13 ms·

BPA alternative disrupts normal brain-cell growth, study says

242 points by finid 12y ago

ra 12y ago
So what is the safest drink bottle to use? I have a stainless steel one, but it has some sort of lining.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  If you can keep from breaking it, lead-free glass.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Something you enjoy drinking from.
- micro_cam 12y ago
  specialized bike bottles use a glass like interior coating that has shown no leaching in some tests.
  - jzwinck 12y ago
    Bike bottle interior coatings are not very durable. They're OK for a while if you only drink water and do not scrub the inside with anything abrasive at all. But one good scrubbing with a stiff brush and a few days drinking juice out of that thing, and it will taste bad, probably until you throw it out. Most people want their bike bottles to be squeezable, so some tradeoffs are made. Everyday bottles can be rigid, so stainless steel (or glass) makes more sense.
    - micro_cam 12y ago
      Just to be clear i'm talking about the "Purist" bottles made by Specialized the company which use a proprietary coating that seems to work well, not bike bottles in general. See for example [this review](http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/product-review-specialized-purist-watergate-bottle http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/product-review-specializ...). I only recently discovered the bottles so can't give a long term review, the manufacture does recommend against scrubbing them. Uncoated stainless and glass are great options as well but not practical for some uses.
      - cullenking 12y ago
        we buy a lot of these as promo/schwag materials for our business (ridewithgps.com, a bike software website/apps) and they certainly do wear out. I end up rotating mine our after 6 months, and i do not wash them with anything but the soap + water + shake method. the lining wears off and you are left with a plasticky tasting bottle. even new, if you let them sit with water in them for a couple days they'll taste slightly of plastic, so it's not perfect. much better than any others we have tried though, so worth it.
- jonah 12y ago
  What stainless bottle do you have? My Klean Kanteens are unlined stainless. If you get the right lid it'll be stainless lined with a silicone seal too.
- ars 12y ago
  Polyethylene and Polypropylene. Same advice as when the BPA thing first came out. They went back to the old plastics with a different plasticizer than BPA, but it's best to just use a plastic that doesn't need a plasticizer in the first place.
- brianglick 12y ago
  I recently bought a 22oz Lifefactory glass bottle. Mostly covered with silicone for durability. It's a bit heavy, but otherwise great. Only downside is that the cap is made out of polypropylene, but polypropylene is apparently BPA, BPS, and phthalate free. (May still have other issues, of course.)
- larrywright 12y ago
  I'll second the vote for Klean Kanteen - I love mine. Also worth looking at is LifeFactory. They have glass bottles with silicon sleeves, that are quite sturdy. I've dropped mine a number of times and it hasn't broken. They also make baby bottles and food storage containers, if that's something you need.
  - cdr 12y ago
    LifeFactory is just normal soda-lime glass, AFAIK. They can shatter from drops of a couple feet.
    - larrywright 12y ago
      They can, but in my experience, they don't. I'm not sure if it's the silicon sleeve around it, or what, but I've dropped mine a number of times and it's been fine.
- rgbrenner 12y ago
  Klean Kanteen is stainless steel, but doesn't have a lining. I also have one of these (the glass bottle is made in japan): http://www.amazon.com/Takeya-Classic-Bottle-Silicone-22-Ounce/dp/B003DTLNUG http://www.amazon.com/Takeya-Classic-Bottle-Silicone-22-Ounc...
- quaffapint 12y ago
  Do the klean kanteen or whatever steel ones smell in a day or two like the SIGG ones I used to get? They were the reason I switched to plastic. You had to constantly scrub them and put cleaning pills in them.
  - zevyoura 12y ago
    The "classic" Sigg bottle is actually lined with plastic, and I find the narrow neck makes them harder to clean as well.
- joeyspn 12y ago
  Nothing like the ol' pal "Glass" and/or Stainless Steel...
ratsmack 12y ago
Every "tin" can I have opened, for as long as I can remember, has a plastic coating inside. I've always wondered what material is being used for this coating. Plastic of one kind or another seems to be inescapable.
- megablast 12y ago
  If a tin can has a dent in it, they are not supposed to use it. Always check at the supermarket before you buy them as well.
  - ars 12y ago
    The dent thing is minor. The only problem with a dent is it might have a small hole - that rarely happens though. If it happened, the can would be bloated and smell, it would be obviously spoiled. A dent has nothing to do with the lining.
  - stephentmcm 12y ago
    Source? This sounds very urban legend. Most stores won't sell it as 'damaged stock' but they also reject many other products based entirely on external appearance regardless of whether they are fit for purpose or not.
    - dghughes 12y ago
      Not urban legend more like common sense, botulism is possible if the can seal is broken. Source? Just google it http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/77ffde83-dc51-4fdf-93be-048110fe47d6/Shelf_Stable_Food_Safety.pdf?MOD=AJPERES http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/77ffde83-dc51-4fdf-...
  - finid 12y ago
    I don't know if they still do it now, but years ago I noticed that the major super markets will actually sell any canned item that has a dent at a reduced price. That's is fact, not urban legend.
  - bjt 12y ago
jostmey 12y ago
In case you haven't noticed, we have surrounded ourselves with chemicals that our bodies never evolved to deal with, and the list is growing. And as a society we are still dealing with chemicals known to be dangerous. Take asbestos as an example. Everyone knows it is bad, and yet you can still find in the walls of old school buildings, houses, and places of work. Worse, the ban on asbestos was lifted in the USA allowing for materials to contain up to 1% of it. Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down.
- finid 12y ago
  > Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up. That made me laugh. but yes, it's true.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Huh, you should stop using computers immediately if you care a little bit about what you said, because that's one hell of a cocktail of various plastics, heavy metals and the like. And you are constantly breathing dust containing who knows what coming from it.
  - jostmey 12y ago
    You're totally right. Not only are computers laden with a lot nasty chemicals, but the insides can become really hot, which could help the chemicals leak out. At the same time, computers have become indispensable to our lives.
- jacobolus 12y ago
