Plastic lined cans

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Did you know that aluminium drinks cans have a plastic lining. It’s there to stop acids in the beverage from corroding the metal which is not good for the can or the flavor of the contents.

If you don’t believe me, you can try this experiment, as done by Steve Spangler, to separate the two. However you will need to be “a chemistry teacher or someone with the proper training to handle hazardous chemicals”). If you are neither of these look at this picture.

You might wish to know that when the can is recycled, the liner is burnt off.

Other sneaky plastic you might not know about are

Plastic lined metal lids

Plastic coated paper and foil

Tin cans of food

Want to find more travel related plastic free tips? Check out the travel category

Stay at home type? Check out my range of Uk based plastic free products with the >>>A-Z<<< plastic free index

its why I dont trust plastic….

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“Many consumers already look for commercial products that do not contain Bisphenol A (BPA), an estrogenically active compound that some manufacturers use for creating plastics and which leaches out of products over time (estrogenically active compounds are suspected to lead to birth defects, cancers and other health problems).

But BPA is only part of the story. For their study, the research team tested more than 500 BPA-free consumer products for other estrogenically active chemicals and found that 92 percent of the products readily leached the potentially hazardous compounds. Leaching was more common when products experienced ordinary stresses like dishwashing, microwaving and exposure to sunlight.”

read the full article

Related Articles

• Study: Health Risks from All Plastics May Spur Innovation (blogs.forbes.com)
• Barbara Ficarra: Are Plastic Bottles Toxic? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Producing Safer Plastics (usnews.com)
• Risks Associated with Bisphenol A in Baby Bottles (education.com)

Find  plastic free stuff  with  the  A-Z plastic free index

Why does my tin can have a plastic liner and is it bad for me?

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Increasing numbers of people are worried about the potential health risks of Bisphenol A (BPA) leaching from the liner into the food and the internet is full of claims and counter claims.

Nearly all tin cans, aluminium cans and metal tubes are BPA lined and have been since the 50s.

The liner can be white or yellow or transparent in which case it is  undetectable.  In most cases it is best to assume that your can has a plastic liner and that it contains BPA. The only way to know for sure is to phone the manufacturer and ask.

So far so BPA but is it really that bad?? To cut a long story short it would seem that BPA is toxic and does leach from plastic liners into the food. However it is in such small amounts as to be negligible. Needless to say there are many who question this finding claiming ones man’s negligible is another man’s cancer. You can read the arguments here 

 

But why  use BPAat all  you might ask ? Here’s some information from the bishenol-a.org

Metal food and beverage cans have a thin coating on the interior surface, which is essential to prevent corrosion of the can and contamination of food and beverages with dissolved metals (UK FSA, 2002).

In addition, the coating helps to prevent canned foods from becoming tainted or spoiled by bacterial contamination.

The major types of interior can coating are made from epoxy resins, which have achieved wide acceptance for use as protective coatings because of their exceptional combination of toughness, adhesion, formability and chemical resistance.

Such coatings are essentially inert and have been used safely for over 40 years. In addition to protecting contents from spoilage, these coatings make it possible for food products to maintain their quality and taste, while extending shelf life.

Based on the results of the SPI study, the estimated dietary intake of BPA from can coatings is less than 0.00011 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day. This level is more than 450 times lower than the maximum acceptable or “reference” dose for BPA of 0.05 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Stated another way, an average adult consumer would have to ingest more than 230 kilograms (or about 500 pounds) of canned food and beverages every day for an entire lifetime to exceed the safe level of BPA set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2002, the safety of epoxy resin can coatings was confirmed by an analysis of the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food (SCF).

Consequently, the potential human exposure to BPA from can coatings is minimal and poses no known risk to human health. Can coatings have been and continue to be recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.K. Food Standards Agency, the EU Scientific Committee on Food and other government bodies worldwide.

It is true that several scientific panels including the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Food, the National Toxicology Program and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis have concluded that the claims that low doses of BPA affect human health have not (yet ), been substantiated. While accepting that animal testing has produced adverse results, they can find no concrete evidence that humans will react the same way.

