What Is Bisphenol A?

1. Bisphenol A or BPA is a compound used in many polymer based plastics like Polycarbonate Plastic (Shatter-proof clear plastic).  This plastic is used to make baby bottles.
2. BPA is used to strengthen and make plastics more flixible.  Plastic without BPA can be more fragile.
3. In the body, BPA acts as an estrogen receptor agonist, which leads it to behave in a similar way to human estrogen
4. Many studies have indicated that there are concerns about BPA’s effects on infant and fetal development
5. In April 2008, the Canadian Government listed BPA as toxic and banned the use of polycarbonate plastic in baby bottles and infant formula can linings
6. A number of US States are looking into banning BPA in baby products

“We believe that the current safety margin (for BPA) needs to be higher. We have concluded that it is better to be safe than sorry.”  Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement , April 19, 2008

Why Stainless Steel?

organicKidz™ Stainless Steel Baby Bottles, offer a number of advantages over the mainstream plastic or glass alternatives. From hygiene to impact resistance to recyclable, organicKidz™ stainless steel products should be your first choice for your family

The most obvious advantage to stainless steel is its durability and longevity.  This is because of its alloy composition (meaning it is a composite of a number of metals).   The result is an inert metal that is resistant to corrosion and will not break down or become brittle when exposed to heat or cold.  Unlike some plastics, it does not need additional chemical treatments to increase its durability.   Furthermore, it will not shatter when dropped, or scratch with normal use. The scratch resistance of Stainless Steel also means that food or bacteria cannot find a place to hide, even after washing.

Which leads to our next point, Stainless Steel is the first choice of hospitals, kitchens and food processing plants because of its easy cleaning ability. You do not need to use strong chemical cleaners to ensure that the product is clean and it is not prone to increased wear and tear from repeated washing.

Finally, Stainless Steel is a 100% recyclable product.  In fact the industry has aggressively pursued recycling strategies for many years.  In 2002 alone,  approximately 12 million tonnes of stainless steel was recycled.   This means that 50-60% of every Stainless Steel product is made from recycled materials (International Stainless Steel Forum, http://www.worldstainless.org/ISSF/Files/Recycling/Flash.html)

As pointed out in the Financial Post (February 23, 2008)
 …”They put stainless steel pins in your body and people live with them…There is no health issue.”
Although this may be a blunt way to put it, it sums up the advantages of Stainless Steel very clearly. organicKidz™Stainless Steel products are at their heart, a safe and reliable product for your family. 

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Articles On Stainless Steel, BPA & Other Chemicals

BPA in Plastic Bottles WARNING - CNN Report 8.18.8

CEH Center's Dr. Galvez on Plastics and Childhood Exposure

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Toxic chemical still found in 'BPA-free' bottles: Health Canada

