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BPA Leaches From Polycarbonate Bottles Into Humans

Linus the Turbonerd sends in the bulletin that BPA, a toxic chemical used in the production of polycarbonate, the plastic composing hard, clear water bottles, has been found to leach out of such containers, directly into the water that their users consume. "In addition to polycarbonate bottles, which are refillable and a popular container among students, campers and others and are also used as baby bottles, BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminum food and beverage cans. ... 'We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds. If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher. This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA's endocrine-disrupting potential,' said Karin B. Michels, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study."

38 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Old? by tulmad · · Score: 4, Informative

    Isn't this extremely old news? Companies have been making BPA-free plastic bottles now for a long long time, including baby bottles.

    --
    "In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
    1. Re:Old? by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is a new study, just published. It confirms earlier indications that BPA's are far from inert and it adds data to specific scenarios whereby they are transmitted for ingestion.

      Many manufacturers have dropped BPA for reasons of public-relations.

      Replaced by?

      Other unproven, untested and highly suspect additives for 'softening' and 'pliability'.

      --
      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    2. Re:Old? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's still extremely old news. This study merely confirmed what people have known for years. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have dropped BPA-containing plastics from their product lines.

      It should be noted that the more flexible plastics often used in water bottles, such as HDPE and PET or PETE, do not contain BPA.

    3. Re:Old? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Careful, this one has friends.

      Anyway, anyone who can't read between the lines of Nalgene stopping their use of a material they've been claiming is the best thing ever isn't very smart, and deserves toxics in their pee.

      The most hilarious part is that if you told people ten years ago that polycarbonates were dangerous they'd say that you were a big fucking idiot. Five years ago you'd be a conspiracy theorist. Today, you're vindicated. Tomorrow, you'll tell them about something else that's probably dangerous, and you'll be a big idiot to them again.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Old? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean like the industrial sugar that's in 99% of all American (and 90% of all European) "food"? ^^

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    5. Re:Old? by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Corn Syrup.

      Michael Pollan has got the number on that. Backed by European studies on endocrine dysfunction and appetite distortion.

      --
      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    6. Re:Old? by zippthorne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ten years ago, if you'd said that, you *would* have been an idiot. Even idiots can be right once in a while, in the same way that a stopped clock is correct twice a day.

      If, instead, your claim was simply that the bottles weren't proven not to leach anything, you'd be vindicated, and all the idiots who bitched that "you can't prove a negative" would still be idiots.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    7. Re:Old? by fractoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Isn't this extremely old news? Companies have been making BPA-free plastic bottles now for a long long time, including baby bottles.

      Well I couldn't have told you exactly what chemical causes it, but I doubt you could find anyone who'd argue that fresh clean water left in a plastic container for a few days *doesn't* taste 'plasticky'. If the water tastes different when it comes out of the plastic container than when it went in, then either something has been removed (unlikely given that it's tap water in a sealed container) or there's something new in it, and unless you believe in homeopathy, that something new is a chemical.

      The human sense of taste is fascinating, it's like 'the lab' from NCIS except it's made out of a few square inches of meat.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    8. Re:Old? by twostix · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Various plastics will probably be this generations lead.

      I'm sure the people who were the first to become sceptical of lead were called fucking idiots too.

      Just like the poor bastard who tried to convince doctors to *wash their hands* before cutting people open was.

      Just like the guy who tried to tell 19th century England that it's widespread disease was due to people living in and drinking their own raw sewage - rather than the 'miasma'.

      Established norms are *hard* to dislodge until there's mass irrefutable proof that can't be hand waved away. To bad that mass proof equals mass amounts of people ill affected. History proves quite tidily that in any given area the general public lag significantly on acceptance when mainstream things are found to be very harmful.

      Don't wait until the masses are ok with something, especially when It's just as easy to do things to protect yourself and family now - like buying glass bottles.

      (Wait until we find out the long term effects of the new ways of growing meat feed lot style! I have two acquaintances who work in abattoirs who won't touch meat unless they know where it's come from because of what they are seeing coming out of feedlot beef.)

  2. Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    This could grow tits on a frog.