However there are many counter claims on the internet and in the media  that BPA  is lethal. You can read them here

It must also be noted that  despite claims that BPA is as safe as safe, research is  ongoing into alternatives. And maybe they have found one. According to Food Production Daily

“Researchers in the United States have developed a chemical derived from sugar with the potential to replace bisphenol A (BPA) in a number of products, including the lining of food cans. The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) said Professor Michael Jaffe had received a US patent for an epoxy resin based on isosorbide diglycidyl ether that could make consumer products safer.

“The patent will enable us to create a family of isosorbide-based epoxy resins that have the potential to replace bisphenol A in a number of products including food can linings”, Jaffe told FoodProductionDaily.com.

Note  the statement by Food Production Daily that this will  make consumer products safer. And I hardly need say that the creators of this new product are clear in their statements that BPA is not a good thing.

Hmmm – the choice is yours. As for me I boycott nearly all tins – tonic and tomatoes are the exceptions.

Some companies are bucking the trend – you can find a list of BPA free tins here.

Related Articles

• BPA Exposure ‘Much Higher’ Than Believed & Proposed BPA Ban (crunchydomesticgoddess.com)
• New Health Canada and FDA Studies Support BPA Safety (eon.businesswire.com)
• Global Epoxy Resins Market to Reach 1.93 Million Tons by 2015, According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. (prweb.com)

• 

How To Boycott Plastic

Find plastic-free products with the

Plastic-free Resource Index

Read up about plastic & the boycott here

What is BPA ?

3D chemical structure of bisphenol A (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bisphenol A or BPA is it is known to its chums is used in polycarbonate plastics.  These include

• that hard plastic  which look like glass but doesn’t  break as dramatically,
• the white plastic liners found in many cans, microwave oven ware, eating utensils and  bottles (including baby bottles).
• Plastics  labelled with the number “7” identification code. HOWEVER not all plastics labelled with the number “7” contain BPA. The number “7” code is assigned to the “Other” category, which includes all plastics not otherwise assigned to categories 1-6.

The chemical was invented in the 1930s during the search for synthetic estrogens.  Diethylstilbestrol was found to be a more powerful estrogen, so bisphenol A was put to other uses. It was polymerized to form polycarbonate plastic and used to make a wide range of products including those listed above.

Over the years there have been an increasing number of claims that the polymer  is not stable. That, over time, BPA breaks down over time and releases hormones into whatever product it comes into contact with.  Research has indeed proved that  BPA can leach into food from the epoxy linings in cans or from polycarbonate bottles, and that the rate increases if the containers are heated i.e. babies bottle being sterilised or a tin being heated.

However additional studies are now suggesting that the ingestion of leached BPA could be harmful. In March 1998 for example a study in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) found that BPA simulates the action of estrogen when tested in human breast cancer cells. A more recent study published in EHP shows a significant decrease of testosterone in male rats exposed to low levels of BPA. The study concludes that the new data is significant enough to evaluate the risk of human exposure to BPA.

BPA is now considered by many to be  a hormone disruptor, a chemical that alters the body’s normal hormonal activity.

In the last 10-15 years that concerns have been raised over its safety, particularly during pregnancy and for young babies.

In April 2008, the United States Department of Health and Human Services expressed concerns about it.

The Canadian government have just banned listed it a toxic substance and banned it from being used in baby bottles.

The following chart was taken from the very informative and interesting Wikkipedia article but you can find the same information all over the internet

Low dose exposure in animals

Dose (µg/kg/day)	Effects (measured in studies of mice or rats,descriptions (in quotes) are from Environmental Working Group)[104][105]	Study Year
0.025	“Permanent changes to genital tract”	2005[106]
0.025	“Changes in breast tissue that predispose cells to hormones and carcinogens”	2005[107]
1	long-term adverse reproductive and carcinogenic effects	2009[76]
2	“increased prostate weight 30%”	1997[108]
2	“lower bodyweight, increase of anogenital distance in both genders, signs of early puberty and longer estrus.”	2002[109]
2.4	“Decline in testicular testosterone”	2004[110]
2.5	“Breast cells predisposed to cancer”	2007[111]
10	“Prostate cells more sensitive to hormones and cancer”	2006[112]
10	“Decreased maternal behaviors”	2002[113]
30	“Reversed the normal sex differences in brain structure and behavior”	2003[114]
50	Adverse neurological effects occur in non-human primates	2008[44]
50	Disrupts ovarian development	2009[77]

So why the hell is BPA still being used  you might ask- while checking  your pants nervously and belting the kids.

