Polycarbonate Pandæmonium

Well, my world got a little bit more complicated last week. It happened when I read that Health Canada, the Canadian version of the Centers For Disease Control, announced that Bisphenol-A would be declared a 'dangerous substance' as a result of an in-depth study of the chemical.

Bisphenol-A (AKA: BPA) is a chemical used in the production of polycarbonate plastic. Polycarbonate is a hard, clear plastic that is very popular in the consumer realm. It's most known for being the plastic that is used for those cool Nalgene bottles hikers (or psudo-hikers) carry around their water in.

Opps. That was probably a 'not-so-great' idea. As it turns out, several studies have shown that Bisphenol-A leaches out of polycarbonate and into whatever it contains, even at room temperature. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that BPA is an endocrine disruptor that mimics the hormone estrogen in humans. It has been linked to the following effects in mice:

• Permanent changes to genital tract
• Changes in breast tissue that predispose cells to hormones and carcinogens
• Prostate cells become more sensitive to hormones and cancer
• Lower bodyweight
• Early onset of puberty (this recent phenomenon has been puzzling scientists for a some time)
  
• Decline in testicular testosterone
• Insulin resistance
• Decreased maternal behaviors
• Damage to eggs and chromosomes
• Reversed the normal sex differences in brain structure and behavior

And the list goes on. Some of these effects were known as early as 1993. Finally, Health Canada stood up and said, "Um..hey guys, this stuff looks pretty bad, eh?" (something neither the CDC nor the FDA has yet to find the balls to do).

Immediately, a slew of retailers said they'd pull polycarbonate baby bottles off the shelf (Wal-Mart will only take a year to do it). Nalgene said they're abandoning the stuff (declared on the front page of their website).

So, you say, your babies drink from Pyrex bottles and you've never been hiking. So what do you care? Well it also turns out that polycarbonate film is in just about every canned good you can think of, from chicken soup to sodas. Even more disturbing is the sheer number of products I use every day which are either clearly polycarbonate, or are suspiciously like polycarbonate (which is usually designated with the recycling code [7], but not all #7's are polycarbonate. The hard, clear plastic is the dead giveaway). For example:

• My Brita pitchers. Are they polycarbonate? They sure look like it but this site says they DO NOT contain BPA. They're made from the safe-sounding "styrene copolymer methylmethacrylate" I'll keep using them until I hear otherwise I guess.
  
• My Turvis Tumblers that I drink hot tea from every night. On the website, they're proudly listed as being polycarbonate.
• Those super-cool Rubbermaid Premier food containers....Polycarbonate (to Rubbermaid's credit, they're very upfront about the issue).
  
• Compact discs and DVDs
• Plastic dinnerware
• Composite dental fillings (ironic...everyone went to these fearing the mercury in amalgam)
• Some of the aluminum water bottles are lined with polycarbonate (just when you thought you got away...)
  

Basically, the stuff is everywhere. On the upside, we may be close to figuring out what's caused the big increase in breast cancer. On the downside, how are we going to get rid of all of it?