Have you been fretting over the reports of gender-bending pollutants leaching from reusable water bottles? Finally, some good news: Nalgene is dumping polycarbonate plastic, according to a report in The New York Times today.
Nalgene made its decision in response to Health Canada's announcement earlier this week that it would list bisphenol A as a toxicant. BPA is the estrogenic plastic additive that makes polycarbonate a dubious choice for food and beverage containers. Grist reported earlier this week that the National Institutes of Health is also expressing increased concern about the chemical, which has been at the center of a battle over industry influence over consumer safety standards.
Next stop on the BPA express: Wal-Mart says it will be dumping BPA from baby bottles later this year. The chemical is still widely used in baby bottles, the linings of steel cans used for canned food, water coolers, compact discs, and plenty of other consumer products.
At least the campers can gulp freely.
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Comments
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Tasermons Partner Posted 8:38 am
18 Apr 2008
Toys-R-Us and Target are reported to be doin' the same.
That still leaves the other BPA products for adults however...
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Pangolin Posted 9:08 am
18 Apr 2008
They even have baby bottle sized steel bottles fwiw.
Put the Carbon Back
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GreenEngineer Posted 12:08 pm
18 Apr 2008
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Vcobb Posted 1:12 pm
20 Apr 2008
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mindy Posted 3:14 am
25 Apr 2008
mindy
http://www.ncconservationnetwork.org/mainblog
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kmp Posted 3:35 am
25 Apr 2008
The majority of large labs switched over to automatic drip watering systems (water delivered through a metal tube with a ball bearing that the animal licks to drink from) sometime in the early to mid 90's. Smaller labs may still use polycarb water bottles, and I don't know about government labs (although I suspect that if they are large, they have gone "automatic" as well - it's cheaper in the long run).
Every animal study has a control group; therefore, any changes that were caused by BPA leaching into animal drinking water would be observed in both control and drug-treated groups, leading to a conclusion of a "natural" background phenonmenon. While this doesn't do much for understanding the natural biology of laboratory animals, it does not really impact the safety assessment of new drugs.
Most of the water bottles that I remember from my lab days were not hard polycarbonate (like Nalgene bottles) but softer, milky, slightly flexible plastic - perhaps HDPE?
It's unclear how much BPA would be leached from bottles that were emptied/filled every day and were routinely (at least once/week) washed through an industrial cage wash system.
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