  > I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down. I suspect you’ve never spent time in rural peasant villages. Many rural peasants (still today, but even more in the past) eat a simple and often poorly balanced diet punctuated by occasional periods of near starvation, do demanding physical labor from an early age until their bodies break down, catch all sorts of diseases that suburban office workers are never exposed to, sometimes get serious bacterial infections when they suffer any kind of laceration, have vastly inferior treatments for pretty much every medical condition, even something simple like a broken ankle used to be permanently crippling, etc., and you find it "amazing" that life expectancy has improved? If you want to talk about exposure to various carcinogenic compounds, any family who cooks on a wood fire in an open hearth in the middle of their house is breathing more smoke than all but the heaviest of cigarette smokers, worse than the worst air pollution Beijing has to offer.
jared314 12y ago
Links to the actual study: Abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.abst... Text: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.full... Supporting Information: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/01/07/1417731112.DCSupplemental/pnas.201417731SI.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/01/07/1417731112.DCSu...
teuobk 12y ago
On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects. There are early rumblings (e.g. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm ) that there might be something similar going on with the replacement of trans-fats with palm oil. Palm oil behaves similarly to trans-fats, which makes it attractive to industry, but then it isn't too surprising that those same similarities might also make it similarly unhealthy.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects. Don't rely on intuition for toxicology. If there's one field where there's a strong lack of Science (and I mean predictive Science), that's this one. There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity. Or, take chirality for example. The same exact chemical formula, but the spatial arrangement being the mirror of each other's. This caused major issues back in the 20th century, when some drugs were synthesized without chiral specificity, and led to one chiral version being harmless and effective to improve a certain condition, and the other chiral version attacking the central nervous system. No, just don't rely on intuition there.
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    > There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity. Your point not to rely on intuition is a good one, but I think that's not quite what the GP was doing. That is, I think the claim wasn't that a chemically similar compound should behave similarly, but rather that a behaviourally similar (in some ways) compound should behave similarly (in other ways)—stated which way it is almost a tautology, no?
curiously 12y ago
It seems like it's impossible to avoid BPA, plastic is EVERYWHERE. I no longer use coffee machine because it has plastic parts and it has a rather plastic taste. I now use dripping method without any plastic. I have become more and more vigilant about plastic in consumables. Would love to have a comprehensive list of items to replace at home.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Fwiw, BPA isn't in most plastics, generally only in polycarbonates, plus some epoxy linings. Most plastic bottles, for example, are made of various kinds of polyethylene instead. A useful (but not exact) rule of thumb is that almost all BPA-containing plastics have resin code 7 (Other); plastics with codes 1-6 typically don't have BPA.
  - curiously 12y ago
    I don't know if I can trust it
deleted 12y ago
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ewzimm 12y ago
Exposure to BPA and similar substances from cans and bottles is probably inconsequential compared to exposure from receipts if you use any kind of hand sanitizer or lotion. A single exposure can equal hundreds of cans. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht... (Fixed the link, thanks)
- ekianjo 12y ago
  your link seems to be broken.
  - pmh 12y ago
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht... is the fixed link.
  - finid 12y ago
    Here's the correct link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht...
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Good reason to not use hand sanitizer and lotion, then. I have a highly sophisticated self-repairing, self-lubricating, self-renewing exterior on my person, and my ancestors needed neither lotions nor aerosols of alcohol in the millions of years prior to whenever those things suddenly became popular. Also a good reason to pay cash, which was another long tradition of my people.
  - jsankey 12y ago
    Although I agree that our own bodies tend to be pretty awesome and require less help than many people think, your argument in this case is a little shaky. We live in a very different environment to our ancestors and expose our skin to all sorts of things that they never could have. Even ignoring all the new compounds we interact with daily, just moving ourselves around the planet (to areas with different sun exposure, as a key example) can have a big impact on our health.
UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
Can I ask a perhaps very ignorant question: We have a kid on the way, and now that BPA and BPA free are considered estrogen leaking, what are we meant to buy? However it should be noted that the kid is meant to be a girl, so for girls is this a non-concern since obviously estrogen won't be unusual within their bodies.
- finid 12y ago
  Search this page for comments that mention Klean Kanteen and LifeFactory.
- djur 12y ago
  Estrogen isn't unusual within a man's body, either. An excess or lack of either estrogen or testosterone can have adverse effects in both men and women.
- 8ig8 12y ago
  Honest question: Is glass an option? Aluminum?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Definitely not aluminum.
- ekanes 12y ago
  Glass is making something of a comeback, presumably related to this trend.
- trentlott 12y ago
  Glass. It's expensive and fragile, but good old silicon oxide is as inert as you can ask for. Extra estrogen in a female baby is absolutely a concern. I was part of an investigation that dosed nursing rats with BPA and investigated the effect on female offspring. I left for graduate school in polymer chemistry, but you can read the results here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q It's no blockbuster paper, but the whole of the evidence gathered suggests you shouldn't expose your baby to BPA just because it's female. There's also a link between post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (older women taking estrogen after their body ceases production) and breast/uterine cancer.
goalieca 12y ago
When everyone started switching away from BPA, I asked one of my chemical engineering friends about it. He said that they switched from a chemical with known problems to one that hasn't been studied yet. This is how it always goes.
spuiszis 12y ago
