What type of plastic contains bpa

Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Featured Video.

Read More. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for thespruceeats. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.

The study started as an accident. The differences between it and the test group vanished, and many control mice started showing genetic issues. Though initially confused, the team discovered that some of the plastic caging was damaged and was leaching bisphenol S, or BPS—an alternative to the now infamous plastic component BPA.

Now her study of the effects of several BPA alternatives, prompted by the latest accidental findings, suggests that these replacements impact reproduction in mice in much the same way. A whale shark swims beside a plastic bag in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen. Although whale sharks are the biggest fish in the sea, they're still threatened by ingesting small bits of plastic. Of course, it's hard to draw conclusions between the effects in these tiny furry critters and those in our comparatively massive fleshy forms, but the latest work adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests all is not safe in the world of BPA-free plastics.

What's more, the study underlines a broader issue in commercial compound development: When chemicals are removed from the market, they're often replaced by others that not only look similar—but act similarly in our bodies. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a common building block in resins and some types of plastic. It's what's known as an endocrine disrupting compound. In the body, these chemicals can act like hormones or disrupt normal hormone functions. In the case of BPA, concerns surround its estrogen-mimicking effects.

In the past couple decades, research on BPA has exploded. A slew of studies document negative reproductive, developmental, and metabolic effects in a menagerie of wildlife— rhesus monkeys , zebrafish , nematodes , and mice.

Even human studies have linked BPA to a range of health issues. In the s, BPA was used in the first epoxy resins. Soon after, Bayer and General Electric discovered the molecules had a nifty trick: They could link together with a small connector compound to form a shiny, hard plastic known as polycarbonate. Soon, BPA was everywhere: reusable water bottles, plastic plates, the liners in canned foods, sippy cups, grocery receipts, and even some dental sealants.

But as people drank from their water bottles and ate their microwaved dinners, they were unknowingly dosing themselves with small amounts of BPA that leached from the plastic containers into their food and drink. The compound has since become so ubiquitous that of the 2, people tested in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey , 93 percent had detectable levels of BPA in their urine.

But the FDA only officially bans the compound from use in baby bottles, sippy cups, and infant formula packaging. Each new version has only slight differences, as if swapping a blue Lego block for a red one. The latest study adds to the mounting research that suggests consumers aren't off the hook buying BPA-free plastic.

Mice—and humans—normally get one copy of genetic material from each parent and then splice together bits of each to form the chromosome they pass on to the next generation.

Hunt and her team found that BPA and its alternatives disrupt this process in a way that could eventually cause a decrease in sperm counts in males and a reduction in egg quality in females. Though gaps remain in understanding how the range of BPA alternatives affect humans, researchers are concerned. Initially, scientists thought BPA was acting like a form of weak estrogen, the primary female sex hormone that regulates reproduction and some sexual characteristics.

Men also have estrogen, but at lower levels. Researchers believed BPA was binding to or disrupting the same receptors used by estrogen. Androgen includes testosterone, the primary male sex hormone. Women have testosterone, too. Since BPA has different effects in different places in the body at different times, that makes it very hard to study.

For instance, rather than being able to nail down how BPA and its alternatives behave in the ovary, researchers have only been able to specify how it acts in the ovary at specific times.

These complexities have allowed lingering doubts about how conclusive the science is that BPA can harm humans, not just animals. Historically, industry research has claimed the chemical is safe to use; even the federal government recognizes BPA as safe at certain levels. But researchers have found evidence of abnormalities in the eggs of mice given less than half the amount of BPA that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared safe.

And scientists have now studied a huge range of health complications that have shown links to BPA exposure. The list is staggering:. Things have only gotten more complicated as scientists around the world have tried to unravel the health effects of dozens of newly introduced BPA alternatives. Are some better? Are some worse? Some of the lingering unknowns stem from current restrictions on experiments with human fetal tissue, she says.

This work has provided compelling evidence for the same damaging effects across a range of species. Well, monkeys are very expensive studies. We can only use a few monkeys, and that research is not very popular either, but it gets closer to humans.