Health fears over a component used in the manufacture of babies' bottles has prompted the authorities to act, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL
THREE LITTLE letters have been creating something of a stir of late – hundreds of scientific studies, reams of newsprint and bans in several countries have put BPA on the radar.
A component in some food packaging materials, BPA or bisphenol A has been in use for decades, but it has been hitting the headlines in recent years due to concerns over its possible potential to disrupt biochemical pathways.
To add to the emotion, BPA has been used in the manufacture of polycarbonate infant-feeding bottles, sparking worries that it may leach into the milk and be consumed by newborns.
Canada has banned infant-feeding bottles that contain BPA, and Europe is set to follow suit. Already France and Denmark have jumped the gun and imposed national restrictions on BPA-containing bottles for babies.
So do the scientific studies back up the concerns?
“It’s a substance that has been studied extensively,” says Dr Rhodri Evans, chief specialist in toxicology with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. “It has almost been the model for the so-called endocrine disruptors, these are things that could potentially have an effect on the system in the human body.”
Studies have recently raised particular questions about BPA’s impact on brain development in an animal model and about links to conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
But in a statement last September, the European Food Safety Authority says: “These studies had many shortcomings. At present the relevance of these findings for human health cannot be assessed, though should any new relevant data become available in the future, the panel will reconsider the current opinion.”
If that doesn’t reassure, there are other factors involved in the process, including our exposure levels and how our bodies ship the chemical out if we take it on board.
Even if BPA does migrate out of plastic food packaging – and it usually needs heating to get it moving – our bodies have mechanisms to get rid of it quickly, explains Evans.
“From about four or five months onwards, we have a very well developed detox mechanism for BPA; it is able to take it out of the body,” he says.
“And the evidence to date suggests that even as soon as we are born we have other mechanisms that can deal with that BPA.”
However, because the potential for exposure is higher in newborns and infants using polycarbonate bottles, the impending European bans on manufacture and sale of those products are a precaution, he adds.
Even without the official ban, BPA bottles are a dying breed anyway. “There has been a response to consumer concerns by the industry and there are plenty of alternatives available – there are virtually no BPA-infant feeding bottles on the market these days,” says Evans.
New studies on BPA and other potential endocrine disruptors are arriving thick and fast, but the regulators are watching, he says. “There’s a lot of data coming out now . . . it’s an evolving area. We will keep it under review but we welcome the measure to prohibit its use in infant-feeding bottles, because it removes any uncertainty parents may have.”
PUTTING BPA TO THE TEST: ‘IT REALLY DOES NOT RELEASE FROM BABY BOTTLES’
Walking into the food contact testing lab at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, near Milan in Italy, is like entering a slightly strange experimental kitchen.
Familiar objects such as chopping boards and pot stirrers are dotted around the lab, but they are being put through their paces – bubbling in liquids and other simulations to test how their materials react to normal use.
One issue that has been particularly under the spotlight in the lab recently is the potential for substances to leach out of plastic containers and into liquids that humans are to drink.
“I have a lot of baby bottles,” says researcher Dr Catherine Simoneau, gesturing towards trays stacked high on the lab bench.
She has been measuring the levels of BPA that migrate out of infant- feeding bottles made of polycarbonate by testing them with a liquid containing ethanol that simulates milk.
And the levels of movement she has seen are low. “It really does not release from baby bottles,” says Simoneau.
“We have a limit that is currently 600ppb , and the release that we see in the worst case condition is around 1-2ppb.”
And when the JRC facility, which is a European Union reference laboratory, tested migration from polycarbonate bottles into heated mineral water, the results were still not even grazing the limit.
“We see a little more with mineral water, but still in the range that is going to be definitely below 50ppb,” says Simoneau.
Polycarbonate infant-feeding bottles are on the brink of being banned across Europe, and several alternatives are already available and in use. But are these alternatives leaching anything into the liquid they contain?
Dr Simoneau is on the case and has been screening about 200 non-polycarbonate infant-feeding bottles from across Europe.
“We have completed the experiments of a large screening study on the release of potential chemicals leaching from the new ‘BPA-free’ plastic baby bottles marketed across EU countries,” she says.
“The interpretation of the results and report are expected for spring 2011.”