“A lot of the alternative chemicals have not been adequately tested because they don’t have to be,” said lead author Deborah Kurrasch. “A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.” I'm no healthcare policy expert but this sounds like the FDA has it backwards.
- refurb 12y ago
  “A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.” That's a ridiculously untrue statement. Try and add a chemical with unknown safety to a food product/cosmetic/medical device and see how long it takes the FDA to shut you down. The FDA does have GRAS designation (generally recognized as safe) for many chemicals, but that is based on a large body of evidence that has demonstrated no (or manageable) safety concerns.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hiou 12y ago
Can we change this title to something closer to the original title of the article? The current title is inflammatory and will likely just bring out all the conspiracy nuts. "BPA alternative disrupts normal brain-cell growth, is tied to hyperactivity, study says"
IgorPartola 12y ago
For adults, go get yourself a Hyrdro Flask. It's a double-walled (thermos-style) food grade stainless steel bottle. It comes with a 100 year warranty, and after your grandkids are done playing with it, it's fully recyclable. There are several products like this on the market, but I am a happy Hydro Flask owner/user. Aluminum bottles are a non-starter: aluminum is toxic to humans, and has to be coated to not leak into your food. Often times there's a plastic liner to prevent the aluminum from coming into contact with your food/drink. Some steel bottles are crap: they actually do stain/rust, and being non-transparent this can be hard to spot. Glass bottles are nice, but obviously more breakable/dangerous than metal. Personally, I don't trust any plastic bottles: not Nalgene not any other kind. Had a Nalgene bottle once; after it took on a stale water odor, I could not get it out with anything. This article particular finding is far from the last one in terms of which plastics do what to the organism. For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle. Is it possible to make stainless steel baby bottles?
  - trentlott 12y ago
    I know it's certainly possible to make glass baby bottles.
    - lostlogin 12y ago
      It's a minor point but bottles that provide any insulating value are sort of worrying to use as the risk of giving a baby a hot drink increases and glass baby bottles are sometimes thick glass. It turns out that getting up for the 9th time, totally exhausted, makes reliably noticing anything hard. Disclaimer: I have only used one glass baby bottle ever
      - sitharus 12y ago
simplexion 12y ago
As bad as the original? Can someone link to evidence of the dangers of people exposed to BPAs through plastics? My understanding is that the whole BPA craziness is the same as the Phthalates nonsense. The problem is if you want to avoid these things, make sure you don't get sick and end up in hospital because then you will be in contact with these like crazy.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  No it is not nonsense. BPA is a kniwn endocrine disrupting chemical. Endocrine disruption is when a chemical interferes with many of the hormones in your body. Hormones which regulate cell growth, differentiation ajd overall cell behavior. Disruption of these can have severe consequences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25569640 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25569640
  - simplexion 12y ago
    I am aware of endochrine disruptors causing problems, but is there evidence of the average level of BPA exposure causing negative effects to be concerned about. I can't find any studies that show this.
- gcb0 12y ago
  thru plastic or not, it's still the same compound. what's your point?
sowhatquestion 12y ago
Chemists of HN: Why does this keep happening? Why is BPA or something close to it seemingly required to manufacture plastics? Or to put it another way, why has it been so difficult to come up with an alternative that's distinct enough to avoid BPA's effects on the human body?
- refurb 12y ago
  Because a lot of plastics don't have the desirable physical properties unless you add plasticizer.
- VLM 12y ago
  I can try to provide a (late) serious, long-ish response. First of all there is no "the plastic atom" they are chemically more diverse than anything in computer-land. So the concerns of polycarb plastics have no relationship with polyethylene or teflon or whatever other than coincidentally having been industrially developed around the same decades so people call them all plastics, although its actually worse than calling anything green a plant and assuming they're all the same. Here's your analogy: Plastics are tangled up strings. Like a crazy nanoscale 3-d composite. The strings are mfgr in place by dumping a bunch of wanna-be string pieces and crazy reactive hyperactive catalyst in a form and then waiting, maybe heating, to convince the catalyst to bond wanna-be string chunks into a long string. The mechanism or turning pieces of string into a long string is surprisingly common and boring, which is the source of the whole problem. You have a chunky molecule with a finger or whatever sticking out containing a double bond. Just a plain old boring double bond like you'd find all over the place, like unfortunately in your innards. The crazy catalyst has the unusual ability to snap open double bonds and fall off to repeat maybe a few thousand times. Then the opened double bonds sometimes snap right shut, but sometimes grab a neighbor. Think of a clown car with 20 people squashed into it, clasping their left and right hand together, and "magically" their hands unclasp for a moment, maybe, and due to crowding, their hands snap shut on a neighbors hand instead of their own. Now instead of having 20 separate clowns in a clown car, you got a conga line of 20 attached clowns wedged into place and you can't remove just one anymore because they're all stuck together. They've polymerized into a car shaped brick with a molecular weight of about 20 clowns. So now you know why some plastics are industrially sold based on molecular weight. The "trick" to making plastics is making a shelf stable substance, preferably liquid-ish, that won't spontaneously polymerize, but has crazy molecule sex with all its neighbors at the drop of a catalyst hat. The catalyst is like a little monster than hands out to everyone little molecule-condoms coated with superglue instead of lube. (don't take this all literally, but figuratively it kinda works) Its actually quite tricky chemistry which is why it took till the last century to really kick off plastic production "for real" rather than just screwing around. Plastics stereotypically, on average across the field, are super boring biochemically. Pure polyethylene is about as chemically exciting and reactive as asphalt, for example. Probably because it vaguely resembles asphalt chemically, you can make synthetic oil out of little bits, and polyethylene is close to what synthetic asphalt would look like. Kinda. Unpolymerized polyethylene is just a simple flammable gas, a very close cousin of propane / butane. The reason why nobody owns a ethylene cigarette lighter or has an ethylene grill in their backyard to grill burgers is it all goes into plastics not lighters and grills... So the world is full of really boring plastics. But not all plastics are boring. Unfortunately, BPA makes a totally awesome and non-biologically reactive plastic once it cures and links up to the neighbors in a big chunk, but by itself, uncured, its fairly nasty stuff. It really wants to grab hold of another molecule, which is awesome if it successfully grabs hold and never lets go of another BPA molecule, but kinda bad if it mistakenly grabs onto your DNA (or whatever) like a bear trap. There are also interesting "green" implications such that if BPA based plastics ever decay, its just like dumping a tanker car of monomer out in the landfill. Kinda nasty if it ever happens. On the other hand, never breaking down is kind of ecologically nasty too. Generally speaking the "green" plastics like PLA or PE have non-toxic monomers and are not nearly as durable as the "non-green" plastics like polycarb family, speaking generally, etc.
