Nov 3 2009

Oh no! Bisphenol A again

Here’s a good reason why food manufacturers don’t want to test for harmful chemicals.  If you test, you might find something you don’t want to.

Consumer Reports did just that.  It tested a bunch of canned juices, soups, tuna, and green beans and found bisphenol A (BPA) in almost all of them — even the ones labeled organic or bisphenol A-free.

BPA, you may recall, is a chemical in polycarbonate plastics that acts as an endocrine disruptor.  How harmful is it?  Debate rages.  These new data will add to the debate.

CR says it found the highest levels of BPA in some samples of canned green beans and canned soups:

• Canned Del Monte Fresh Cut Green Beans Blue Lake had the highest amount of BPA for a single sample in Consumer Reports tests, with levels ranging from 35.9 parts per billon (ppb) to 191 ppb. Progresso Vegetable Soup BPA levels ranged from 67 to 134 ppb. Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup had BPA levels ranging from 54.5 to 102 ppb.

• Average amounts in tested products varied widely. In most items tested, such as canned corn, chili, tomato sauce, and corned beef, BPA levels ranged from trace amounts to about 32 ppb.

Because it was particularly concerned about BPA exposure for infants and young children, it tested samples of infant formula and apple juice.  It found:

• Similac liquid concentrate in a can averaged 9 ppb of BPA, but there was no measurable level in the powdered version.

• Nestlé Juicy Juice in a can averaged 9.7 ppb of BPA, but there were no measurable levels in the samples of the same product packaged in juice boxes.

Although the BPA in Nestlé Juicy Juice averaged 9 ppb, this was not so high, but children consume a lot of juice so this levels worries the testers.

While waiting for the experts to decide just how bad a problem BPA might be for adults and children, Consumer Reports recommends reducing the risk:

* Choose fresh food whenever possible.

* Consider alternatives to canned food, beverages, juices, and infant formula.

* Use glass containers when heating food in microwave ovens.

I would add to this: urge the FDA to finish up its scientific review right away.  It would be good to know more about just how harmful BPA is, and at what levels.

Update, November 4: I love the industry response to this report: “The use of bisphenol A (BPA) in can linings is both safe and vital for food protection.”

Update, November 9: Thanks to Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore for telling me about her investigations into lobbying against restrictions on BPA (she also posted a summary as a comment here, but her site gives many more of the political details).  The plastics and related industries must be really worried.  They have reason to be worried.  There hasn’t been much reassuring news about BPA recently.

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  • Nancy
  • November 3, 2009
  • 9:29 pm

It is stories like these that help to justify my slightly higher grocery bills and the amount of time I spend in the kitchen preparing meals for my family.

What a cool post, thanks for sharing.

  • fuzzy
  • November 4, 2009
  • 8:14 am

191 ppb is a meaningless number unless it is associated with information on relative safety levels. It *sounds* like a tiny number until you realize that these kinds of things are measured from nanograms to micrograms. I’m not sure why the study is measuring ppb anyway when the vast majority of reports I’ve read on similar studies talk about micrograms when talking about safety levels.

Yes, it’s out there, no I don’t use #7 plastic in my microwave — ever. We eat a diet of home-grown local food, though we allowed each one of us to select 5 items each that are processed foods (canned, crackers, flour, etc) that we still buy (this limitation is for other reasons rather than BPA).

Anti-bacterial soap often has similar compounds in it, which the sadistic part of me smirks at, considering the germophobes out there who are slowly destroying our children’s immune systems by refusing to let them play in dirt.

If I sound ambiguous in my phrasing and attitude, it’s because I am. On the one hand I think it is unconscionable that we don’t test when we have the capability to do so. On the other, people who run around screaming “the sky is falling” almost always are exaggerating the situation. The average american is probably doing much worse to themselves via their diet in a hundred ways, so seeing suburban housewives complaining about plastic when I can see exactly what they’re feeding their families becomes an exercise in eye-rolling.

And these are the same people who have cases of plastic bottled water because it’s *safer* than tap water. I was unappreciated when I pointed out to my relative in Raleigh that the “bottled water” they were drinking was in fact Raleigh/Garner tap water, and it was in a BPA bottle. It’s like watching vegans wearing leather belts and shoes.

Sorry for the digression. I guess what I want to know, and still can’t find, is a reliable study by someone who doesn’t have an axe to grind (integrity in research anyone?) who can give me *levels* of relative safety in BPA. And if the fact that we don’t have them yet is the fight we’re fighting, then we’re just stupid as a species and deserve to reap what we sow.

  • Anthro
  • November 4, 2009
  • 9:27 am

Another timely reminder to make your own food. I shudder to think how much of this crud I ingested as a child who grew up on canned food, especially Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and green beans. Does the body get rid of this stuff eventually? I still use canned tomatoes, but will try even harder next year to grown enough of them to can– as I used to when my children were at home.

  • Michelle
  • November 4, 2009
  • 1:29 pm

@Anthro – just remember that the only commercially available (in the US) canning lids are coated with BPA, as well. I still can my own, but they may or may not be BPA-free.

[...] a Comment BPAs are back, and now they aren’t being very nice to the food industry. From Marion Nestle: It tested a bunch of canned juices, soups, tuna, and green beans and found bisphenol A (BPA) in [...]

[...] étant Marion Nestle note de façon humoristique sur son blog Food Politics, Oh no! Bisphenol A again, à propos de l’étude de Consumer Reports, « I love the industry response to this report: [...]

  • Jill
  • November 8, 2009
  • 11:34 pm

Fantastic job, Marion! Here’s some more info I dug up… there are bills in Congress to ban BPA and industry is spending a lot of money to lobby for their right to continue poisoning us: http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2717/bpa-in-our-food-and-in-our-bodies

[...] the natural world and the manufactured one. Though we can never prove for certain that the chemical BPA doesn’t cause cancer, we already know about viruses and natural plants like tobacco that [...]

[...] containers that hold our food. (To read more on the specific health implications of the study, read this and this.) Once you have absorbed the data on BPA amounts and its hazards to our health, you can [...]

  • Richard Allen Roe
  • November 13, 2009
  • 10:43 am

I guess you know about this article in the Washington Post (and elsewhere) linking exposure to BPA (high levels) with erectile dysfunction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111104569.html

and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR20

[...] Food Politics November 3, 2009 [...]

[...] Food Politics November 3, 2009 [...]

[...] Food Politics November 3, 2009 [...]

[...] Food Politics November 3, 2009 [...]

[...] Kristof and Marion Nestle both address the recent Consumer Reports story about the presence of synthetic estrogen in canned [...]

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