Protecting Our Children From BPA

Well, perhaps we will never know with absolute certainty how dangerous or safe BPA is in varying levels. Nor might we ever know with absolute certaintly how different vaccines might affect different people. Consequently, my mantra is this: proceed with caution. I realize we live in a world where it's impossible to eradicate every toxin from our lives, but we can definitely take steps to limit our exposure, and particularly limit the exposure of our children, who are extremely vulnerable.

There's a fine line between living in panic and worry about all of the potential harms in our lives, and burying our heads in the sand. Personally, I feel that our society's constant push for convenience and cheapness is doing us harm. People love to say "But I grew up doing/eating/playing with X" and I'm OK. But are we really OK? With obesity, infertility, autism and other diseases on the rise, we are far from OK. I think it's important to look at the big picture, as well as the small picture - the little things we are exposed to day to day that might have a great impact on our health down the road.

www.quinoaandcornchips.blogspot.com ( http://www.quinoaandcornchips.blogspot.com )

Thank you for giving us a different perspective!

Although I am veering away from the topic of BPA, I would just like to point out that many of the mothers I talked with this winter about the flu shot are also concerned about their child's immune system, not autism.  Many people over a certain age will not be affected by the H1N1 flu because they may have been exposed to a strain of it when they were young, and their own immune systems keep them safe from this flu.  So it becomes a matter of choice: do we want to build up our children's resistance to the flu naturally by exposure to the flu, or do we prevent the flu by providing them with the vaccine?

We are just mothers trying to do our best to raise our children, and we don't have time to keep up with all the research/medical journals that are out there. The media is a main source of information, as well as our pediatricians. Sometimes there is just too much information to sort through.

I'd rather be safe than sorry, so I'm trying to stay away from containers that may contain BPA.

I also had both my children immunized against seasonal flu and H1N1!

Ginny Marie

Lemon Drop Pie ( http://lemondroppie.blogspot.com )

 I replaced the "BPA" bottles and sippy cups in my house, but as a former child health researcher (not affiliated with toxiocology, BPA, or big pharma) and someone who reviews and writes about scientific evidence related to children's health I've kept up with this chemical and wish the media, from the New York Times to mommy bloggers, would present a more nuanced and thus more accurate perspective.  As for politicians, it's a no-brainer to villify any chemical.  All they have to do is mention carcinogen or estrogenic effect and people get angry.   

So it's not surprising that Gillibrand fails to mention many relevant facts and issues - like the hundreds of studies (over several decades) that have tried and failed to find any harmful effects.  Or the fact that many of the "harm" studies involve rats being injected with BPA - a delivery method many experts believe to be more dangerous than ingesting it (the way we probably most often come into contact with BPA).  The studies linking "high" levels of BPA in the blood and urine with heart disease and other chronic conditions sound alarming.  Though many scientists realize they are but correlational and that there are any number of reasonable explanations other than BPA contributed to the diseases.  We even have a recent study showing infants in ICU readily rid their bodies of BPA (in the premier journal, Pediatrics).  As for baby bottles leaking BPA, basically reseachers have shown you have to boil the milk (or water) in them for hours then leave it in the bottles for days before they start leaking even relatively minute amounts, does that sound like anything we mothers do?.  Lastly, it's true, Canada did label it a toxic substance - but not because they believe it so, but because they believed it might be.  What Gillibrand didn't mention - the European equivalent of the FDA, an agency that's traditionally taken a more precautionary stance than the FDA, reviewed all the available evidence and raised the daily "safe" threshold of BPA by a factor of five.  All the European countries also concluded BPA (in its current levels) does not pose harm to humans, as did Australia and Japan.   I direct people who are interested in more objective information to go to STATS.org, a non-profit devoted to fleshing out evidence in the media (http://stats.org/). 