aaron695 12y ago
The nutters seem out on mass today.....
- finid 12y ago
  You mean that people who care about their health are "nutters"? Count me in. I am a nutter!
jrapdx3 12y ago
Maybe I missed it, but it should be mentioned that there are many variations of bisphenol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol Also worth noting that BPS was reported >10 years ago as producing endocrine disruption similar to BPA. I think it likely other bisphenol variants would do the same. Part of the problem is not only the use of BP(A|S|.+) as plasticizers but also BP_ is a constituent of polycarbonates, epoxies and other industrially important materials. The amount of free BP_ in a properly prepared and cured product is likely quite small, but heating, UV exposure, etc., can hasten decomposition or release of BP_. Used as plasticizer BP_ would be more easily transferred and ingested. As others have said, the safest "plastic" containers are the low surface energy thermoplastics, polyethylene or polypropylene. They aren't pretty and clear like polycarbonate, but they are a whole lot less risky.
ZoFreX 12y ago
I don't understand why so many people on HN are worried about BPS or BPA. So far studies have shown that it has detrimental effects on the developing brain (in extremely limited animal trials!). Presumably everyone on here is not an infant and their brain has developed... so why are you buying BPA/BPS free bottles?
- iSnow 12y ago
  Because I am a father?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    From Freakonomics: No one is more susceptible to an expert’s fearmongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. A parent, after all, is the steward of another creature’s life, a creature who in the beginning is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species. This leads a lot of parents to spend a lot of their parenting energy simply being scared. The problem is that they are often scared of the wrong things. It’s not their fault, really. Separating facts from rumors is always hard work, especially for a busy parent. And the white noise generated by the experts — to say nothing of the pressure exerted by fellow parents — is so overwhelming that they can barely think for themselves. The facts they do manage to glean have usually been varnished or exaggerated or otherwise taken out of context to serve an agenda that isn’t their own.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      That's great and all until you consider that all parents are doing here is managing their buying decisions, so even the "threat" is low, so is the solution. I'm pretty sure that quote was aimed at parents worried about e.g. third party kidnappings (which are insanely rare). Or who consider inoculations to be "dangerous" (without examining the danger of the other side). Switching from one type of bottle to another may do "nothing" in the medium to long term, but it also costs the parent an inconsequential amount. As long as you aren't exchanging one somewhat unsafe bottle for a much more unsafe bottle (e.g. bottles made of lead) you're likely fine or breaking even.
iSnow 12y ago
>A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise. In contrast, in Europe, there is REACH - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Authorisation_and_Restriction_of_Chemicals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Autho... - http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/reach/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/reach/index... - http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach) "REACH places the burden of proof on companies. To comply with the regulation, companies must identify and manage the risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market in the EU. They have to demonstrate to ECHA how the substance can be safely used, and they must communicate the risk management measures to the users." Chemical companies in Europe of course are pushing for TTIP, to get rid of REACH.
- andrewla 12y ago
  Practically speaking, in this case, does this work better? Did the Eurozone cause risks associated with BPA and BPS to be identified faster, or prevent them from being used in consumer products?
- debacle 12y ago
  What does REACH say about BPA and BPS?
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise. This is simply false. If it were true, getting FDA approval for a new drug would be trivial: Just release it, and hope nobody dies.
  - checker 12y ago
    I know that the FDA regulates prescription medication in that manner, but I don't think it has the same reach over things like food packaging, water bottles, dietary supplements, etc.
    - 12y ago
jhealy 12y ago
Here's a discussion of these results by an Australian lecturer in Pharmacology: https://theconversation.com/a-fishy-story-zebra-fish-bisphenol-a-and-hyperactivity-36224 https://theconversation.com/a-fishy-story-zebra-fish-bisphen... He covers a few points, but here's a key one: > The concentrations of BPA in this study, while low, are still much higher than humans would be exposed to. It is a bit difficult to relate the exposures of the fish to those of humans, as humans typically do not swim immersed in solutions of BPA day in and day out, but let us look at it from a variety of perspectives.
fcbrooklyn 12y ago
"One of the most significant findings is that low doses can be more harmful than larger ones." Wait, what? This jumped out at me, but the article doesn't really elaborate on the surprising claim.
blergh123 12y ago
Does anyone know what the plastic lids of coffee cups are made from? I drink out of those things all the time :(
userbinator 12y ago
Possible easy DIY fix: line your bottles with a clean plastic bag, the clear transparent type. That will almost certainly be polyethylene, which doesn't contain any plasticizers like BPA or BPS.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  If it is that easy then why aren't bottles made from polyethylene?
  - sp332 12y ago
    Some are. Any bottles with a recycling number 2 (HDPE) or 4 (LDPE) are made of polyethylene. Edit: or 1 (PETE).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nirai 12y ago
We are totally fucked.

