BPA FREE Baby Bottles - Get Glass

Nippy New England morning...


Today's blog is short(sort of) but the links are invaluable. No point in repeating all these extensive studies and conclusions. Read them yourself by just clicking through.

BPA, one of many petrol based additives in plastic, continues to make headlines as a hormone disruptor with great potential for unknown future risks to human health. BPA, Bisphenol-A, was, and still is, added to plastic baby bottles despite being banned in Canada, and taken off the shelf by big stores such as Walmart(and our own FDA has their head in the sand) There is so much evidence of BPA's dangers( despite the plastics industry's attempt at fraud websites) that caution can not happen soon enough.

How soon? Now, before a baby is even born, or ASAP. Fetal development can be affected by the mother's exposure to and use of BPA containing products. All these links available are so comprehensive that I urge you to review them. If you want to erase all doubt, the safest non-leaching product is glass.

Glass-back to basics. Since our modern convenience society wanted something that wouldn't break, most people began using plastic baby bottles many decades ago. But things went astray as the plastic companies got greedy about cheap additives and fancy clear designs. Not only were we told they were convenient, we were told they were safe. It wasn't until comprehensive testing laid out the facts. See this link to compare baby bottles that purported to be safe and were not: 5 Leaching Brands

Now companies are switching their formula and claiming BPA free but are still showing leaching but at a low level. We are told this is safe. @%#&*! This is what SIGG claims, to be BPA free, but the testing results say "undetectable", not FREE. Like Nalgene, many companies made a switch to an untested new chemical. Or the are using polypropylene. Based on the plastic industries track record of deception, I wouldn't begin to trust these new plastic bottles.

Get Glass-Be Safe. Hormone disruption is pretty serious stuff. To dismiss it is short sighted, and that is being very polite. The affects of hormone disruption happen many years after it is way too late, breast cancer, obesity, thyroid, infertility, early puberty, heart disease and the list goes on. Taking the precautionary road is the only way to assure safety, and that means using glass.

But "my baby throws her bottle and it breaks"... so stop giving it back to her, she'll get the message. "I'm worried about the bottle breaking"...sooooo be careful. "The glass is heavy"... so get a 5 oz. bottle or sit and feed your baby if they aren't old enough to hold it, like you should. Are these typical excuses worth the entire future of your human being? I think not.

Next topic-Nipples. (no, not that kind!) Stay turned...

Triclosan - The New BPA, It's Everywhere

A band of brown haze sits on the horizon, very sad.


Triclosan, it is everywhere and you need to know about it - for two reasons. One is what it is, and the products it is on, and the other is to ponder how on earth something like this gets past the FDA, is every where, and as consumers we have no idea. I will give you lots of resources for more in depth information otherwise I could be writing all day.

Triclosan simply falls under the category of pesticides. Makers of "things" put it on curtains, in soaps, clothing, flooring, fabric, and the list goes on. Under the name brand of Microban, triclosan is pitched as a wonder bug fighter.

No long term affects were done prior to FDA approval but there was and is plenty of discussion about the possible affects, mostly about the real possibility of creating super bugs resistant to the very product used against them.

Google Triclosan and the best articles appear on the first page. The most important one was recently published by the EWG and boy did they do their homework. Thank goodness for them. I strongly urge you to review this document.

So how did all this get started in the first place? How is it the FDA approves something like this for mass consumption and we the consumer, have no idea where it is because it is not required to be labeled? And if there is a label, it might just say antibacterial, so it must be good, right? So who is protecting us? Seems to be no one. How can a maker of a curtain even agree to have triclosan added to their product? What the heck for? (money?) Germs on a curtain? Come on!

So like BPA, Triclosan has been used insidiously for a long time. Long enough to possibly reek havoc with our bodies and mother nature. And we continuously wonder why we have the highest cancer rate in the world despite our civilized status. Maybe if the FDA and EPA actually did their job, which is to protect us, we wouldn't be in this mess. The word precautionary isn't in their vocabulary. This triclosan issue is nothing short of outrageous.

So what can you do now? I guess the usual. Write your politicians, tell others, get mad. Any other suggestions?

SIGG vs Klean Kanteen - No Contest (Madonna and Crawford got hoodwinked)

Crazy hazy today.

