The Z Report: A Directory of Bisphenol-A In Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

Please note: This report has been substantially revised and updated since this post was published, most recently in our ZRecs Guide to Safer Children's Products. Much of the information in this post is outdated, and we encourage you to refer instead to our new consumer guide to BPA and other potentially harmful chemicals in children's products, the ZRecs Guide.

Introduction
We published our first Z Report on the endocrine-disrupting hormone Bisphenol-A in baby bottles three months ago, and our BPA-free Sippy Cup Showdown a couple of months before that. The two articles have proven the most widely cited and visited pieces of reporting in Z Recommends' thirteen-month history. We took companies' silence about their own products' plastic content as a consumer reporting challenge, and as the site traffic these reports generate continues unabated, we have felt an increasing obligation to revisit, revise, and expand upon our earlier reporting to offer the most comprehensive directory of available information on BPA in baby feeding products.

What's Inside

The information in this report is designed to serve several audiences.

For those simply looking for recommendations, click on the names of any of the companies listed in the "Top Picks" section of our company map. We recommend bottles by Born Free, MAM and Adiri, breast pumps and supplies by Medela and Mother's Milkmate, and sippy cups by Born Free, Klean Kanteen, Thermos, and SIGG.

If you are here to check on information about bottles or sippy cups you already have, we can say with some confidence that you should be most concerned if you are using bottles by Avent, Dr. Brown's, Evenflo, the First Years, Munchkin, Nuby, Playskool, or Second Nature, or sippy cups or breast pumps by many of these brands. You are also likely, but less certain, to be using products containing Bisphenol-A if you are using bottles by Gerber, Playtex, or Tommee Tippee. We have included BFree in our "Brands to avoid" section for reasons of its own, which you can read at the link.

Readers familiar with our previous research and reporting on BPA in bottles and sippy cups will find the "Promising entrants" category of most interest, as it highlights three companies who have just entered the sippy cup market, each electing to do so with a BPA-free product.

We do, however, have a broader goal in organizing and presenting the information in this new, company-by-company directory structure. As we attempted to communicate using our "BPA IQ" ratings in our original Z Report, we believe that companies should not be judged or rewarded based on the presence of a single BPA-free product. Expanding on our previous company assessments, we have attempted to provide the clearest picture possible regarding where each of the brands pictured above stands on the issue of safe plastics. This BPA "portrait" can be compiled not just from formal company statements, but also from companies' support of lobbying organizations or their holding of positions of power in industry trade groups. We consider these profiles to be works in progress, and will update them as information becomes available and new actions are taken.

All new information included in this report has been verified with company representatives.

What Our Ratings Mean

Our categorization of companies in the chart above is intended to be a broad assessment of the company's BPA-free offerings. This is a "snapshot" designed for the casual reader who wants some guidelines but is not interested in memorizing which types of each product are safe and which aren't from the wide array of companies represented. This means that companies which do offer some BPA-free products are listed in our "Brands to avoid" section" - they simply are not committed to offering BPA-free products in any consistent, cohesive, or public way.

By BPA-free, we mean that not only the main body of the bottle or sippy cup is not made of polycarbonate plastic, but that none of the item's other parts are, either. Some companies provide incomplete information and claim that their bottles or sippys are "made of polypropylene" but cite this fact in a very careful way to obscure the fact that other parts of the equipment are made of polycarbonate. This is why we discuss products one by one with company representatives in compiling our research for this and our other reports.

If your interest or allegiance lies with a particular brand or brands, please view individual company posts for item-by-item listings of which products are BPA-free and which are not, and you can then buy products even from those companies with some confidence. We say "some" because companies which are on the record as supporting the use of polycarbonate plastic are under no legal obligation to inform you if they choose to change the plastics used in their products, and if they believe that polycarbonate is as safe as other plastics, they have no reason to tell you, either.

You can learn more about Bisphenol-A by visiting our del.icio.us links on the topic. We encourage readers to suggest additional resources in the comments. If you have questions or comments regarding a specific brand, please comment on the company post.

So What Is It You Want, Anyway?

What we want is actually quite simple. We want companies that produce products which come into contact with infants' and toddlers' mouths, and which are exposed to high heat due to washing and sterilization, to disclose the types of plastic they use in their products. Here is an example from Combi's wonderful toddler training chopsticks:


We want companies to inform consumers so that people like us don't have to do their job for them. Labeling like this will only influence the choices of people who care. If people care, they should have a choice. If enough people care about materials that you're afraid to label your products with the information, you're using the wrong materials.

Thanks for reading.

ZRecs BPA-Free Shortlist:
Bottles: Adiri | Born Free | MAM | Medela | Mother's Milkmate
Sippys: Born Free | Klean Kanteen | Sassy | SIGG | Thermos
Pacifiers: Playtex | Gerber/NUK | First Years
Pumps and Supplies: Medela | Mother's Milkmate

Read about BPA levels in infant formula.

Disclaimer: Z Recommends collects information for its reports from official company websites, company-staffed customer service lines, and company managers and public relations officials. We also update listings as needed to correct or revise information, and encourage readers or company officials to submit questions, comments or corrections as needed to ensure that this information is as accurate as possible. By reading and acting upon the information contained here, you hereby release Z Recommends from any liability for the information provided in this or other ZRecs reports.

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