242 points by finid 12y ago

ra 12y ago

So what is the safest drink bottle to use? I have a stainless steel one, but it has some sort of lining.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago
If you can keep from breaking it, lead-free glass.
danielweber 12y ago
Something you enjoy drinking from.
micro_cam 12y ago
specialized bike bottles use a glass like interior coating that has shown no leaching in some tests.
- jzwinck 12y ago
  Bike bottle interior coatings are not very durable. They're OK for a while if you only drink water and do not scrub the inside with anything abrasive at all. But one good scrubbing with a stiff brush and a few days drinking juice out of that thing, and it will taste bad, probably until you throw it out. Most people want their bike bottles to be squeezable, so some tradeoffs are made. Everyday bottles can be rigid, so stainless steel (or glass) makes more sense.
  - micro_cam 12y ago
    Just to be clear i'm talking about the "Purist" bottles made by Specialized the company which use a proprietary coating that seems to work well, not bike bottles in general. See for example [this review](http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/product-review-specialized-purist-watergate-bottle http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/product-review-specializ...). I only recently discovered the bottles so can't give a long term review, the manufacture does recommend against scrubbing them. Uncoated stainless and glass are great options as well but not practical for some uses.
    - cullenking 12y ago
      we buy a lot of these as promo/schwag materials for our business (ridewithgps.com, a bike software website/apps) and they certainly do wear out. I end up rotating mine our after 6 months, and i do not wash them with anything but the soap + water + shake method. the lining wears off and you are left with a plasticky tasting bottle. even new, if you let them sit with water in them for a couple days they'll taste slightly of plastic, so it's not perfect. much better than any others we have tried though, so worth it.
jonah 12y ago
What stainless bottle do you have? My Klean Kanteens are unlined stainless. If you get the right lid it'll be stainless lined with a silicone seal too.
ars 12y ago
Polyethylene and Polypropylene. Same advice as when the BPA thing first came out. They went back to the old plastics with a different plasticizer than BPA, but it's best to just use a plastic that doesn't need a plasticizer in the first place.
brianglick 12y ago
I recently bought a 22oz Lifefactory glass bottle. Mostly covered with silicone for durability. It's a bit heavy, but otherwise great. Only downside is that the cap is made out of polypropylene, but polypropylene is apparently BPA, BPS, and phthalate free. (May still have other issues, of course.)
larrywright 12y ago
I'll second the vote for Klean Kanteen - I love mine. Also worth looking at is LifeFactory. They have glass bottles with silicon sleeves, that are quite sturdy. I've dropped mine a number of times and it hasn't broken. They also make baby bottles and food storage containers, if that's something you need.
- cdr 12y ago
  LifeFactory is just normal soda-lime glass, AFAIK. They can shatter from drops of a couple feet.
  - larrywright 12y ago
    They can, but in my experience, they don't. I'm not sure if it's the silicon sleeve around it, or what, but I've dropped mine a number of times and it's been fine.
rgbrenner 12y ago
Klean Kanteen is stainless steel, but doesn't have a lining. I also have one of these (the glass bottle is made in japan): http://www.amazon.com/Takeya-Classic-Bottle-Silicone-22-Ounce/dp/B003DTLNUG http://www.amazon.com/Takeya-Classic-Bottle-Silicone-22-Ounc...
quaffapint 12y ago
Do the klean kanteen or whatever steel ones smell in a day or two like the SIGG ones I used to get? They were the reason I switched to plastic. You had to constantly scrub them and put cleaning pills in them.
- zevyoura 12y ago
  The "classic" Sigg bottle is actually lined with plastic, and I find the narrow neck makes them harder to clean as well.
joeyspn 12y ago
Nothing like the ol' pal "Glass" and/or Stainless Steel...

ratsmack 12y ago

Every "tin" can I have opened, for as long as I can remember, has a plastic coating inside. I've always wondered what material is being used for this coating. Plastic of one kind or another seems to be inescapable.

megablast 12y ago
If a tin can has a dent in it, they are not supposed to use it. Always check at the supermarket before you buy them as well.
- ars 12y ago
  The dent thing is minor. The only problem with a dent is it might have a small hole - that rarely happens though. If it happened, the can would be bloated and smell, it would be obviously spoiled. A dent has nothing to do with the lining.
- stephentmcm 12y ago
  Source? This sounds very urban legend. Most stores won't sell it as 'damaged stock' but they also reject many other products based entirely on external appearance regardless of whether they are fit for purpose or not.
  - dghughes 12y ago
    Not urban legend more like common sense, botulism is possible if the can seal is broken. Source? Just google it http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/77ffde83-dc51-4fdf-93be-048110fe47d6/Shelf_Stable_Food_Safety.pdf?MOD=AJPERES http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/77ffde83-dc51-4fdf-...
- finid 12y ago
  I don't know if they still do it now, but years ago I noticed that the major super markets will actually sell any canned item that has a dent at a reduced price. That's is fact, not urban legend.
- bjt 12y ago

jostmey 12y ago

In case you haven't noticed, we have surrounded ourselves with chemicals that our bodies never evolved to deal with, and the list is growing. And as a society we are still dealing with chemicals known to be dangerous. Take asbestos as an example. Everyone knows it is bad, and yet you can still find in the walls of old school buildings, houses, and places of work. Worse, the ban on asbestos was lifted in the USA allowing for materials to contain up to 1% of it. Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down.

