:: aerobrain ::

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Polycarbonate risks to Babies

Recently, people were talking about the risk of using Polycarbonate (PC) material for water bottles. Previously, people were shocked by the news that Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles such as mineral water bottles should not be used because it is a risk to our health.

I believe after the news regarding the PET bottles spread out, every each of us start to buy PC bottles. So, what is actually happening here?

According to US FDA (Food & Drug Administration), PET is pretty much safe material to be used as food container. However, it is not suitable to fill up boiled water since the typical glass transition temperature for PET is 75 deg C. So, what about PC? The typical glass transition temperature for PC is 150 deg C. It should be ok if you fill it up with boiled water ~100 deg C. But, actually, that is not the problem.

Note:

Glass Transition Temperature is the temperature at which the material becomes brittle at cold and softens at hot temperature respectively.
Melting Temperature is the temperature at which the material starts to change from solid phase to liquid.

PC contains bisphenol-A (BPA) to make it strong plastic. Study shows that BPA mimics the human natural hormones at low doses and become toxic for long term exposure or high doses.

Thus, why does US FDA says PC is “ok” to use? Study also shows that the leach of BPA from a PC container is very minimal, 4.7 parts per billion parts (0.00000047%). It was tested after the water stays in PC container for 39 weeks. So the leach rate is pretty much small.

However, BPA consumption for babies is worrying due to babies weight are very much lesser compared to the adults. US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) outlines that the acceptable level of BPA consumption should be 50 micrograms/kg-weight/day. Thus, if an adult with 60 kg of weight consumes 1 micrograms/kg/day, a baby with 3 kg of weight consumes 20 micrograms/kg/day. The value still doesn’t reach the acceptable level of BPA consumption, but to be safe, babies must stay away from PC food containers.

According to this statistics, the lesser the weight of a person, the higher the risk of using PC food containers. But I would advise pregnant women and babies should stay away from using PC food containers. At least until the babies grow.

There are alternatives from using PC food containers. But it doesn’t mean you can throw all the PC bottles in your house now. The alternatives are:

Glass
Steel - make sure it is stainless steel, otherwise you are in bigger trouble than BPA
Ceramic
Polypropylene (PP) - used a lot in Tupperware (R) containers

Example of Polypropylene container by Tupperware (R)