Bisphenol A has been around for several decades, and started being used heavily as an ingredient of plastics used to hold water and other beverages a couple decades ago. The possible harmful side effects of Bisphenol A (also known as BPA) leaching out of the plastic and into the stuff we drink is only recently receiving any attention from the mainstream media.
If you want to learn about details of how BPA and other similar chemicals act on our bodies, you can read this 2007 Creative Commons-licensed journal article, The Toxic Origins of Disease by Liza Gross.
The article discusses not just the research, but also discusses the way that large corporations, who feel comfortable exposing consumers to chemicals like this, fund research which generally reaches conclusions counter to independent researchers who find harmful side effects from exposure to those chemicals. It is long and detailed, but worth reading if you are interested in understanding why you probably have enough BPA in your bloodstream to be concerned about.
I have used a couple of Nalgene liter-sized water bottles when camping and hiking for years, but I think I need to find a new, Bisphenol-free solution. Unfortunately it sounds like BPA leaches from soda bottles and even from the thin plastic that lines soda cans, and I am a regular consumer of soda. Bleah.
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You think water bottles are bad? Look up what’s in dental composites. The stuff they make the resin out of is bisphenol dimethcrylate and bisphenol glycidylmethacrylate, among several others. These break down to BPA. If the temperature fluctuations affect the leaching in water bottles, imagine what it does in our mouths!!
http://jada.ada.org/cgi/content/full/137/3/353
This is a website telling about it.
Comment by Kathy — February 4, 2010 @ 5:46 pm |