finid 12y ago
> Someday we as a society will hopefully wake up to the dangers we put ourselves through. I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up. That made me laugh. but yes, it's true.
ekianjo 12y ago
Huh, you should stop using computers immediately if you care a little bit about what you said, because that's one hell of a cocktail of various plastics, heavy metals and the like. And you are constantly breathing dust containing who knows what coming from it.
- jostmey 12y ago
  You're totally right. Not only are computers laden with a lot nasty chemicals, but the insides can become really hot, which could help the chemicals leak out. At the same time, computers have become indispensable to our lives.
jacobolus 12y ago
> I continually find it amazing that human lifespan has gone up, not down. I suspect you’ve never spent time in rural peasant villages. Many rural peasants (still today, but even more in the past) eat a simple and often poorly balanced diet punctuated by occasional periods of near starvation, do demanding physical labor from an early age until their bodies break down, catch all sorts of diseases that suburban office workers are never exposed to, sometimes get serious bacterial infections when they suffer any kind of laceration, have vastly inferior treatments for pretty much every medical condition, even something simple like a broken ankle used to be permanently crippling, etc., and you find it "amazing" that life expectancy has improved? If you want to talk about exposure to various carcinogenic compounds, any family who cooks on a wood fire in an open hearth in the middle of their house is breathing more smoke than all but the heaviest of cigarette smokers, worse than the worst air pollution Beijing has to offer.

jared314 12y ago

Links to the actual study: Abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.abst... Text: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1417731112.full... Supporting Information: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/01/07/1417731112.DCSupplemental/pnas.201417731SI.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/01/07/1417731112.DCSu...

teuobk 12y ago

On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects. There are early rumblings (e.g. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm ) that there might be something similar going on with the replacement of trans-fats with palm oil. Palm oil behaves similarly to trans-fats, which makes it attractive to industry, but then it isn't too surprising that those same similarities might also make it similarly unhealthy.

ekianjo 12y ago
> On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects. Don't rely on intuition for toxicology. If there's one field where there's a strong lack of Science (and I mean predictive Science), that's this one. There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity. Or, take chirality for example. The same exact chemical formula, but the spatial arrangement being the mirror of each other's. This caused major issues back in the 20th century, when some drugs were synthesized without chiral specificity, and led to one chiral version being harmless and effective to improve a certain condition, and the other chiral version attacking the central nervous system. No, just don't rely on intuition there.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  > There are tons of chemical compounds that have no severe tox effects, but add a couple of carbons in the chain and you can get toxicity. Your point not to rely on intuition is a good one, but I think that's not quite what the GP was doing. That is, I think the claim wasn't that a chemically similar compound should behave similarly, but rather that a behaviourally similar (in some ways) compound should behave similarly (in other ways)—stated which way it is almost a tautology, no?

curiously 12y ago

It seems like it's impossible to avoid BPA, plastic is EVERYWHERE. I no longer use coffee machine because it has plastic parts and it has a rather plastic taste. I now use dripping method without any plastic. I have become more and more vigilant about plastic in consumables. Would love to have a comprehensive list of items to replace at home.

_delirium 12y ago
Fwiw, BPA isn't in most plastics, generally only in polycarbonates, plus some epoxy linings. Most plastic bottles, for example, are made of various kinds of polyethylene instead. A useful (but not exact) rule of thumb is that almost all BPA-containing plastics have resin code 7 (Other); plastics with codes 1-6 typically don't have BPA.
- curiously 12y ago
  I don't know if I can trust it

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ewzimm 12y ago

Exposure to BPA and similar substances from cans and bottles is probably inconsequential compared to exposure from receipts if you use any kind of hand sanitizer or lotion. A single exposure can equal hundreds of cans. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht... (Fixed the link, thanks)

ekianjo 12y ago
your link seems to be broken.
- pmh 12y ago
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht... is the fixed link.
- finid 12y ago
  Here's the correct link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022143628.ht...
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Good reason to not use hand sanitizer and lotion, then. I have a highly sophisticated self-repairing, self-lubricating, self-renewing exterior on my person, and my ancestors needed neither lotions nor aerosols of alcohol in the millions of years prior to whenever those things suddenly became popular. Also a good reason to pay cash, which was another long tradition of my people.
- jsankey 12y ago
  Although I agree that our own bodies tend to be pretty awesome and require less help than many people think, your argument in this case is a little shaky. We live in a very different environment to our ancestors and expose our skin to all sorts of things that they never could have. Even ignoring all the new compounds we interact with daily, just moving ourselves around the planet (to areas with different sun exposure, as a key example) can have a big impact on our health.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago

Can I ask a perhaps very ignorant question: We have a kid on the way, and now that BPA and BPA free are considered estrogen leaking, what are we meant to buy? However it should be noted that the kid is meant to be a girl, so for girls is this a non-concern since obviously estrogen won't be unusual within their bodies.

finid 12y ago
Search this page for comments that mention Klean Kanteen and LifeFactory.
djur 12y ago
Estrogen isn't unusual within a man's body, either. An excess or lack of either estrogen or testosterone can have adverse effects in both men and women.
8ig8 12y ago
Honest question: Is glass an option? Aluminum?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Definitely not aluminum.
ekanes 12y ago
Glass is making something of a comeback, presumably related to this trend.
trentlott 12y ago
Glass. It's expensive and fragile, but good old silicon oxide is as inert as you can ask for. Extra estrogen in a female baby is absolutely a concern. I was part of an investigation that dosed nursing rats with BPA and investigated the effect on female offspring. I left for graduate school in polymer chemistry, but you can read the results here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q It's no blockbuster paper, but the whole of the evidence gathered suggests you shouldn't expose your baby to BPA just because it's female. There's also a link between post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (older women taking estrogen after their body ceases production) and breast/uterine cancer.

goalieca 12y ago

When everyone started switching away from BPA, I asked one of my chemical engineering friends about it. He said that they switched from a chemical with known problems to one that hasn't been studied yet. This is how it always goes.

spuiszis 12y ago

“A lot of the alternative chemicals have not been adequately tested because they don’t have to be,” said lead author Deborah Kurrasch. “A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.” I'm no healthcare policy expert but this sounds like the FDA has it backwards.

