Facts About Bisphenol A or BPA Found in Some Canned Goods

​If your Thanksgiving dinner shopping list includes Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, you might want to give the can opener a rest and start re-thinking your menu. A new report reveals the presence of the toxic estrogenic chemical bisphenol (BPA) in several canned Thanksgiving staples. Some of the highest levels reported came from samples of canned goods purchased in Minneapolis.

Exposure to BPA, commonly used in plastics and container linings, including can linings, to protect against contamination, has been linked to infertility, diabetes, and several types of cancer.The study, conducted by the the Breast Cancer Fund, sampled four cans each of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, Campbell's Turkey Gravy, Carnation Evaporated Milk (by Nestlé), Del Monte Fresh Cut Sweet Corn (Cream Style), Green Giant Cut Green Beans (by General Mills), Libby's Pumpkin (by Nestlé), and Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce. Results showed vastly different levels of BPA in each sample, which researchers say could be attributed to the different methods of canning at each manufacturing facility.

The Breast Cancer Fund's website says that "for half of the products tested, a single 120-gram serving of the food contains enough BPA to show adverse health impacts in lab studies. Have some pumpkin pie after your green bean casserole and gravy, and the amount of BPA delivered to each holiday diner adds up to a concerning chemical dose."

It's not all bad news for consumers and Minnesota-based businesses. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says that "some of the can manufacturers featured in this report, such as General Mills and Nestlé, have announced that they are working toward alternatives to BPA in canned foods."

A Survey of Bisphenol A in U.S. Canned Foods

Summary. Independent laboratory tests found a toxic food-can lining ingredient associated with birth defects of the male and female reproductive systems in over half of 97 cans of name-brand fruit, vegetables, soda, and other commonly eaten canned goods. The study was spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and targeted the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), a plastic and resin ingredient used to line metal food and drink cans. There are no government safety standards limiting the amount of BPA in canned food.

EWG's tests found:

• Of all foods tested, chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli had BPA levels of highest concern. Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests.
• For 1 in 10 cans of all food tested, and 1 in 3 cans of infant formula, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals. The government typically mandates a 1,000- to 3,000-fold margin of safety between human exposures and levels found to harm lab animals, but these servings contained levels of BPA less than 5 times lower than doses that harmed lab animals.

BPA testing in canned food. We contracted with a national analytical laboratory to test 97 cans of food we purchased in March 2006 in three major, chain supermarkets in Atlanta, Georgia; Oakland, California; and Clinton, Connecticut. The lab tested 30 brands of food altogether, 27 national brands and 3 store brands. Among the foods we tested are 20 of the 40 canned foods most commonly consumed by women of childbearing age (NHANES, 2002), including soda, canned tuna, peaches, pineapples, green beans, corn, and tomato and chicken noodle soups. We also tested canned infant formula. The lab detected BPA in fifty-seven percent of all cans.

BPA is a heavily produced industrial compound that has been detected in more than 2,000 people worldwide, including more than 95 percent of 400 people in the United States. More than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found BPA to be toxic at low doses, some similar to those found in people, yet not a single regulatory agency has updated safety standards to reflect this low-dose toxicity. FDA estimates that 17% of the U.S. diet comprises canned food; they last examined BPA exposures from food in 1996 but failed to set a safety standard.

RECOMMENDATIONS

BPA is associated with a number of health problems and diseases that are on the rise in the U.S. population, including breast and prostate cancer and infertility. Given widespread human exposure to BPA and hundreds of studies showing its adverse effects, the FDA and EPA must act quickly to set safe levels for BPA exposure based on the latest science on the low-dose toxicity of the chemical.

 Source: http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola
http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2011/11/thanksgiving_canned_foods_found_with_toxic_chemical_bpa.php