Polycarbonate Drinking Bottles Leach BPA

BOSTON—Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles, the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles, showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA, and suggests that drinking containers made with BPA release the chemical into the liquid that people drink in sufficient amounts to increase the level of BPA excreted in human urine.