refurb 12y ago
“A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise.” That's a ridiculously untrue statement. Try and add a chemical with unknown safety to a food product/cosmetic/medical device and see how long it takes the FDA to shut you down. The FDA does have GRAS designation (generally recognized as safe) for many chemicals, but that is based on a large body of evidence that has demonstrated no (or manageable) safety concerns.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

hiou 12y ago

Can we change this title to something closer to the original title of the article? The current title is inflammatory and will likely just bring out all the conspiracy nuts. "BPA alternative disrupts normal brain-cell growth, is tied to hyperactivity, study says"

IgorPartola 12y ago

For adults, go get yourself a Hyrdro Flask. It's a double-walled (thermos-style) food grade stainless steel bottle. It comes with a 100 year warranty, and after your grandkids are done playing with it, it's fully recyclable. There are several products like this on the market, but I am a happy Hydro Flask owner/user. Aluminum bottles are a non-starter: aluminum is toxic to humans, and has to be coated to not leak into your food. Often times there's a plastic liner to prevent the aluminum from coming into contact with your food/drink. Some steel bottles are crap: they actually do stain/rust, and being non-transparent this can be hard to spot. Glass bottles are nice, but obviously more breakable/dangerous than metal. Personally, I don't trust any plastic bottles: not Nalgene not any other kind. Had a Nalgene bottle once; after it took on a stale water odor, I could not get it out with anything. This article particular finding is far from the last one in terms of which plastics do what to the organism. For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle. Is it possible to make stainless steel baby bottles?
- trentlott 12y ago
  I know it's certainly possible to make glass baby bottles.
  - lostlogin 12y ago
    It's a minor point but bottles that provide any insulating value are sort of worrying to use as the risk of giving a baby a hot drink increases and glass baby bottles are sometimes thick glass. It turns out that getting up for the 9th time, totally exhausted, makes reliably noticing anything hard. Disclaimer: I have only used one glass baby bottle ever
    - sitharus 12y ago

simplexion 12y ago

As bad as the original? Can someone link to evidence of the dangers of people exposed to BPAs through plastics? My understanding is that the whole BPA craziness is the same as the Phthalates nonsense. The problem is if you want to avoid these things, make sure you don't get sick and end up in hospital because then you will be in contact with these like crazy.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
No it is not nonsense. BPA is a kniwn endocrine disrupting chemical. Endocrine disruption is when a chemical interferes with many of the hormones in your body. Hormones which regulate cell growth, differentiation ajd overall cell behavior. Disruption of these can have severe consequences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25569640 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25569640
- simplexion 12y ago
  I am aware of endochrine disruptors causing problems, but is there evidence of the average level of BPA exposure causing negative effects to be concerned about. I can't find any studies that show this.
gcb0 12y ago
thru plastic or not, it's still the same compound. what's your point?

sowhatquestion 12y ago

Chemists of HN: Why does this keep happening? Why is BPA or something close to it seemingly required to manufacture plastics? Or to put it another way, why has it been so difficult to come up with an alternative that's distinct enough to avoid BPA's effects on the human body?

refurb 12y ago
Because a lot of plastics don't have the desirable physical properties unless you add plasticizer.
VLM 12y ago
I can try to provide a (late) serious, long-ish response. First of all there is no "the plastic atom" they are chemically more diverse than anything in computer-land. So the concerns of polycarb plastics have no relationship with polyethylene or teflon or whatever other than coincidentally having been industrially developed around the same decades so people call them all plastics, although its actually worse than calling anything green a plant and assuming they're all the same. Here's your analogy: Plastics are tangled up strings. Like a crazy nanoscale 3-d composite. The strings are mfgr in place by dumping a bunch of wanna-be string pieces and crazy reactive hyperactive catalyst in a form and then waiting, maybe heating, to convince the catalyst to bond wanna-be string chunks into a long string. The mechanism or turning pieces of string into a long string is surprisingly common and boring, which is the source of the whole problem. You have a chunky molecule with a finger or whatever sticking out containing a double bond. Just a plain old boring double bond like you'd find all over the place, like unfortunately in your innards. The crazy catalyst has the unusual ability to snap open double bonds and fall off to repeat maybe a few thousand times. Then the opened double bonds sometimes snap right shut, but sometimes grab a neighbor. Think of a clown car with 20 people squashed into it, clasping their left and right hand together, and "magically" their hands unclasp for a moment, maybe, and due to crowding, their hands snap shut on a neighbors hand instead of their own. Now instead of having 20 separate clowns in a clown car, you got a conga line of 20 attached clowns wedged into place and you can't remove just one anymore because they're all stuck together. They've polymerized into a car shaped brick with a molecular weight of about 20 clowns. So now you know why some plastics are industrially sold based on molecular weight. The "trick" to making plastics is making a shelf stable substance, preferably liquid-ish, that won't spontaneously polymerize, but has crazy molecule sex with all its neighbors at the drop of a catalyst hat. The catalyst is like a little monster than hands out to everyone little molecule-condoms coated with superglue instead of lube. (don't take this all literally, but figuratively it kinda works) Its actually quite tricky chemistry which is why it took till the last century to really kick off plastic production "for real" rather than just screwing around. Plastics stereotypically, on average across the field, are super boring biochemically. Pure polyethylene is about as chemically exciting and reactive as asphalt, for example. Probably because it vaguely resembles asphalt chemically, you can make synthetic oil out of little bits, and polyethylene is close to what synthetic asphalt would look like. Kinda. Unpolymerized polyethylene is just a simple flammable gas, a very close cousin of propane / butane. The reason why nobody owns a ethylene cigarette lighter or has an ethylene grill in their backyard to grill burgers is it all goes into plastics not lighters and grills... So the world is full of really boring plastics. But not all plastics are boring. Unfortunately, BPA makes a totally awesome and non-biologically reactive plastic once it cures and links up to the neighbors in a big chunk, but by itself, uncured, its fairly nasty stuff. It really wants to grab hold of another molecule, which is awesome if it successfully grabs hold and never lets go of another BPA molecule, but kinda bad if it mistakenly grabs onto your DNA (or whatever) like a bear trap. There are also interesting "green" implications such that if BPA based plastics ever decay, its just like dumping a tanker car of monomer out in the landfill. Kinda nasty if it ever happens. On the other hand, never breaking down is kind of ecologically nasty too. Generally speaking the "green" plastics like PLA or PE have non-toxic monomers and are not nearly as durable as the "non-green" plastics like polycarb family, speaking generally, etc.