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News ServiceJuly 30, 2009

Health Canada scientists have found bisphenol A leaching into the liquid of plastic baby bottles marketed to parents as being free of the toxic chemical. The study says "traces" of the toxin were found in "BPA-free" bottles while internal correspondence between a department official and the lead scientist went further, characterizing the amounts in two brands as "high readings."
OTTAWA - Health Canada scientists have found bisphenol A leaching into the liquid of plastic baby bottles marketed to parents as being free of the toxic chemical.
The study says "traces" of the toxin were found in "BPA-free" bottles while internal correspondence between a department official and the lead scientist went further, characterizing the amounts in two brands as "high readings."
Manufacturers of non-polycarbonate plastic baby bottles, however, were quick to challenge the "shocking" results, saying there must be a problem with the way the agency conducted the research.
Government scientists conducted the tests on non-polycarbonate bottles last year after Health Canada announced an imminent ban on polycarbonate plastic baby bottles.
By then, the market had already been flooded with "BPA-free" alternatives made of substitute plastics without any bisphenol A, which were pitched as an option for parents concerned about the health risks associated with the newly labelled toxin.
Bisphenol A, a hormone disrupter that can cause reproductive damage and may lead to prostate and breast cancer in adulthood, is used as a building block in polycarbonate plastic, but not in the substitutes, such as polypropylene.
The test results surprised Health Canada scientists involved, according to records released to Canwest News Service under the Access to Information Act.
"This bottle is labelled polypropylene which should contain no BPA," the lead scientist wrote to a colleague, recommending another analysis be done to "verify the claim" and "check more samples."
The brand mentioned in the correspondence is blacked out on the grounds that the information could result in financial loss or prejudice the competitive advantage of a company.
In separate correspondence, a Health Canada official wrote to the scientist - under the subject heading "Migration of Bisphenol A from 'BPA Free' Baby Bottles and Liners" - to thank him for other results.
"We would definitely like to do a material characterization for the two brands with high readings and would also like to test the other brands too at the same time."
The records show Health Canada tested about nine different brands of baby bottles using non-polycarbonate plastic for possible leaching of BPA, chosen because they're made with a type of plastic that does not use the chemical as a building block.
In a recently published summary of the test results, researchers suggest the "traces of BPA found to migrate from these bottles could be artifacts of the manufacturing process."
And since these "BPA-free" bottles leached less than polycarbonate plastic bottles under conditions designed to simulate repeated normal use, the government researchers concluded these bottles made of polysulfone, polystyrene or polypropylene (non-PC) are a "reasonable alternative" to the banned polycarbonate (PC) bottles.
"The average BPA concentration in non-PC baby bottles after 10 days at high temperature (60 C) was similar to the levels found in PC bottles after 24 hours at 40 C. This is a good indication that non-PC baby bottles may be considered as appropriate alternatives to PC bottles, in order to minimize exposure BPA from PC-plastic baby bottles."
University of Missouri's Frederick vom Saal, a leading researcher into bisphenol A and other endocrine disrupters, said Health Canada's test results are a "wake-up" call for bottle manufacturers and consumers.
"This really is a truly ubiquitous chemical. It's very sticky. It's on dust, it's on everything. It is possible at very, very small amounts that you could maybe detect it in something, but most of these assays are not sensitive enough to pick up a hitchhiker," he said.
"You're picking it up because it's actually a component of the plastic that it's in, and that's a little unnerving to find that people are reporting this coming out of other plastic products like polypropylene."
And even if trace amounts can be explained away as a result of environmental contamination, companies need to revisit their manufacturing processes, said vom Saal.
Leading manufacturers of non-polycarbonate plastic baby bottles said there's no way their bottles leach any amount of bisphenol A, even in trace amounts.
"We have not only three major global testing labs that test our products, but we also do biologic testing on our bottles, and the biologic type of testing is even more sensitive than anything that Health Canada could ever pull off, and it would pick up anything that even behaved like BPA," said Kevin Brodwick, founder and president of thinkbaby, whose products are made with medical-grade plastic specifically formulated to be free of bisphenol A, PVC, nitrosamines, phthalates, lead, melamine and biologically toxic chemicals.
Test results, conducted at least every quarter, consistently show "zero, complete non-detect for BPA," said Brodwick.
"It sounds more like Health Canada has an issue of their equipment not being clean."
BornFree Canada president Tony Ferraro echoed this sentiment, saying several independent tests have all found "no detection" of the chemical in his company's bottles.
"It is extremely difficult to comprehend otherwise" because bisphenol A is not contained or added to the resin or additives during the manufacturing practice," said Ferraro. "I can conclude with 100 per cent accuracy and confidence that any possibility of trace amounts of bisphenol A in BornFree products is unlikely and impossible."
Corina Crawley, meanwhile, wants Health Canada to fully release the study's details, including brands and methodology.
The Ottawa mother sought out BPA-free bottles when her son was born two years ago, expecting all products to be "100 per cent free" of the chemical.
She said details should be released "for the public to decide."
"As a parent, there are risks associated with BPA, but I don't know anything about the science of trace amounts," said Crawley. "What are the amounts that matter?"
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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Harvard study backs bottle concern
Says plastic used leaches bisphenol A
By Beth Daley
Globe Staff / May 22, 2009
A Harvard study released yesterday supports what many public health specialists have long assumed: Hard plastic drinking bottles containing bisphenol A are leaching notable amounts of the controversial chemical into people's bodies.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that people who drank for a week from the clear plastic polycarbonate bottles increased concentrations of bisphenol A - or BPA - in their urine by 69 percent.

The study is the first to definitively show that drinking from BPA bottles increases the levels of the chemical in urine, researchers said. It was published on the website of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

BPA is used in hundreds of everyday products. It is used to make reusable, hard plastic bottles more durable and to help prevent corrosion in canned goods such as soup and infant formula.

"If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher," said Karin B. Michels, senior author of the report and associate professor at the School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. "This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA's endocrine-disrupting potential," she said.

Canada banned the use of BPA in baby bottles in 2008, and Massachusetts health officials are now weighing whether to warn pregnant women and young children to avoid food, drinks, and other items containing the chemical.

Numerous animal studies in recent years suggest that low levels of BPA might cause developmental problems in fetuses and young children and other ill effects. The health effects on adults are not well understood although a recent large human study linked BPA concentrations in people's urine to an increased prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, and liver toxicity.

