Green Options

Bisphenol A (BPA) has gotten a lot of press recently, from infant formula to Sigg bottles, it’s everywhere.  But did you know that it’s also in your canned foods, especially canned tomato products, pasta sauces, and vegetables?

BPA is a compound used to manufacture plastics and has been in mainstream use for over 50 years.  But for all of its benefits, BPA has some significant drawbacks.  It can leach from plastics and plastic linings into the product that it holds, especially with acidic foods like tomatoes.  From the food products it then is absorbed into the human body, where it causes damage to the cardiovascular and reproductive systems, and can contribute to incidences of cancer, diabetes, asthma and obesity.

Thank you Citizenpup for sponsoring our Green Lunch Giveway, and congratulations to Sonya of Sanity is for Those Without Children (love the name!) for winning.  Sonya wrote, “My kids love edamame and lots of veggies!”  My kids love edamame too, and I promise to grow the beans in my garden next year. If you do buy edamame, shop carefully to avoid beans [...]

Bisphenol-A (BPA) has already been linked to loads of problems, but now scientists ask, is it making our kids mean, too? The latest research links BPA exposure during early pregnancy with behavior changes in two-year-old girls and boys.

According to the study published in the October issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, the higher a mother’s BPA levels were during the first 16 weeks of pregnancy, the more likely kids were to exhibit the behavior changes. Girls were more aggressive and hyperactive than the norm while boys were more anxious and withdrawn.

The study also examined the effects of a mom’s exposure to lead and cigarettes, oddly enough neither one was linked to toddler behavior changes.

Every parent wishes for a happy baby…did you know an organic baby is also a happy baby?  That’s the premise behind Dr. Sears’ new book HappyBaby: The Organic Guide to Baby’s First 24 Months. Dr. Robert W. Sears, MD is best known for the Vaccine Book and being the son of Martha and William Sears, MD.

The kind folks at Citizenpip have offered to give a Square Meal Kit to one lucky Eco Child’s Play reader!  The Square Meal Kit features:

• 1 insulated lunch bag with nametag and carabiner that easily attaches to a backpack
• 1 stainless steel water bottle
• 4 BPA-free airtight food containers
• 5 100% cotton napkins

“Citizenpip is muck-free: no lead, BPA, PVC, or phthalates.”

To enter, simply leave [...]

Unless you are lucky enough to send your child to a school with organic lunches and a farm to school program, you probably pack your child’s lunch. We’ve reviewed numerous lunch boxes and lunch systems, but in the end, I usually just grab random items and throw then together in my hurried mornings.  Despite my haphazard lunch packing routines, I am really excited about the Munchgear Soup to Nuts Kit (so are my kids who are fighting over who gets to use it tomorrow.

The Munchgear Soup to Nuts Kit made by Citizenpip (such a cute name) is an “everything in one kit” that, in my opinion, provides more flexibility and durability than a Laptop Lunch. The Soup to Nuts Kit includes:

• 1 insulated lunch bag with nametag and carabiner that easily attaches to a backpack
• 1 stainless steel water bottle and insulated food jar
• 4 BPA-free airtight food containers
• 1 stainless steel fork + spoon set
• 5 100% cotton napkins

Sigg CEO offers a free exchange program for new bottles without BPA-containing lining until October 31,2009.

I was hugely disappointed to hear last month that Sigg Water Bottles produced before August 2008 were made with a liner that includes bad, bad, bad BPA. Many people, including me, bought Sigg bottles to replace other BPA/nasty chemical leaching bottles in our possession.

In the wake of the Sigg/bisphenol-A controversy, a top researcher and CEO of Environmental Health Sciences fills us in on the news: endocrine disruptors such as BPA and phthalates are indeed toxic at low-level doses, too. And they’re toxic in entirely different ways than at the traditional high-dose testing indicates.

The way the tests work today is we think that by testing at high doses we’re gonna see everything. So that once we get to a dose that’s intermediate and we don’t see anything, we’re golden.

But the science is telling us that at really low doses as contaminants mimic hormones. They can have effects that are totally unpredictable by what happens at high doses.

Pete Myers spoke to Living on Earth about the consequences of current testing.

The metal water bottle market has exploded, and consumers are still riling after Sigg’s deception regarding BPA in their aluminum bottle lining.  Recently, I was sent another BPA-free, stainless steel water bottle to try, which my son adores.  The Kid Basix SafeSporter combines sports bottle with aesthetics to create a unique bottle.

Born out of the movement to eliminate plastic water bottles, the SafeSporter’s limited plastic parts do not contain BPA or phthalates.

Why go with stainless steel bottles from Kid Basix when so many BPA-free plastic bottles are available now? We can give you 300 billion reasons. That’s the approximate number of plastic water bottles discarded around the world every year. Enough to power 12 million cars for an entire year. And that’s just the water bottles! It doesn’t include all the plastic bottles used for sodas, sports drinks, fruit juices and the like. All told, the plastic bottles we throw away each year would reach to the moon and back – 1500 times. So using reusable stainless steel bottles makes sense on every level: personal, local and global.

I waited to write this post until after I had the opportunity to speak with SIGG CEO Steve Wasik. I am still disappointed.

Over this last week we have learned that SIGG bottles manufactured before August 2008 (not 2009, as I mistakenly mentioned earlier) contained Bisphenol-A (BPA) in their liners. BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins and is part of a group of molecules known as endocrine disruptors.

Endocrine disruptors are defined by the National Institute of Health as

naturally occurring compounds or man-made chemicals that may interfere with the production or activity of hormones of the endocrine system leading to adverse health effects. Many of these chemicals have been linked with developmental, reproductive, neural, immune, and other problems in wildlife and laboratory animals. Some scientists think these chemicals also are adversely affecting human health in similar ways resulting in declined fertility and increased incidences or progression of some diseases including endometriosis and cancers.

The Sigg Company recently admitted that its aluminum bottles, long touted as an alternative to chemical leaching plastics, actually contain bisphenol-A (BPA) in their liner. The announcement has left customers around the world outraged.  Especially damning is evidence that the company knew as far back as 2006 that the bottle liners contained BPA, yet failed to disclose this fact to consumers.

Though the scientific jury is still out on the effects of BPA, states such as Minnesota and Connecticut have already banned their use in kiddie drinking cups and other bottles.  Conscientious consumers have also been leery of BPA, and many have tried to do their best to avoid it.  Unfortunately for many people, the alternative to other BPA leeching plastic bottles were the aluminum Sigg bottles they thought were safe.