aaron695 12y ago

The nutters seem out on mass today.....

finid 12y ago
You mean that people who care about their health are "nutters"? Count me in. I am a nutter!

jrapdx3 12y ago

Maybe I missed it, but it should be mentioned that there are many variations of bisphenol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol Also worth noting that BPS was reported >10 years ago as producing endocrine disruption similar to BPA. I think it likely other bisphenol variants would do the same. Part of the problem is not only the use of BP(A|S|.+) as plasticizers but also BP_ is a constituent of polycarbonates, epoxies and other industrially important materials. The amount of free BP_ in a properly prepared and cured product is likely quite small, but heating, UV exposure, etc., can hasten decomposition or release of BP_. Used as plasticizer BP_ would be more easily transferred and ingested. As others have said, the safest "plastic" containers are the low surface energy thermoplastics, polyethylene or polypropylene. They aren't pretty and clear like polycarbonate, but they are a whole lot less risky.

ZoFreX 12y ago

I don't understand why so many people on HN are worried about BPS or BPA. So far studies have shown that it has detrimental effects on the developing brain (in extremely limited animal trials!). Presumably everyone on here is not an infant and their brain has developed... so why are you buying BPA/BPS free bottles?

iSnow 12y ago
Because I am a father?
- danielweber 12y ago
  From Freakonomics: No one is more susceptible to an expert’s fearmongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. A parent, after all, is the steward of another creature’s life, a creature who in the beginning is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species. This leads a lot of parents to spend a lot of their parenting energy simply being scared. The problem is that they are often scared of the wrong things. It’s not their fault, really. Separating facts from rumors is always hard work, especially for a busy parent. And the white noise generated by the experts — to say nothing of the pressure exerted by fellow parents — is so overwhelming that they can barely think for themselves. The facts they do manage to glean have usually been varnished or exaggerated or otherwise taken out of context to serve an agenda that isn’t their own.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    That's great and all until you consider that all parents are doing here is managing their buying decisions, so even the "threat" is low, so is the solution. I'm pretty sure that quote was aimed at parents worried about e.g. third party kidnappings (which are insanely rare). Or who consider inoculations to be "dangerous" (without examining the danger of the other side). Switching from one type of bottle to another may do "nothing" in the medium to long term, but it also costs the parent an inconsequential amount. As long as you aren't exchanging one somewhat unsafe bottle for a much more unsafe bottle (e.g. bottles made of lead) you're likely fine or breaking even.

iSnow 12y ago

>A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise. In contrast, in Europe, there is REACH - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Authorisation_and_Restriction_of_Chemicals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registration,_Evaluation,_Autho... - http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/reach/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/chemicals/reach/index... - http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/understanding-reach) "REACH places the burden of proof on companies. To comply with the regulation, companies must identify and manage the risks linked to the substances they manufacture and market in the EU. They have to demonstrate to ECHA how the substance can be safely used, and they must communicate the risk management measures to the users." Chemical companies in Europe of course are pushing for TTIP, to get rid of REACH.

andrewla 12y ago
Practically speaking, in this case, does this work better? Did the Eurozone cause risks associated with BPA and BPS to be identified faster, or prevent them from being used in consumer products?
debacle 12y ago
What does REACH say about BPA and BPS?
cbd1984 12y ago
> A compound is considered safe (by the Food and Drug Administration) until proven otherwise. This is simply false. If it were true, getting FDA approval for a new drug would be trivial: Just release it, and hope nobody dies.
- checker 12y ago
  I know that the FDA regulates prescription medication in that manner, but I don't think it has the same reach over things like food packaging, water bottles, dietary supplements, etc.
  - 12y ago

jhealy 12y ago

Here's a discussion of these results by an Australian lecturer in Pharmacology: https://theconversation.com/a-fishy-story-zebra-fish-bisphenol-a-and-hyperactivity-36224 https://theconversation.com/a-fishy-story-zebra-fish-bisphen... He covers a few points, but here's a key one: > The concentrations of BPA in this study, while low, are still much higher than humans would be exposed to. It is a bit difficult to relate the exposures of the fish to those of humans, as humans typically do not swim immersed in solutions of BPA day in and day out, but let us look at it from a variety of perspectives.

fcbrooklyn 12y ago

"One of the most significant findings is that low doses can be more harmful than larger ones." Wait, what? This jumped out at me, but the article doesn't really elaborate on the surprising claim.

blergh123 12y ago

Does anyone know what the plastic lids of coffee cups are made from? I drink out of those things all the time :(

userbinator 12y ago

Possible easy DIY fix: line your bottles with a clean plastic bag, the clear transparent type. That will almost certainly be polyethylene, which doesn't contain any plasticizers like BPA or BPS.

Someone1234 12y ago
If it is that easy then why aren't bottles made from polyethylene?
- sp332 12y ago
  Some are. Any bottles with a recycling number 2 (HDPE) or 4 (LDPE) are made of polyethylene. Edit: or 1 (PETE).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nirai 12y ago

We are totally fucked.