The Food and Drug Administration has said that products containing BPA are safe and that exposure levels, including those for infants and children, are below those that would affect health. But the FDA's own scientific advisory board criticized agency officials for relying on industry-funded studies to declare the chemical safe.

Michael L. Herndon, an FDA spokesman, said in e-mail to the Globe yesterday that newly appointed chief scientist Jesse Goodman will "provide new leadership and take a fresh look at this important issue from a scientific and policy position, incorporating emerging science and appropriate input from both inside and outside the agency."

Yesterday, an official with the American Chemistry Council discounted any suggestion that the Harvard study underscores a health risk.

In an e-mail, Steven G. Hentges said the study shows that exposure to bisphenol A from use of the bottles is "extremely low" and below the mean BPA amounts reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the US population, "indicating that even exclusive use of polycarbonate bottles does not lead to unusually high levels of bisphenol A in the urine."

The Harvard study was sparked by a discussion in Michels's class after she warned students who regularly swigged water from hard plastic bottles that they might want to limit their BPA exposure. The students countered by asking how much BPA they were getting from the bottles - and soon, a study was born.

Led by Jenny Carwile, a Harvard School of Public Health doctoral student, 77 Harvard students in the study drank all cold beverages from stainless steel bottles for a week to wash BPA out of their bodies and minimize exposure. Most BPA is flushed from people's bodies within a matter of hours. During that week, the students gave urine samples.

Then the students were given two refillable polycarbonate bottles made with BPA to drink all cold beverages from for one week. Urine samples taken over that week showed the students' BPA levels spiked the second week to levels normally found in the general population. Because the students did nothing different in their schedules other than drink from the BPA bottles, the researchers determined their urine concentrations largely came from the bottles.

"While previous students have demonstrated that BPA is linked to adverse health effects, this study fills in a missing piece of the puzzle - whether or not polycarbonate plastic bottles are an important contributor to the amount of BPA in the body," said Carwile.

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Stainless Steel Baby Bottles Are the Best Alternative to Plastic

April 06, 2009 by
Jennifer Wiley

Even though they have been out and about for some time now, not as many mothers are aware of stainless steel baby bottles as they should be. While at first I saw nothing wrong with feeding my babies with plastic bottles, all of the news and research that was surfacing about the dangers of chemicals in plastic alarmed me. That was the turning point for me and that is when I started looking for alternative bay bottles.

But just what is it about the plastic baby bottles that could be so dangerous to your precious little one? The harmful chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is found within a lot of the plastic baby products that are sold. Everything from the mattress liner to the baby bottle, there is a good chance your baby is coming into an extremely harmful chemical. It is so harmful in fact that the Canadian government placed a ban on the use of BPA in baby bottles sold within their country. But what is America doing? The government is doing a lot of things, but nothing about the use of BPA in baby bottles.

Wal-Mart and Toys 'R' Us has reported that they would be phasing out the products for baby feeding that contain BPA. This means that I can still find unsafe plastic baby bottles being sold. So what about alternative baby bottles? When I started searching I found that I had two options. There are the glass baby bottles and then there are the stainless steel baby bottles. At first I did not like the idea of the stainless steel baby bottles and preferred the idea of the glass. In my mind, glass was safer in terms of possible chemicals and poisoning.

While I found that glass is in fact a great alternative to the plastic bottles, I learned that stainless steel baby bottles were just as safe as any other alternative baby bottles. The difference between the two is that the glass could harm the baby in ways the plastic or stainless steel baby bottles could not. As my baby started to carry around bottles, there seemed to be an endless amount of bottles hitting the ground. Imagine if one of those glass bottles broke and the harm that could be done to the baby.

This is why I decided to stick with the stainless steel baby bottles. They are just as earth friendly and baby friendly as glass. And the best part about these alternative baby bottles is that they will not poison my baby with BPA. It is my responsibility and the responsibility of every parent to make sure that their baby is safe from all danger. Until the government steps in to place a ban on the use of BPA, we have to protect ourselves.

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Health Canada to ban chemical in kids' toys

Phthalates, found in rattles and other soft vinyl products, could lead to reproductive problems

