Investigation: Scandal Of Danger Chemical In Baby Bottles
Boots and Mothercare are selling baby bottles made with a chemical that scientists fear could cause breast cancer, heart disease, obesity, hyperactivity and other disorders, The Independent can disclose.
The behaviour of Britain’s main infant-products retailers contrasts with that of manufacturers, who have quietly stopped up placing bisphenol A, or BPA, into baby bottles “to allay parents’ fears”, amid peer-reviewed studies in checkup journals associating it with serious health evils in laboratory animals.
Canada and three US states, Connecticut, Minnesota and Wisconsin, have banned BPA in baby bottles and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it is afraid about its bang on infants and young offspring, and supports its removal from infant-feeding products.
Nonetheless BPA, a synthetically-produced hormonal substance which is added to plastics to generate them tougher, is legal in Britain and most of the rest of the world, and Boots and Mothercare, the biggest retailers in Britain’s £141m-a-year infant-feeding market, have continued to sell off old stock containing the controversial chemical devoid of labelling it on packaging.
Boots, the country’s prevalent chemists’ chain, also sells BPA bottles branded with Disney lettering made by another firm, Tommee Tippee, which has removed BPA from its own bottles.
In the US, the six biggest newborn urn firms including Disney stopped making BPA products last year following logical outrage at the then failure of the FDA to tackle its impending impact. Other infant-feeding brands such as NUK have already removed BPA from British bottles.
Boots, Mothercare and Disney insisted BPA bottles had been secure, even though they have ordered its removal from current production. Mothercare said: “Mothercare takes the issue of invention quality and safety extremely seriously and all our bottles and feeding equipment comply with strict European standards.”
It new that it offered “comfort and advice” to customers through its website and leaflets, that advise viewers to ensure polycarbonate bottles were “free from scratches or signs of sport, to replace them after six months’ tradition and not to use boiling water”.
But Mothercare admitted that it was just continuing to sell BPA bottles because its timetable for removal had slipped. Britain’s biggest mothering and infant-product retailer had intended to stop selling BPA bottles by January 2010; now the objective was “the end of the autumn”.
Mothercare said: “We anticipated that there would be a phasing-in period, during which time the new BPA-free stock would replace the preceding ranges. However, the timescale of that phasing-out period has taken more time than we originally expected and we now anticipate that all our stock in stores will be BPA-free by the autumn.”
Boots, owned by the private justice company KKR, said: “With the exception of Canada, polycarbonate, which is made from bisphenol A, is standard as a food-contact material worldwide. The vast sum of scientific facts still supports its continued safe use.”
Disney acknowledged that British mother and father were being offered dissimilar foodstuffs to their counterparts in the US, where its BPA bottles are no longer on the shelves. By contrast, vibrant Winnie-the-Pooh-branded bottles made last year remain on sale in the UK, three months after their last production date.
A Disney orator, Sandra van Vreedendaal, said: “As far as Europe is worried they have said that quantity of BPA does not pose a peril to human health. They consider the use of BPA to be safe. Though we have decided to move to totally BPA-free with a final target of 2010. A number of our products in Europe are already BPA-free.”
She added: “No Disney-branded Tommee Tippee goods have been manufactured since 1 January, so any products in the market are old stock and will be phased out in time.”
Breast Cancer UK has launched a campaign mission for the removal of BPA from infant products. Clare Dimmer, chair of trustees at the charity, said: “It’s amazingly cynical that, despite the serious health concerns surrounding infant BPA publicity, suppliers and manufacturers still find it perfectly acceptable to continue to sell BPA stock here despite similar food already being withdrawn from sale in the US and Canada.
“I think parents will be irate about these double standards and disappointed that retailers are not taking on board the full advice from scientists.”
Based to independent scientists, BPA may be an underlying cause of a collection of illnesses rapidly rising in the West, including chubbiness, heart disease, diabetes, fertility problems and birth defects. Concern is greatest about its transmission from pregnant mothers to little ones in the womb, and on young children.
Certainly one of a class of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, BPA interferes with the release of the female hormone oestrogen, and its impact is most on disorders associated with metabolism, fertility and neural development.
BPA is widely vacant in tins of food and canned drinks, where it is used to toughen the internal lining of tins. It is also used in a wide array of plastic products such as mobile phones, computers and medical equipment.
Hundreds of analyses have been conducted on BPA, most of which have found harm to laboratory rodents and primates, and studies looking at the belongings of BPA in human beings have also found links to ill-health.
Though, several studies funded by the chemical’s manufacturer and concerning large numbers of laboratory rodents have given BPA a clean bill of health. Regulators such as the Food Values Agency have relied on this minute number of industry-based studies in reaching their assessments that BPA is safe.
Though, in January, the US FDA reversed its long-held position that BPA was safe and announced it favoured its withdrawal from infant bottles – and would support the canning industry’s search for alternatives.
Scientists have claimed that the American chemical business has been overly dominant in its influence on the FDA, sparking a backlash from independent scientists prior to its U-turn. In December, 7 experts from five British universities including London, Ulster and Stirling wrote to the Health Secretary Andy Burnham calling for a review of BPA.
A presenter for Born Free, one of countless BPA-free brands, said: “We consider that BPA has been one of the most studied chemicals for decades for a grounds. Recent scientific research suggests that small amounts of BPA may leach into foods or liquids stored in polycarbonate containers, especially when the contents are acidic, high in fat, or heated.
“Investigate also suggests that BPA may act as an endocrine disruptor, a substance which mimics natural human hormones, and that babies and growing children are particularly at risk from exposure because they are still undergoing many hormone-mediated developmental processes.
“We suppose that the use of BPA in baby-feeding products should be banned in its entirety. It is for this reason that our entire manufactured goods portfolio has for all time been and always will be free from harmful chemicals such as BPA.”
Breast Cancer UK’s Ms Dimmer added: “Several hundred autonomous scientific studies have been published in peer-reviewed college journals over the last decade that have established the low-dose effects of BPA.
“These studies include examine conducted on cell cultures as well as mammalian animals and have determined potential increased risks in a whole host of chronic health circumstances, including breast and prostate cancer, liver disease, diabetes, obesity, and even a potential impact on brain function. Scientists have also identified that juvenile children and infants have the top levels of exposure to BPA as they are less able to clear this chemical from their bodies.”
She added: “This is above all troubling as infants and young children are in a rapid state of growth and advance, and are potentially more susceptible to risks of exposure to BPA.”
Professor Vyvyan Howard, professor of bioimaging at Ulster University, said regulators should adopt the precautionary avoidance of bisphenol A. “With our own family, who were breast-fed, we obtained glass feeding bottles for water and fruit juice,” he said. “I consider that the weight of evidence is such that schedule use of polycarbonate products should be avoided during pregnancy and for young infants.”
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said the substantiation on BPA was insufficient to alarm parents. “No direct link sandwiched between bisphenol A and breast cancer risk have been shown in humans,” he said. “Some results from animal studies or work on cells in the laboratory point to the need for more research in this area.
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