I just don’t know what to say. In my last blog of December 13th, I talked about chemical contaminants and their possible relationship to the recent increase in asthma and allergies. Though I didn’t want to return immediately to the issue of pollutants in our environment, a recent article just threw me for a loop: Kids' Soup Cans Contain BPA Toxins : Discovery News. For the past several years I have made efforts to avoid Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic containers. Again, I’m not paranoid, as the European Union just banned BPA from baby bottles: EUROPA - Press Releases - Bisphenol A: EU ban on baby bottles to enter into force tomorrow. The EU prohited the use of BPA , citing concerns that the compound could potentially affect development and immune response in infants.
I have a doctorate in research and have studied epidemiology, so I believe we can’t determine the long term effects of exposure to hundreds of chemical compounds. For example, it’s even possible that BPA could be related to the recent increase in allergies, but it would take millions of dollars and years of research to try to establish such a link. Who would pay for this costly endeavor? So I use the principle of ‘nature knows best’, trying to live as naturally as I can. I don’t like microscopic amounts of pollutants in my or my family’s bodies if I can help it. So imagine my distress when I discovered BPA commonly enters into our system through soup cans. Now don’t tell me that food manufacturers didn’t know about BPA’s presence in their soup cans, but it must make sense to their bottom line, and since the government hasn’t outlawed it, companies haven’t been forced to change this practice.
Now that it has been uncovered, in all probability we will start to pressure these companies to remove BPA from their cans, and perhaps in a few years it will happen. In the meantime, we should further investigate the extent of this contamination, and take measures to remove this from our food supply. It may be that we’ll not be having canned soups for some time!!
Here's a list of countries that already ban BPA from baby bottles.
How will you personally respond to this information?
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