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News ServiceJune 20, 2009

Conceding a decade-old voluntary ban on hormone-disrupting chemicals in children's toys hasn't worked, Health Canada Friday announced regulations requiring companies to get phthalates out of soft vinyl toys.
The proposed ban will prevent the use of six phthalates in bath toys, teethers, rattles and other children's products, such as vinyl bibs. The chemical additive, used to soften vinyl can cause reproductive problems.
Health Canada is taking the step after doing a survey last year that found the widespread presence of phthalates in soft plastic toys and other items for young children that are likely to be chewed on, such as rubber ducks.
The survey, released to Canwest News Service under access to information laws, found elevated levels of phthalates ranging from 0.2 to 39.9 per cent by weight of the plastic known as polyvinyl chloride in three-quarters of the items -- or 54 of 72 of the children's products tested.
A similar phthalates ban has been in place in the European Union since 1999, where pthalate levels cannot exceed 0.1 per cent in children's products. A ban in the United States came into effect last year.
The government won praise from nearly all corners on Friday.
"This is great news for parents," said Aaron Freeman, policy director for Environmental Defence, which has been lobbying for a ban for years.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis, health critic for the New Democrats, raised the issue in 1997 when she was first elected. She was even "scolded" by the Speaker of the House of Commons 12 years ago, when she brought in a prop, a pink plastic backpack, to make her point.
"It's good news. Finally, the government has acted. It's been a long, hard struggle. I think the science has been in for a long time. Other countries have acted, even the United States has acted."
The American Chemistry Council said the proposed ban isn't necessary.
"There is no scientific basis to believe that Health Canada's decision to restrict certain phthalates in children's products will improve public health, or meet the stated objective of protecting the health and safety of Canadian children. Phthalates have a long history of safe use, and have been extensively reviewed by governments around the world," Sharon Kneiss, a council vice-president, said in a statement.
"Because phthalates neither migrate out of products easily, nor build up in the body, research has not demonstrated adverse effects to humans from phthalates at typical exposure levels."
Until the regulations come into effect, Health Canada is advising parents and caregivers to monitor their children's use of soft vinyl toys. If parents observe their children sucking and chewing on soft vinyl toys not specifically designed to be placed in a child's mouth, they should take these items away from their children, according to the department.
The new regulations will also effectively ban lead in these children's products by proposing a maximum of 90 milligrams of lead per kilogram of product. The current lead limit for toys intended for children under three years old is 600.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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Avoid bisphenol A when you can
May. 26, 2009 11:04 AM
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Question: I have been reading about the debate over whether BPA is a safe chemical to use in plastics. Should I be using BPA-free products for my family?

Answer: Bisphenol A (BPA) is a compound found in polycarbonate plastics commonly used in items such as baby bottles, tin-can linings and food storage containers. A study conducted by British researchers, which was reported in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that there is a link to higher incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities in people exposed to high levels of BPA. However, at this time, the Food and Drug Administration states that BPA is safe at current levels and there is no risk to people.

While completely eliminating your family's exposure to BPA products may be impossible, there are some steps you can take to minimize it.

• Whenever possible, try to avoid plastic containers marked with PC and recycling label No. 7. Plastics with recycling labels Nos. 1, 2 and 4 are safer choices and are BPA-free.
• Use (stainless steel) glass baby bottles, or those made from a safer plastic, such as polyamine, polypropylene or polyethylene. Plastics that are soft or cloudy-colored doesn't contain BPA. Additionally, Medela bottles used to pump or store expressed breast milk are also made of BPA-free material.
• When selecting a water bottle, consider using one made of stainless steel. Those made of stainless steel are not lined with plastic inserts as other metal varieties.
• Try to avoid eating or drinking foods out of these plastic containers, especially if they have been exposed to heat, in a hot car or placed in the microwave.

Until more research has been conducted and there is a more conclusive answer to the overall safety of BPA, try to reduce your family's exposure to these products. Many Web sites offer additional tips on reducing your exposure to BPA products like the Environmental Working Group, www.emg.org. If you have additional concerns, speak with your primary care physician or your child's pediatrician.

- Dr. Albert Tejada
Tejada is a physician at Catholic Healthcare West's Urgent Care in Ahwatukee

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 Bisphenol A poses disease risk for adults, study says
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Globe and Mail Update
September 16, 2008 at 9:43 PM EDT
An influential new study linking bisphenol A to heart disease and diabetes is raising the possibility that Health Canada erred in April when it concluded that the chemical used to make plastic poses no risk to adults.
The new research, the largest investigation to date on the chemical's possible effects in humans, found that those with higher exposures to bisphenol A had 2.9 times the odds of having cardiovascular disease and 2.4 times the odds of having adult-onset diabetes, compared with those with lower exposures. Those with more of the chemical also had liver enzyme abnormalities.
The study, issued Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was based on the typical ranges of bisphenol A found in American adults.
Health Canada made regulatory history in April by proposing to place bisphenol A on the government's list of toxic substances and banning it from baby bottles. That made Canada the first country in the world to recommend such actions against the ubiquitous compound used in everything from polycarbonate plastic office water-cooler jugs to the resin linings inside nearly all tin and pop cans.