And the winner is...Klean Kanteen. Hands down, no question. And here's why:

Let's first compare the two. SIGG is a single walled (though they just started making doubled walled in China) aluminum water bottle, made in Switzerland out of virgin aluminum (with aluminum being the best truly recyclable material, this is not very eco after all) that is lined with a softish amber (it has to be lined) "epoxy based resin". SIGG is adamant that it is not a plastic but based on the definition of an epoxy, I don't know how that can be. Their slick CEO Steve Wasik does a nifty tap dance and never fully answers questions about the lining and passes it off to the makers wanting to hold the info. His words seem carefully chosen and vague.

Klean Kanteen is a solid, food grade, 18/8 stainless steel bottle that is not lined, made responsibly in China. Virgin stainless steel is almost unheard of which makes stainless steel appealing for it's high recycled content and its recyclable ability. Stainless steel is next in line to glass in terms of safety with a few concerns about nickel or chromium leaching. Luckily, our bodies actually need a minimum level of each for functioning and are capable of processing it. After all we cook and brew with food grade stainless steel.

So the real issue comes down to this. What the heck is the lining in the SIGG bottles made of? I mean give us the whole story, full disclosure, the ingredients - let's have it.

No one knows. It's a secret. Maybe a dirty little secret.

SIGG claims it can't divulge the lining ingredients for fear of copy cats. They claim their proprietary right to secrecy like Coca-Cola. Last I saw, the ingredients were on a coke can. There is a lot of discussion on green forums about the subject, much back and forth between the faithfuls. However, in the Land of Green, this lack of transparency just doesn't cut it. SIGG boasts meeting FDA requirements which as most of us know is pretty meaningless. So what are they hiding? Me thinks BPA.

BPA, bisphenol A, a chemical used for decades in resins, plastics and epoxy, has gotten a huge amount of press lately because of its ability to leach and cause health problems. Epoxy was co-invented by a Swiss, Dr. Pierre Caston, back in 1936 when he got an amber colored solid by mixing epichlorhydrin with...BPA. What a coincidence. As a severe hormone disruptor, BPA has been shown to cause many problems in animal studies even at very low levels, so much so that Canada has proposed banning BPA in baby bottles. Canada takes the better safe than sorry road. Yeh Canader, eh? BPA has recently been tested and found in canned foods in the range of 1.6 to 10 or more parts per billion, or PPB. Testing also can also take place at the smaller parts per trillion level, or PPT. In animal studies, very low levels of BPA in PPT have caused cell damage and cancer due to hormone disruption.

SIGG offers an independent study of their bottles to show their safety levels, though not exactly independent since SIGG paid for it. SIGG claims their bottles have been regularly tested extensively in Europe but have yet to cough up any studies despite being hounded. At close examination of this one independent study, the testers used a LOQ (limit of quantitation) of 2 PPB, which means they don't test for accuracy below that level. And in the scientific world, below the LOQ can be called zero, nothing, nada or "undetectable", because the calibration used doesn't go below the LOQ. How conveeeeenient. What's disturbing is that this gave SIGG permission to then claim that the test showed NO BPA leaching from their bottles. Now that's just plain twisting the truth as I see it. If tests can use the parts per trillion range, yet the chemistry lab uses a LOQ of 2 parts per billion and then declares the product BPA free, well ... you can draw your own conclusion. The lab was very careful in its wording saying that "no BPA was detectable above the LOQ". So if you're hanging your hat on this one, paid by SIGG study and declare SIGG totally safe, I have a covered bridge to sell you.

SIGG's marketing is nothing short of genius with long established tentacles and celeb endorsements but this dark shadow isn't going to go away. SIGG makes a big deal about great quality because of being Swiss Made (that's like saying if you've done this and that, you qualify for president) but SIGG was quick to go to China when they introduced their stainless steel bottles. Its time to look behind the curtain and find out the truth behind the lining. Until such time, I will stick to Klean Kanteen. I believe SIGG is hiding something, and you should too.

So don't just sit there. Write SIGG and ask for full disclosure. Write the EWG and ask them to do independent testing on SIGG bottles using PPT (parts per trillion). Don't settle for evasive answers or no answers at all. Don't be duped by fancy colors and cool designs, like Madonna and Crawford were.

Be healthy and safe drinking.