Health Risk or Hysteria? Plastic Baby Bottles and Bisphenol A

Not too long ago a colleague of mine who has a four-month-old baby asked my opinion on BPA. My mind ran through the potential acronyms—did she mean BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia, otherwise known as an enlarged prostate)? Nope. How about BPM (beats per minute)? Wrong again.

I finally had to admit I was stumped. Turns out she was talking about bisphenol A, a chemical in found clear, hard plastic known as polycarbonate, which is used to make water bottles, baby bottles, and the like. Bisphenol A has been around a long time—about 60 years, in fact. And it seems to grab media attention in cycles: The Food and Drug Administration studied safety concerns in the late 1990s and again in 2002 and 2003.

But lately it’s getting a mega-boatload of attention. It started last month, when the National Toxicology Program issued a draft report that said BPA merited “some concern” (the middle of its five-point rating scale) for fetuses, infants, and children. The chemical could have possible neural and behavioral effects, as well as effects in the “prostate gland, mammary gland, and an earlier age for puberty in females.”

Retailers such as Wal-Mart and CVS said they were pulling those bottles from the shelves. The Canadian government announced that it was mulling a BPA ban. Then last week Senator Charles Schumer discussed his proposed U.S. BPA ban at a Senate subcommittee hearing. But an expert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said at the hearing that “a large body of available evidence” indicates that BPA is safe.

It’s enough to make a new mom run screaming through the house, stamping on really hard, unbreakable plastic, until it, well, breaks.

So before you lose it, here’s what is known about the chemical. For adults, it doesn’t seem all that risky. So I personally wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.

But for babies and children there might be more to the story. How much more? At this point it’s hard to tell.

What is known is that BPA is found in the epoxy lining of food cans, including infant formula cans. It’s also found in clear, hard plastic—including some baby bottles. Heat causes the chemical to leach into the liquid.

So if you pour liquid formula from a BPA-containing can into a BPA-containing bottle, then heat it up, you get more of the chemical than if you use other containers.

The potential health risk depends on how much of the chemical you get. The FDA says some studies use superhigh temperatures or “aggressive solvents” (to mimic years of use) that you’d be unlikely to ever encounter in real life. They estimate that a baby’s exposure would have to be 7,000 times greater than is currently likely to have an impact on health.

So I spoke with Mitchell Cheeseman, PhD, the deputy director of the office of food additive safety at the FDA, and he told me that “a lot of those studies have a lot of limitations that make them frankly unacceptable to fit into and contribute to safety decisions at FDA.”

The FDA is, well, picky. When safety concerns are raised—as has happened in the past—the regulatory agency asks manufacturers to conduct more animal research in a specific way to meet FDA’s persnickety standards (for the record, persnickety is good).

But others say the FDA relies too heavily on such industry-conducted studies, which suggest BPA isn’t a problem.

I don’t equate industry-funding with evil intent—I generally believe these are hard-working humans studying this stuff, not automatons out to poison my kids. However, some industry-funded studies (at least clinical trials in humans) can be biased, so it’s prudent to take them with a grain of salt.

Elizabeth Hitchcock, public heath advocate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, notes that bottle manufacturers, such as Nalgene, announced that they can make products without using BPA.

“If we can do that and there are studies that show that this has an adverse effect on our growing children, why not just exercise the good common sense of saying this chemical doesn’t belong in a product that’s going to end up in a kid’s mouth?” Hitchcock told me. (She also testified at the Senate committee.)

An FDA task force was launched in April to revisit the issue. In the meantime, here are some recommendations gleaned from various agencies.

1. Don’t put boiling water in a polycarbonate baby bottle. Heat formula in another type of container and pour it into the bottle after it has cooled to a lukewarm temperature. (Check out other recommendations from Health Canada.)
2. If a bottle is damage or scratched—throw it out. (Check out other information from bottle manufacturer, Avent.)
3. If you’re buying a new bottle and want to avoid polycarbonate, look for a triangle-shaped recycling symbol with the number 7 in it and sometimes the letters “PC.” This indicates it’s polycarbonate. Not all items with the 7 symbol contain BPA, and if the bottle doesn’t have a recycling symbol, it may still be polycarbonate.
4. Check out your bottle manufacturer’s website for more details on the specific brand you use. (This PDF from Playtex that might help.)

I know it’s not much comfort, but my kids probably consumed a river of milk and formula from BPA-containing bottles. And they seem OK.

(PHOTO: RANDY FARIS/CORBIS)