BPA: What is It and What Does It Do?

When my son was six months old, I entered Babies R Us to try to find him a sippy cup. When I got to the "sippy cup aisle," as it were, I was bombarded with labels boasting "BPA Free!" I had never heard of this acronym before, so I asked a Babies R Us employee to fill me in.

"Excuse me?" I said "What is BPA?"
She responded in a curious way.
"Oh, well, it's this thing that's in a lot of plastic items. They're not sure what it does. But it's bad."

This was a disconcerting answer. I needed to know more. Upon further research, I found out that BPA is, in fact, a harmful chemical compound that is found in plastic and canned items. It has been known to cause harmful hormonal changes in rats and has dangerous implications for humans.*

BPA is highly controversial. My colleague and long time friend, Kyle, alerted me to an event surrounding BPA and the Sigg company.

Recently Sigg, the Swiss manufacturer of metal water bottles, announced that there was BPA present in some of their water bottles manufactured before August 2008. Because of this, Sigg is offering a "voluntary exchange program." Any Sigg consumer can send in their old water bottle for a new eco-friendly BPA free water bottle. See this link for more info: http://mysigg.com/bulletin/exchange_program.html

Thankfully, mine and my son's Sigg bottles do not fall into this category. Mine is stainless steel and his has the eco-friendly BPA free liner.

Though I found a ton of information about BPA online, I was still overwhelmed and confused.
I consulted my best friend, Mint. She is my source for all things health related. She recommended I check out grist.org; reliable environmental website that happened to have a great layman's article on BPA.

Here it is:
http://www.grist.org/article/flex-and-effects

This article cleared up my confusion on BPA.

*See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plastic-not-fantastic-with-bisphenol-a