BPA - Brian Lozinski

Do you like canned food? What about little babies using sippy cups? What If I said that the food will kill you, and the cups will kill the baby? Now look into that babies eyes and rethink how you feel about it. I’m just kidding, that baby is fine and you can keep eating all the canned beans you want. Why do I bring up cans and sippy cups being dangerous? It’s because a segment of people write blogs and books espousing the idea that the chemical Bisphenol A is going to hurt you or your kids.

What is Bisphenol A? It’s a chemical that is used to make some plastics and the linings of food cans. It’s used because it makes plastic very rigid and strong. It also allows us to protect the food in cans by keeping the can from degrading.  

So why are we supposed to be afraid of this chemical? Well the structure of BPA allows it to act as an endocrine disrupting drug. There have been many studies that have found a certain amount of connection between BPA and some health issues like endocrine disruption, or some cancers.

Should you lose much sleep over this? No, you can probably sleep as well as you normally would. Most of the studies use amounts of BPA in animals that are well above the actual amount of BPA we take in from plastics and cans. The amount we take in is about one thousand times less than the amount used in most studies. There are also a number of governmental and international organizations that agree that BPA is not a high risk to people. The European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada, US Food and Drug Administration, US Environmental Protection Agency, and National Institute of Environmental Health have all agreed that BPA is safe in the current amounts we ingest it at. And if you still fear for the babies BPA is banned in baby products in the USA, Canada, and the EU.