As  I said before, I threw away the BPA bottles but I refuse to panic or to ignore all the scientific evidence.  Is it possible BPA is a horrible toxin?  Somehow I doubt it's as dangerous as we've been led to believe.  But even if it eventually turns out to be a verified carcinogen, particularly dangerous for developing minds and bodies, on a practical level, I worry some of us won't believe it - myself included.  Because by the time we'll figure it out (this research can take years and years) we'll have encountered too many other threats (real and imagined).  As a psychologist I know the consequences of false alarms and living with regular stress and worry.  If this sounds dramatic, you only need recall the past decade of parenting in which we lived through a variety of false threats, chief among them,  vaccines causing autism.  A false threat that's resulted in rising numbers of unvaccinated children and thus, diseases we thought we'd extinguised from this country, not to mention parents refusing flu shots this past winter.         

http://mommadata.blogspot.com/

Thanks for taking an interest in this issue and for co-sponsoring the BPA-Free Kids Act. One issue that will need to be resolved - and, frankly, we think it should be addressed somehow in the legislation itself - is the level to which products will need to be "clear" of BPA to be considered "free" of The current consensus around this issue at present appears to be that 1 ppb is a reasonable level of tolerance, with the assumption that this might change over time. But it is important to include this in any legislation that mandates certain products be "BPA-free" as there needs to be a way to measure it without companies getting hammered and public losing faith in the term "BPA-free" as testing grows ever more sensitive.

At Z Recommends we have been tracking the presence of BPA, as well as a host of other suspect chemicals, in children's products since 2007. You can access the data we've collected directly from company representatives regarding their products' BPA status at the ZRecs Guide to Safer Children's Products ( http://www.zrecsguide.com ) ( http://www.zrecsguide.com/ ).

And here's a bit more ( http://www.zrecommends.com/detail/when-it-comes-to... ) on our perspective on the need for an agreement regarding what testing level is considered adequate, based on some shocking findings from testing in Canada that implicates many products sold as "BPA-free" here in the U.S. and legally there. The Canadian law does not in fact ban BPA but the use of polycarbonate plastic.

If you'd like to discuss our perspective on the state of BPA in children's products or the challenges facing regulatory action, we'd love to speak with you. You can reach us at (979) 314-4692.

Jennifer McNichols

As a young breast cancer survivor and the mother of two young girls, the reports on BPA concern me. As I sent my husband to work with his lunch in a glass container, he asked why I didn't want him to use his old plastic container. I told him that BPA could be released into his food when he heated plastic in the microwave, and he had no idea what I was talking about!

I'm very supportive of legislation that would ban BPA!

Ginny Marie

Lemon Drop Pie ( http://lemondroppie.blogspot.com )

I've blogged about the dangers of BPA before, and have advised readers to stay away when possible, but it's so hard for the average consumer to avoid.  I find myself looking at everything plastic with suspicion, and I can never keep track of which recyling numbers are Good and which are Evil.

And I just signed the co-sponsor thingy--it only took about 30 seconds which was great for someone like me who's lazy... er, busy!

It's my understanding the FDA has missed it's deadline to rule on BPA... I want to know why, frankly. Does the FDA think BPA is safe? Or is this one of those Washington/lobbist issues? 

Politics & News Contributing Editor Erin Kotecki Vest ( http://queenofspainblog.com/ )

I'm so glad you're doing this and thanks for coming to BlogHer to tell us about it.

I'm not sure what got BPA into those products in the first place, but I fear most scary-stuff-in-the-food problems stem from corners cut in manufacturing and agriculture in order to bring down the food price. It blows my mind that a Barbie costs half as much in 2010 as it did when I was playing with them in 1983. I'm afraid to let my daughter play with half of her toys for long because I have no idea how they were made or what is in them. I look with suspicion on processed food, but I always thought canned food was safe, especially if it had less salt.

Parents are asked to stop being helicopters even as we find out every day the things we thought were safe aren't. I'd like to see our government restrict what we can use in manufacturing and agriculture, and I'd rather do more with less and pay more to see safe products return to the marketplace.

Rita Arens writes at Surrender Dorothy ( http://surrenderdorothy.typepad.com ) and BlogHer and is the editor of Sleep is for the Weak ( http://tinyurl.com/9pg62e ). She is BlogHer's assignment and syndication editor.