Canada Designates Bisphenol-A as a "Toxic Substance"

What do canned goods, plastic bottles, credit card receipts, and cigarette filters have in common? They've all got a toxic chemical as one of their ingredients.

Yesterday, Canada designated bisphenol-A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting chemical, as a "toxic substance." Formally declaring the chemical as a toxin will make it easier for government agencies to ban the substance in specific products, a move that many folks aren't too happy about (we're looking at you, chemical and plastic industry execs). "Environment Canada's announcement is contrary to the weight of worldwide scientific evidence, unwarranted and will unnecessarily confuse and alarm the public," Steven G. Hentes, the leader of American Chemical Council's polycarbonate and BPA group, told the New York Times.

I hate to sound like a know-it-all, Hentes, but the public's got every right to be alarmed by BPA. Studies showcasing the chemical's potential health impacts roll in more frequently than celebrity gossip. The endocrine-disrupting substance has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and early-onset puberty in people and cancers, obesity, and reproductive problems in lab animals. I'm no chemist, but those findings make BPA seem pretty toxic to me.

What makes matters worse is BPA's ubiquity throughout our food supply. Food manufacturers use the chemical to coat the inside of aluminum cans, in plastic packaging, and in bottles. BPA leaches from its container and into consumers' canned veggies, soda, soups, and more. As I recently blogged about, a new study showed that pregnant women who ate canned vegetables every day were 44 percent more likely to show BPA in their urine than women who didn't chow down on canned produce. In fact, most folks harbor BPA in their bodies, with the highest concentrations showing up in teenagers and young children.

Despite BPA's increasingly bad rep, Canada is one of the first countries to take serious action against the chemical. Only a half-dozen U.S. states have banned BPA in kids' products, and according to the NYT, the European Food Safety Authority recently declared that the "data currently available do not provide convincing evidence of neurobehavioral toxicity of BPA."

The host of health studies out there may not be enough to definitively say that "Yes, BPA is killing us." But they do highlight the fact that we just don't know enough about this chemical to be using it so ubiquitously in the global food supply (and what we do know is, quite frankly, frightening). Governments move at a glacial pace when regulating anything. In the meantime, consumers can pressure manufacturers to switch to BPA-free food packaging. Take action now, and sign our petition asking Del Monte Foods to use BPA-free can liners in its canned goods.

Photo credit: Daquella Manera via Flickr