Correct me if I'm wrong: My research on BPA

Courtney, your recent post inspired me to finish this one that I have been working on for a while...

I am serious in my post title; please do correct me if I am wrong. That is part of the point of writing this post -- I want to know if others have come to my same conclusions. My other point is to share the information that I have learned for those who haven't looked into this issue. My disclaimer (again, only a lawyer would put a disclaimer in her kids' blog!) is that the following is just my summary of things I have read about online from other sources and thus shouldn't be taken as the truth. As I mentioned, I am interested to hear from others whether they have read differently. So if you are finding this post because you are conducting your own research on the topic, I'd suggest looking at more reputable sources!

I have been concerned about the presence of BPA (bisphenol A) in plastics since this issue started hitting the news. This is mostly because of its presence in baby bottles and sippy cups, both of which we use. It is also present in the linings of canned goods, but I am not going to get into that today (maybe some other time!). Studies have shown that BPA in products can cause some pretty bad things such as endocrine disturbances and even cancer (of course, these results are disputed). I have been feeling guilty for months, thinking that I really ought to get serious about this issue and in discarding the offending items from my home and replacing them with "safe" alternatives. So, without doing much research, I ordered some Sigg baby water bottles for Lucy. They are adorable and I love them, but they are expensive and also heavy...so I worry about errant ones hitting little Phoebe in the head. They also leak if you turn them upside down when the spout is open, so I can't let Lucy have one with water in bed as she requests every night. At any rate, I had diligently been trying to use the Sigg bottles in place of my regular Playtex sippies. But still, I had not thrown out the Playtex sippies because I still used them at bedtime and to send to daycare.

Recently, I visited a friend who has two daughters roughly Lucy and Phoebe's ages. I asked her if she was as confused as I am about this whole issue. She told me that her husband had checked the codes on their plastics and they were all ok. Hmmm, I had not heard of this. But I did know what she was referring to -- those little numbers you see inside the recycling sign that are embossed on the bottom of plastic goods. Turns out that those things are called "resin codes" and they indicate, for recycling purposes, the type of plastic that an item is made of. You can find a list of these codes by clicking here. It also turns out that BPA is present only in a particular type of plastic -- polycarbonate. So if the bottles, sippy cups, plastic bowls, etc. that you use are not made of polycarbonate, seems to me that they will not contain BPA (is this starting to sound like an LSAT question?). This is not to say that these plastics are entirely "safe" -- I think the jury is still out as to whether they do other bad things to you -- but from what I understand they do not contain BPA. Unfortunately, there is not a specific resin code for polycarbonate. Instead, it falls under the number 7, which is the code for all "other" plastics not covered by codes 1 through 6. I have noticed that sometimes when something has a code 7, it also has the letters PC under it, which to me indicate that it is, in fact, polycarbonate . Other times there are no letters. And sometimes there is no resin code at all.

A bit confusing, yes, but my course of action based on this research is as follows. First, I threw out everything with a code of 7, whether or not it had letters underneath it. Why risk it, right? Next, I put aside to keep anything with a code other than 7. But most of our sippy cups had no codes, so we looked around online and found through various sources (including Playtex's website) that their "sipster" sippy cups do not have BPA. Yeah, so we get to keep them and also rest easier knowing that we have not been using BPA-leeching sippy sups for the past year and a half. This made me wonder why certain companies are heavily marketing themselves as selling BPA-free products (at a great expense, I might add) when good ole' Playtex sipsters from CVS are just fine. Perhaps it is because they are still made of plastic, and perhaps all plastics are suspect for other non-BPA reasons...I dunno.

I also discovered that polycarbonate (the BPA-containing plastic) has a characteristic look -- it is hard and shiny. This made a lot of sense to me after looking at the products I had that were made out of polycarbonate. We also had some juice cups for Lucy that were adorable, each with a different little animal one them, but I tossed them because they were made out of hard, shiny plastic (no code on them). I should note that the Playtex nurser bottles that we use ARE made of polycarbonate (at least I think they are). But that is just the outer part and not the drop-in liner that comes into contact with the milk. So those are safe...I think!

Anyway this is my summary of findings...can you tell that I need to get back to my research job sooner rather than later? Please, please let me know if you have come to any different conclusions. I would love to get to the bottom of this issue -- hopefully I already have!