Bisphenol A - Government and Industry Response - United States - 2011

2011

In 2011, 26 states proposed legislation that would ban certain uses of BPA. Many bills died in committee however, some are moving forward. In August 2010, the Maine Board of Environmental Protection voted unanimously to ban the sale of baby bottles and other reusable food and beverage containers made with bisphenol A as of January 2012. In February 2011, the newly elected governor of Maine, Paul LePage, gained national attention when he spoke on a local TV news show saying he hoped to repeal the ban because, "There hasn't been any science that identifies that there is a problem" and added: "The only thing that I've heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards." In April, the Maine legislature passed a bill to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, and other reusable food and beverage containers, effective 1 January 2012. Governor LePage refused to sign the bill.

A study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that BPA used in the lining of food cans is absorbed by the food and then ingested by consumers. The experiment involved 75 participants, half of whom ate a lunch of canned vegetable soup for five days, followed by five days of fresh soup; the other half did the same experiment in reverse order. "The analysis revealed that when participants ate the canned soup they experienced more than a 1,000 percent increase in their urinary concentrations of BPA, compared to when they dined on fresh soup."

In October 2011 California banned BPA from baby bottles and toddlers' drinking cups. The ban will take effect 1 July 2013.

In a July report the American Medical Association (AMA) declared that they believe that feeding products for babies and infants that contain BPA should be banned. In the report AMA said they would also like to see better federal oversight of BPA and the clear labeling of products containing it. It stressed the importance of the Food and Drug Administration to "actively incorporate current science into the regulation of food and beverage BPA-containing products."