What is Bisphenol A, or BPA, in Plain Terms? - a Safety Guide for Parents

So what's with all the media coverage on Bisphenol A, or BPA lately? Since my wife is a nurse and has a chemical engineering background, we've done some research on this issue. My original thought was to write a whole technical article about this chemical, but I decided to make this more useful (and less boring) to readers instead. So here is my opinion on this from a "practical" point of view.

First let's define BPA in plain and simple terms. Bisphenol A is simply a chemical used to make a variety of products, including a certain type of plastic. More specifically, it is used to make polycarbonate plastic. This type of plastic is lightweight, tough, and possesses qualities such as optical clarity and high heat resistance that make it desirable for making a wide range of products. Without getting any further into technical-speak, all we need to know is that polycarbonate plastic is what many (perhaps most) of the baby feeding bottles are made of these days.

In reading up on this issue, it appears that no one argues that BPA is harmful to humans, and therefore harmful to babies. The more important questions are, "at what level of exposure is it harmful to babies?" and "do babies get exposed to harmful doses from bottles?" This is where the debate is raging. Since I stated that I want to keep this on a "practical" level, it's not worth going into all the details of the debate. It does seem, however, that both sides have studies that they cite to back up their argument...hence the debate, I suppose. It should be noted that the Canadian government recently took steps to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles. Now, this neither proves nor disproves the dangers of BPA in baby bottles but it is interesting to note.

So after doing our research, here is what my wife and I concluded:

It is a fact that BPA is harmful to our baby, if she is exposed to it enough. We don't know for sure if the polycarbonate bottles we are using will expose her to this high level. However, given the debate going on there may be a risk. As with all parents, we want to protect our baby. But practically speaking, the cost and effort has to be reasonable given the unknown risk. Fortunately, we found that the cost and effort to replace our baby bottles with BPA-free bottles were negligible. In fact, some BPA-free bottles cost less. And (as of the time of this writing) Babies-R-Us is offering to do a free exchange of bottles for BPA-free ones. So we decided to get BPA-free bottles. Why not? Even if it turns out that this is just an unfounded public scare, it doesn't cost us anything to have piece of mind about it. And that is worth it for us.