Back in May, I talked about BPA on receipts and in other paper products. Recently, there has been another flurry of activity on the subject. Because of contamination from receipts, BPA has been found on money, as noted in a recent report published by Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and the Washington Toxics Coalition. This makes it very difficult for people to avoid BPA exposure since nearly everyone handles money.
The numbers matter: Money has very little BPA compared to receipts — a high of 11 parts per million for money vs. 22,000 parts per million for the receipts. But, as noted in this Sightline analysis, “This suggests that while our exposure to BPA from money may be far less problematic than from receipts directly, the chemical is being transferred in ways we didn’t realize before.”
So I went looking a little deeper. We know that BPA is used as the developer material in thermal paper (ie, receipts). This is a known hormone disruptor, probably of greatest danger to children and pregnant women. It turns out that the EPA has convened a working group of industry experts to begin scoping out whether there might be alternatives to using BPA as the developer.
There is some interesting information on the EPA site. In particular, one of the presentations from a July 2010 working group meeting highlighted chemical alternatives to BPA that are under consideration – examples include sulfones (the most promising) and various other kinds of phenols (considered less promising). At this time, we just don’t know what else to use. One hopes there is sufficient incentive for the companies to make an effort to find a healthful alternative.
[By the way, according to an industry source, Appleton Paper - the company I cited as using a BPA alternative - is simply experimenting with an alternative chemical that hasn't been fully tested. So they can't truly say it is superior to BPA in safety.]
There are also some interesting facts quoted by the EPA working group:
- 93% of Americans have measurable levels of BPA in the urine, and kids aged 6-11 have the highest concentration (CDC report, Dec 2009: http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/)
- A recent study suggests that non-dietary exposure is more significant than previously recognized (Stahlhut, et. al. 2009. Bisphenol A data in NHANES suggest longer than expected half-life, substantial nonfood exposure or both. Environmental Health Perspectives).
- In indoor air, BPA is detectable in 50% of samples (Wilson, et al. 2007 An observational study of the potential exposures of preschool children to pentachlorophenol, bisphenol-A, and nonylphenol at home and daycare. Environmental Research.)
- The United States has never measured the BPA levels in its recycled paper stream. But the European Union has. They find that BPA in recycled paper towels ranged from 0.6 to 24.1 mg/kg paper, while
BPA in virgin paper ranged from 0.03 – 0.1 mg/kg paper (Vinggaard AM, Körner W, Lund KH, Bolz U, Petersen JH. 2000. Identification and quantification of estrogenic compounds in recycled and virgin paper for household use as determined by an in vitro yeast estrogen screen and chemical analysis. Chem Res Toxicol. 13(12):1214-22.) - The EU also found that the BPA concentration in recycled paper was 10 or more times higher than in virgin products: 0.19 to 26 ?g/g recycled paper versus 0.034 to 0.36 ?g/g virgin paper (Ozaki A, Yamaguchi Y, Fujita T, Kuroda K, Endo G. 2004. Chemical analysis and genotoxicological safety assessment of paper and paperboard used for food packaging. Food Chem Toxicol. 42(8):1323-37).
So we’re already living with easily detectable levels of BPA. And as we dump BPA-laced paper (such as receipts) into the recycle bin, it is increasing the concentration of BPA in the recycled paper stream. This BPA then rubs off onto other items – the money in our wallet, our fingers, and into our bodies.
I choose to throw away receipts. I don’t want to contribute to the increase in BPA concentration in recycled paper, because I hope we’ll be using more and more recycled paper instead of virgin. BPA is known to have adverse effects, so limiting how far it spreads seems to be wise.
It’s your choice too. How will you respond?
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