Because the science is by no means conclusive. It has become something of a cause with consumer and green groups who are vociferous in their opposition. Media  reporting tends to concentrate on the negative aspects of any new reports. Yet several scientific panels, including the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Food, the National Toxicology Program and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, have all concluded that the claims that low doses of BPA affect human health have not (yet ), been substantiated. While accepting that animal testing has produced adverse results they can find no concrete evidence that humans will react the same way.

And even if they do, the amounts of BPA we ingest are so minimal as to be negligible.

The current U.S. human exposure limit set by the EPA is 50 µg/kg/day.

Which means, as the BPA industry’s voice over at to bishenol-a.org, puts it

“Based on the results of the SPI study, the estimated dietary intake of BPA from can coatings is less than 0.00011 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day. This level is more than 450 times lower than the maximum acceptable or “reference” dose for BPA of 0.05 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Which means an adult would have to eat  230 kilograms  of canned food and beverages every day of their life to exceed the safe level of BPA set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As the toxicologists love to say – it’s not the poison but the dose…..

However, what is certain  is that  BPA is a $6 billion plus global industry. According to the National Institute of Health, approximately 940,000 tons of BPA are produced in the U.S. per year. About 21% is used in epoxy resins and most of the rest goes to polycarbonate. You can find out more here

• Global Epoxy Resins Market to Reach 1.93 Million Tons by 2015, According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. (prweb.com)

You can find our most recent  BPA related posts here and this is another good read.

 Whatever the final conclusions, I feel I have quite enough of my own, home-made estrogen to be going on with. I choose avoid BPA where ever possible.

I limit food from tins, drink from cans and don’t use plastic food containers.

• 

How To Boycott Plastic

Find plastic-free products with the

Plastic-free Resource Index

Read up about plastic & the boycott here

 

More bad BPA news

“As staunch supporters of the anti-BPA campaign we were very pleased to see coverage in the British media last Friday of a new report linking BPA to breast cancer. The Daily Mail and the BBC both featured articles about Professor Anna Soto, an expert in cancer development ar the University of Ulster, who has recently carried out research on BPA . She is warning that BPA can trigger toxins which lead to cancer after discovering that foetal and neonatal exposure to the chemical increases the likelihood of development of malignant tumours later in life.

To read this artice in full including up to date reports from the BBC go to baby born free of baby born free feeding bottles. to quote the website “BornFree’s award winning leak proof BPA-Free baby bottles come in plastic (PES) or glass and feature an anti-colic vent designed for comfortable and safe feeding.”

Find out more about BPA “here

BPA is back in the news

FRIDAY, Oct. 31 (HealthDay News) — A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel agreed Friday that the agency had erred in August when it said that a chemical widely used in baby bottles and other plastic packaging for foods and beverages posed no health risks.Go HERE to read the rest of the article.

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Plastic In Us Studies

In 1998, Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western University in Ohio discovered that damaged or worn or warm plastics made from polycarbonate resin can leach biphenyl.

As I am sure you know – biphenyl is a chemical suspected of causing damage to the reproductive organs. Other studies have confirmed those findings and just recently Canada has banned the use biphenyl in babies bottles

Dont Wash Your Plastic in Hot Water

Could sterilising plastic bottles in hot water do more harm than good? Scott Belcher and his colleagues at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have found that polycarbonate plastic bottles release up to 55 times more bisphenol A (BPA) after they’ve been washed in boiling water.

BPA is found in many plastic food and drink containers and has been linked to breast and prostate cancer. Because they are often reused, Belcher wanted to test whether old containers leached BPA into their contents faster than new ones. His team filled new and used polycarbonate plastic bottles with water and kept them at room temperature for a week. They found that the rate of BPA release into the water by new and used bottles was an average of 0.49 nanograms an hour.

But when the team mimicked sterilisation by filling the bottles with boiling water and leaving them to cool, they found that the average rate of BPA release jumped to 18.67 nanograms per hour. This continued even after the bottles had cooled and been rinsed out (Toxicology Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2007.11.001).

While the levels of released BPA fall within safe limits as currently defined by the European Food Safety Authority, Belcher suggests switching to bottles made of high-density polyethylene as a precaution.

As reported in new scientist

Meanwhile Canada has already banned BPA in babaies bottles an American lawmakers are discussing banning BPA in childrens food products