says. “Even the most careful consumer can’t avoid BPA when it’s so pervasive that it even contaminates money.”

BPA has been linked to everything from cancer, to early puberty. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Health previously noted that 93 percent of urine samples from individuals over the age of six years exhibit detectable levels of BPA.

While research linking BPA to specific health problems remains inconclusive, most agree that an update to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act is long overdue.

Schreder says the Act needs to be replaced with a new chemical law requiring companies to “provide health information on chemicals they produce and ensure chemicals that can cause cancer, infertility, and other health problems can’t be used in everyday products.”

Bottom line? There is BPA on a lot of cash receipts. Now there is BPA on cash. While the jury is still out on just how harmful BPA is (if it is at all), a precaution might be to park the cash and use the plastic more.

That includes your teenage daughter. Let’s just hope you can afford it…

Tags: Bisphenol, BPA, bpa-breast-cancer, Receipts
Posted in Defective Products, Emerging Issues | No Comments »

Startling Study: 91% Canadians have BPA in their Urine

August 19th, 2010. By Hunter West

It may be the title and a line from a romantic Peter Frampton song, but in this context it is anything but endearing. 

I’m In You… 

In this case, you’d rather the suitor not—especially Canadians who learned on Monday that according to a national survey through the analysis of thousands of representative samples, 91 percent of the population of Canada is found to have bisphenol A (BPA) in their urine. 

The good news is that BPA is excreted from the body after about six hours. But here’s the bad news: such a high percentage suggests that Canadians are exposed to BPA on a regular basis and from a variety of sources. What’s more, according to a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the findings mirror those of other international studies. 

So it’s something we all have to fret about. 

BPA was banned from baby bottles some time ago—and therein lay the most serious concern over the man-made substance. Some studies on animals suggest that low levels of exposure to BPA very early in life can affect brain development and behavior, but scientists are unsure how these findings might be relevant to human health, according to Statistics Canada. 

But baby bottles aside, BPA lurks in a lot of other stuff, too: water bottles and Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BPA
Posted in Drugs/Medical, Environment | No Comments »

Coca-Cola Shareholders Spurred by Conscience or Profit?

April 26th, 2010. By janem

Coca-Cola shareholders know if their coke glass is half-full or half-empty. By that comment I mean they are aware of public concern regarding the safety of Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in the epoxy lining of Coca-Cola’s canned beverages. Yet at the same time, if something isn’t done about it, sales could potentially drop and so would their dividends. So the shareholders voted last week on a measure that will force the company to go public on plans to rid their beverage cans of BPA.

The Coca-Cola company already eliminated BPA from their plastic bottles, but the plastic used to line aluminum cans still contains BPA. Did the company think this measure would satisfy their shareholders and the public, and they would get away with just a bit of BPA? Apparently not. Shareholders say the company has “failed to provide investors or consumers with sufficient evidence that it is taking steps to address these public health concerns”—and 22% of them voted for a resolution asking the company to publish a report on how it is responding to the “public policy challenges” related to BPA and what they’re doing to come up with alternatives for their beverage cans.

Meanwhile, as reported by Business Wire, Coca-Cola’s Board of Directors today approved the quarterly dividend of 44 cents per common share, up from 41 cents. Coca-cola returned $5.3 billion to shareowners in 2009, through $3.8 billion in dividends and $1.5 billion in share repurchases.

BPA is an endocrine disruptor that interrupts hormones and has been linked with breast cancer, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BPA, Coca-Cola, Coke
Posted in Consumer Fraud, Defective Products | 3 Comments »

FDA Taking Baby Steps on BPA

January 21st, 2010. By Hunter West

Last week the US Food and Drug Administration did an about-face on its stance with regard to bisphenol-A (BPA), saying Friday that it has had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans. 

This, in contrast to its report of 2008, when the agency deemed the chemical safe. 

Not that the FDA is saying that BPA is unsafe. Far from it. “If we thought it was unsafe, we would be taking strong regulatory action,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the drug agency, at a news briefing late last week. 

However, it is a hint—baby steps here—that the FDA is taking a harder line on issues than it appeared to take previous to the Obama Administration. Needless to say safety advocates are buoyed by the change of position, short of being overjoyed given their entrenched view that the FDA has not gone far enough. 

The chemical industry from whence the BPA originates, is also not happy with the news. 

Hardly surprising, as both camps line up and defend their respective positions—the chemical industry saying that the FDA’s concerns are unfounded, while the safety advocates say the FDA hasn’t gone far enough. Then there’s the FDA, trying to come up in the middle and be fair to everybody. 

But at least they’re looking. Rather than remain cocooned in a kind of Pleasantville (the movie, with apologies to any real ‘Pleasantvilles’ out there), outfitted with blinders and assuming that everybody, everywhere will be doing Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BPA, FDA
Posted in Personal Injury | No Comments »

Sex Toys Need to Be Safe

December 31st, 2009. By Hunter West

It’s a titillating subject to be sure and one that would be expected to serve as the butt of many a joke in the locker rooms of the nation. The fact remains, however that sex toys comprise a legitimate product component in the retail industry—and like any product that is used for the purposes to which they were designed, it needs to be safe. 

It may not be. 

Earlier this month in Canada (known affectionately as the Great White North where it gets so cold in the winter that residents alternate between outdoor sports and the indoor variety with their…well…never mind), a Liberal Member of Parliament issued a communiqué to the Canadian Health Minister with regard to sex toys manufactured with the dreaded bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates. 

The latter are chemicals used to make plastic sex toys soft and flexible. 

All playfulness aside, the safety concern for sex toys is not unlike previous health issues that have surfaced over the chemical’s use in things such as baby bottles, the lining of food cans and Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BPA, Health Canada, Phthalates, Sex Toys
Posted in Personal Injury | 3 Comments »