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    1. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Funny

      This could grow tits on a frog.

      Hmmm .... so, do you mean that like growing a human ear on a mouse so you have an actual breast growing out of the back or a frog? Or do you mean a whole new market of cosmetic breast augmentation for frogs?

      I'm just asking. Either way, I'm sure it would fast become a popular kind of porn for some people. ;-)

      Cheers

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by wjh31 · · Score: 4, Funny

      excelent, ill start feeding my girlfriend soymilk from a polycarbonate bottle

    3. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're dating a frog? Hey, whatever floats your boat mate...

    4. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by No+Grand+Plan · · Score: 3, Funny

      This could grow tits on a frog.

      Hmmm .... so, do you mean that like growing a human ear on a mouse so you have an actual breast growing out of the back or a frog? Or do you mean a whole new market of cosmetic breast augmentation for frogs?

      I'm just asking. Either way, I'm sure it would fast become a popular kind of porn for some people. ;-)

      Cheers

      Rule 34 strikes again...

    5. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Exactly!

      The absurdity of the proposition is targeted to illustrate the level of hormonal disturbance that is being courted.

      --
      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    6. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by RabidMoose · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is Slashdot. Stealing a frog from the lab is the closest thing to a girlfriend he's likely to get for a long, long time.

    7. Re:Combined with Phyto-Estrogens from Soy Formula by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're dating a frog? Hey, whatever floats your boat mate...

      You're assuming he had a choice.

  3. Bulletin? Bulletin? by btempleton · · Score: 4, Informative

    These bottles were banned two years ago, though not in the USA. This is hardly a bulletin.

    --
    Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  4. Nalgene by HappyCycling · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nalgene, one of, if not the biggest producers of the 'indestructable' plastic bottles with BPA, still does not acknowledge the health detriments even though they stopped producing those bottles. Probably because of liability reasons... http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/technical/bpaInfo.html

  5. soy milk by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    has genistein

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genistein

    genistein is a potent estrogen mimic

    Effects in males

    Isoflavones can act like estrogen, stimulating development and maintenance of female characteristics or they can block cells from using cousins of estrogen. In vitro studies have proven genistein to induce apoptosis of testicular cells at certain levels, thus raising concerns about effects it could have on male fertility.[10]

    soy has been used in many cultures for thousands of years

    where is the faux outrage about how soy is going to destroy the world?

    not that i think we shouldn't get rid of BPA. get rid of BPA, please. the positives it enables are outweighed by the negatives. same with transfats, same with DDT: get rid of these substances form our food supply and our environment. just do it without the drama

    but i don't see why this pantytwisted fear-addled panic is supposed to help anyone or anything

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:soy milk by fractoid · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Hey, that's a nice set of soybeans on that blond over there, I really like to soak her overnight in water and then give her a wet grinding."

      Pedobear approves without quite knowing why.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  6. Very old news? by brunes69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    BPA in plastic bottles was banned in Canada last year.

    1. Re:Very old news? by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 3, Informative

      I believe it was only banned for use in baby bottles.

      This is because babies are probably more susceptible to BPA and because baby bottles are heated, increasing the amount leached.

      --
      http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  7. Good News by PingPongBoy · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is the justification of beast feeding that I've been waiting for. Now, if you don't mind, I'm off to find a tit.

    Unitil I return, all the breast, to you and yours.

    --
    Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
  8. Re:Bulletin? Bulletin? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can the US government finally get on the fucking ball and ban BPA? I'm sick of catering to business interests.

  9. Great! Science Schmience by forgot_my_username · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great! I think we should all go back to lead plumbing and lead pewter cups.... After a couple of generations, we won't have all these fancy "scientific" reports.... Instead we will have... "wite paint tastyer than blu paint"

    refinance cost

  10. FUD? Doesn't seem to harm infants... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was an interesting article on NPR recently where they looked at premature infants who were on heart-lung machines whose tubing all used such BPA. These kids had much higher levels than other kids in their systems. 15 years later there were no detectable problem with their reproductive systems. Granted the study size was small, but there is clearly no dramatic effect from significantly larger levels than adults get from using water bottles.

