Some solid reassurance about BPA – one more thing you don’t need to worry about

The Pediatric Insider

© 2015 Roy Benaroch, MD

Remember BPA? It’s a chemical used in the manufacture of plastic things, food can liners, and lots of other things. For a while, everyone seemed to be worried about it. Stickers started showing up on bottles – “BPA FREE!”—which created all kinds of anxiety among people who had no idea there was BPA in their water bottles to begin with. It’s a scary sounding, chemically kind of thing, bisphenol-A, so we’d be better off without it. Right?

I last wrote about BPA in 2008. It wasn’t worth worrying about then, and it’s even less worth worrying about now.

There have been dozens of studies of BPA over the last few years. I’ll just highlight a few recent ones:

JAMA, 2011. Adults eating canned soup – from ordinary cans manufactured with BPA in the liners – had 1200% percent more BPA in their urine than adults consuming fresh soup. Bloggers like this one completely misunderstood the significance of this, with headlines like “BPA rises 1200% after eating from cans.” Yes, it does rise—IN THE URINE. That’s how you get rid of the stuff. High amounts in the urine are good, it means your body is excreting it. That’s what kidneys do. They’re the real detox system—not the expensive BS from the health food store. Want to rid your body of “toxins”? Drink some water and let your kidneys do their job.

Toxicology Science 2011. Adults consuming a high-BPA diet had blood and urine levels monitored. Urine levels were much higher than blood levels – good! It’s excreted! – and in fact blood levels remained extremely low, or undetectable. BPA doesn’t seem to have a chance to make it into body tissues, or concentrate there. It’s peed out. (This study is reviewed in detail here.)

Environmental Health Perspectives, 2013. High doses of BPA solutions were placed in the mouth of anesthetized beagles, and blood levels showed that this method of administration led to higher absorption of BPA than BPA swallowed into the gut. (Lesson: It may not be a good idea to just hold soup in your mouth for hours. Just swallow it, OK?)

Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 2015. To evaluate the potential for oral absorption of BPA in humans, adult volunteers were fed warm tomato soup with added BPA—after coating their mouths with every spoonful, they swallowed it. This recreated a genuine eating experience better than the beagle studies (the dogs were anesthetized and their BPA just sat in their mouths.) In this human study, BPA levels in the blood remained low, and as has been observed previously, almost all of the BPA absorbed was quickly deactivated and excreted in the urine.

What’s the harm in replacing BPA in food containers? There’s always a trade-off. Those other kinds of plastics may be more hazardous.

BPA is just one of many “chemical” bugaboos to attract media attention. Caramel coloring? Eek! BHT? Lawds! There are entire industries out there making money off of food fears and nutrition fears. And vaccine fears. There’s enough unnecessary fear out there to power an entire media empire based on one person with vain hair, a magnifying glass, and a kindergartener’s understanding of chemistry.

Don’t live in fear. If you want to avoid plastics, that’s great—eat fresh things, grow a garden, cook and eat with your family. The cans of beans in your pantry, they’re not going to kill you any time soon.

More about BPA from Science 2.0

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Tags: bpa, food safety

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