People have long been concerned about bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles, inside cans that food comes in and so many other consumer items. Thousands of things made from clear, hard plastics have BPA, as it is called, as an ingredient because it makes them tough and all but unbreakable.
Although the industry has long insisted BPA is safe, the chemical, which has "estrogenic" properties, meaning it mimics somewhat the properties of the female hormone estrogen, has been linked to behavioral and developmental problems.
Janet Raloff, writing a blog item for ScienceNews, the magazine of the Society for Science and the Public, says that a Massachusetts researcher has found a new source of BPA: cash register receipts.
She writes: While working at Polaroid Corp. for more than a decade, John C. Warner learned about the chemistry behind some carbonless copy papers (now used for most credit card receipts) and the thermal imaging papers that are spit out by most modern cash registers. Both relied on bisphenol A. Manufacturers would coat a powdery layer of this BPA onto one side of a piece of paper together with an invisible ink, he says. “Later, when you applied pressure or heat, they would merge together and you’d get color.”
After concerns about BPA surfaced, Warner, now co-founder of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, went back to sample receipts to see if BPA was still on them. He found that it was. At least on some of them. And without a lab test, you wouldn't know which did and which didn't. He hasn't submitted his results for peer review or publication, but the findings certainly raise some questions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had pledged to issue a ruling last Monday on the safety of BPA, did not do so. Meg Kissinger, a Milwaukee Journal reporter who has been following the issue relentlessly, reported that "last year, relying on two studies paid for by BPA-makers, the FDA held the chemical was safe for all uses. But the FDA's own science board recommended that the agency had not considered enough of the other studies on the chemical."
In a Journal story on Monday, she said advocates for a ban on BPA viewed the prospect of a delay as a good sign, figuring if the FDA plans to maintain its earlier ruling the agency would not need more time.
The agency's information page on BPA was last updated in August.
GreenSpace - her column about how to reduce your carbon footprint in everyday life - appears every other Monday in Health & Science.
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