BPA and Phalates

Understanding the basics & what to do

Last week, in partnership with Consumer Reports I shared information about their history and current work assessing home and baby products and advocating for consumer product safety. As a pediatrician I often partner with families concerned about these threats to help them understand what they can do in the meantime while we learn more.

There’s always a gap between when we identify a potential danger and when we confirm it and update our environment to make things safer (removing it from the market, having safer alternatives available, or legislating change). And it tends to be the things that are in this in between phase that attract the most attention and questions from my friends.

Ever since I spent a summer in college nearly 20 years ago working with Dr. Leo Trasande I became interested in the science around bisphenols and phthalates. He wrote an excellent book (with a relatively scary title), “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer: The urgent threat of hormone-disrupting chemicals to our health and future… and what we can do about it” in 2019. His book goes deep exploring many chemicals which have consequences to human health including bisphenols and phthalates. You may have heard about these before, but what do you really understand about them?

Bisphenols have been used in polycarbonate plastic containers - baby bottles, sippy cups, and water bottles and additionally in resins that coat the inside of cans. Bisphenols are also synthetic estrogens and at high levels can inhibit thyroid hormone binding. So many things are now BPA free but it’s a whole class of compounds and other BPs are out there. Phthalates are a group of chemicals that makes plastic soft and flexible and used to bind scented personal health products like cosmetics. Phthalates also inhibit and disrupt thyroid function. 

We are all exposed to these all the time. Everyone has detectable levels of these chemicals, so what can we do about this? First I would say, let’s not panic. These chemicals have been around for decades and while they likely do have an impact the impact is subtle and most notable on a population level. Your one elevated exposure isn’t going to give you hormone instability. But it’s more notable when all of us have some exposure that at a population level we might see impacts add up over time. So it’s still important to address.

For you and your family, planning for next week it’s best if we approach this problem constructively. We can think about where in our life the highest exposure / consumption of these chemicals may be, and then let’s think about structured changes that we can make to have a reasonable impact on our family’s consumption. 

This is where content from Consumer Reports can be invaluable. They have done impartial research, testing products to help you understand the risks of certain products (ie. which foods tested to have the highest levels). I know without this data I would have assumed that my microwave bags of veggies that I’ve used for weekday meals would be worse than say canned tuna, but this is part of why data can inform and power decision making. Turns out that tuna swim in polluted waters and those cans are lined with BPA making tuna one of the higher risk products. The goal is not to consume zero BPA or phthalates - frankly that’s impossible - but to be aware of where your highest consumption lies. 

Then you can also make some common sense changes in your family behavior to reduce your total exposure. 

• Use glass or steel food storage containers

• Don’t heat plastics in the microwave or dishwasher

• Reduce consumption of fast food and high fat foods where levels are highest

• Choose kitchen tools that less likely to impact food (ie. reduce use of plastic cutting boards, using plastic bowls with hot foods, silicone bags instead of plastic disposable ones)

• Choose fragrance free cosmetics/soaps/cleaners because they have lower levels.

The most practical example of this for me has been in the school water bottle choice. Honestly, the price tag of some of these fancy stainless steel water bottles, that are really nice, can be hard to stomach. However, if you think about the volume of exposure your child might have to daily drinking out of this many times a day for a year, if you invest in the safest option there it’s likely to have a high impact.

The truth is, that even the most vigilant consumer will still be exposed to these chemicals often. However, once organizations like Consumer Reports do the testing, identify the risk and advocate for us, bigger change can happen when organizations like the FDA change the rules governing products. In 1999, Consumer Reports first raised concern about BPA in baby bottles and in 2009 consumer reports tested some foods calling on government agencies for change. In 2012 the FDA banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups. Consumer Reports then followed up to confirm in 2023 that bottles are free of these chemicals (sharing lists of popular products indeed free of contamination) and called attention to places where there may still be opportunities to improve.  

I’m curious to hear from you - has this been on your radar or is it new information? This post has been on my mind to share for almost a year, which made it a no brainer for me to say yes when Consumer Reports offered to sponsor it. The thoughts are all my own, but if you’d like to explore a membership with Consumer Reports, gain access to their 10,000 product reviews and support further advocacy work they do please click here for more details (and $10 off).

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Now that my kids are back in school, I’m hoping to get back in the routine of posting and get all the podcasts I recorded when researching my book up and in the wild. If you have topics you’d like me to tackle definitely let me know in the comments.