    1. Re:FUD? Doesn't seem to harm infants... by mozzis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is most disturbing about this is that in this "highly technical" (ahem) community, only one poster noticed that what is important is not whether or not BPA is present in the urine or blood of people who use the bottles, but rather it is what are the health effects if any when it is present? A related question still unasked here is, how far away does a 69% increase in BPA levels put us from FDA-posited unsafe levels? Since the normal level in the population is thousands of times less than the unsafe level, this is an important piece of data that was missing from TFA.

      --
      This is not a self-referential sig.
  11. Re:Bulletin? Bulletin? by Mr_eX9 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Companies have been ditching BPA on their own...government intervention is unnecessary. If you wanna whine about government catering to business interests, you're definitely barking up the wrong tree.

  12. Re:Delicious Uranium by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least RTF summary before you accuse people of mass hysteria. It says that aluminum beverage can liners contain BPA.

  13. I don't want to make light of this, but... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The linked report was less than useful, since the reporting was done in relative terms - e.g. "increased by two thirds". Okay, but two thirds over what? There are generally specific concentrations above which a chemical is identified as harmful by the government (or by a watchdog agency, if you don't trust the government). Why not say "BPA levels increase from the background level of xxxxxxx to a ppm/ppb of yyyyyy in individuals who drank from these bottles for one week"?

    So really, even if the shift away from BPA plastics wasn't already well on, there's no indication from this report whether I should actually be concerned or not. And frankly, as someone with a science background, this sort of thing makes me LESS likely to be concerned. When I see fuzzy reporting, my first though is it was done intentionally because they can't support their case using objective numbers. I've seen this happen in honest-to-goodness scientific papers way too often to not notice.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:I don't want to make light of this, but... by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The linked report was less than useful, since the reporting was done in relative terms - e.g. "increased by two thirds". Okay, but two thirds over what? There are generally specific concentrations above which a chemical is identified as harmful by the government (or by a watchdog agency, if you don't trust the government). Why not say "BPA levels increase from the background level of xxxxxxx to a ppm/ppb of yyyyyy in individuals who drank from these bottles for one week"?

      ...And frankly, as someone with a science background, this sort of thing makes me LESS likely to be concerned. When I see fuzzy reporting, my first though is it was done intentionally because they can't support their case using objective numbers. I've seen this happen in honest-to-goodness scientific papers way too often to not notice.

      It makes me skeptical as well, but I think there are at least two other reasons things get reported this way:

      • Reporters are afraid that if they mention more than one number, Joe Sixpack's eyes will glaze over and he'll think some gawl-durn science geek is trying to talk down to him, and he's less likely to read news from this source again.
      • The reporters themselves have such a poor grasp of science and math that they don't know that anything matters other than the relative increase.
      --
      [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
  14. Re:Delicious Uranium by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Soda bottles are made fomr PET.

    Oh, Good.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  15. half-life by spikenerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So what's the half-life of one of these bottles when full of water? Eventually, most of the BPA will be leached out, and the bottle will become safer. Does this take months, or years?

    1. Re:half-life by man_ls · · Score: 5, Informative

      The bottle itself is a polymer of Bisphenol-A sub-units. As the bottle itself naturally breaks down from exposure to light, heat, etc. the polymer sub-units are liberated into the free BPA that is a problem. As long as there's a bottle made of polycarbonate, the water stored in it will have BPA.

    2. Re:half-life by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not as long as the half life of this story, apparently! (I tossed my Nalgene bottle a year ago, and my coworkers were stunned I hadn't already heard of the hazard...)

  16. Can linings by Bloody+Peasant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most canned foods (soups, beans, etc.) have a BPA-laden liner too. There was one company whose name escapes me right now that used a safer natural* lining. It's for this reason I swore off any canned soup (even the so-called healthy ones) well over a year ago.

    * If you like beans, beans and more beans, this was fine, but the company didn't make the chicken soup I wanted :-(

    --
    -- This .sig intentionally left meaningless.
  17. Junk Science by thethibs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    'We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds [from nearly zero to 1.6×nearly zero] . If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher. This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA's endocrine-disrupting potential,'

    This is propaganda, not science.

    --
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