Posts Tagged ‘ Receipts ’

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
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