BPA In Infant Formula: Notes On the Environmental Working Group's Report

The Environmental Working Group, a leading investigator on the issue of Bisphenol-A, has combined the kind of company surveying we used in our Z Report on BPA with a review of existing studies and some testing of their own to develop a new report on the presence of BPA in infant formulas at high levels.

The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has an excellent track record for its research and advocacy. We first heard of them back in 2004 when they blew the lid off of the USDA's violation of a civil rights settlement with black farmers; we love their research and reporting on chemicals in cosmetics, children's care products, and more, and they work hard and smart to educate the public on a number of other health and environmental causes. The EWG maintains a four-star (top) rating with the independent and highly reputable Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits based on their effectiveness and fiscal responsibility.

Below, a summary and discussion of the study.

The Short Version

Cans and cardboard canisters used to store liquid and powdered infant formulas typically use a BPA-containing plastic to line their metal parts (in canisters, the top and bottom discs; in cans, the whole thing) and the EWG analyzed FDA and conducted their own tests to evaluate the amount of potential harm to infants.

Dozens of recent studies link very low concentrations of BPA with permanent alterations of the reproductive system, brain and behavior of laboratory animals (Maffini 2006). However, FDA regulations governing BPA leaching from food containers are completely out of touch with these findings of low dose toxicity. Regulations mandate that leaching of BPA into food must not exceed 0.05 milligrams of BPA from each square inch of the can surface (FDA 2006). At the maximum allowable BPA leaching, this would result in 0.5 to 5 parts per million of BPA in standard size formula cans, and lead an average 0 to 4 month old baby to exceed EPA’s outdated safe daily dose of BPA by up to 30 times (EPA 1998).

Further, the study's authors write that "at the highest BPA levels found in formula, 17 parts per billion (ppb), nearly 2/3rds of all infants fed ready-to-eat formula would be exposed above doses that proved harmful in animal tests." There is a lot more detail offered in the report, including some caveats, but the long and short of it is that BPA is present in formula in even higher levels than the amounts leached from bottles.

The EWG recommends parents use the following formula options, in this order of preference:

1. Powdered formula by Nestle, Enfamil or Similac
2. Powdered formula by Earth's Best or Bright Beginnings
3. Concentrated liquid formulas

The highest concentrated consumption of BPA comes from ready-to-eat formula in cans, because it is not diluted with water and has the most surface contact with the epoxy.

Discussion with the Author

I spoke with researcher Sonya Lunder yesterday to discuss the report. She explained to me that the group used data from a CDC database as well as an online survey to collect the data about kids' weights used to develop their risk assessment. I asked her what alternatives companies had to using the BPA-containing epoxy.

"Other can linings leach more into food, but there's nothing else out there I know of that has been shown to have effects at such low doses," she said. "Two micrograms per day is nothing! I'd say even if something else got into the formula, if it wasn't this potent estrogenic chemical, we'd be better off."

The researchers faced many of the same issues we did when we collected information about bottles and sippy cups: intractable company representatives, misleading or incomplete statements, and occasional downright contradictions. We applaud EWG for sharing these observations in their report; they could just as easily have left them out because they can be difficult to pin down, but they rightly saw them as an additional way to shed light on the companies consumers may be doing business with.

"Two of the companies sent emails out saying 'we don't have any BPA in our packaging' that we found to be false," Lunder said. "Nestle said they do in their liquid container but not in their powder, but that's not true." She also cited PBM ("they make most of the store brands of formulas, under different names") as having provided conflicting information about BPA use to EWG inquiries than it did to parents, admitting to its presence to researchers but asserting the opposite in emails to parents.

More broadly, we are thrilled to see EWG contributing so substantially to the conversation about BPA. We expect the report to trigger a third wave of renewed and expanded interest in the issue, and their research appears thorough and their conclusions well-considered. They deserve all of the attention they get from this very engaging and intelligent reporting.

That said, we did notice a couple of things that bothered us. One small thing, and one big one. Since they center on the same issue, let's start small.

Criticisms

A natural fourth option that could have been added to the 1-2-3 list of formula recommendations above would be ready-to-eat formula in plastic containers, but EWG appears to have passed on recommending any ready-to-eat formulas because of their environmental costs (the plastic plus the increased transportation impact of non-concentrated product). Allowing this outside consideration to affect their guidelines seemed inconsistent with their inclusion of Nestle among the report's top recommendations, despite the international boycott on the company over its practices in marketing formula in developing nations.

We faced this same issue in developing our bottle and sippy cup recommendations, as we do frequently in product reviewing. Gerber, for example, is owned by Nestle, and we take the Nestle boycott quite seriously, avoiding products produced by Nestle-owned companies wherever possible. In the end, however, we elected to allow outside considerations to affect a company's recommendation level in our Z Report only if it impacted our ability to trust the information we received - we listed Nuby and BFree as brands to avoid for related reasons, even though they had some products we believed to be BPA-free.

But the EWG's stance presents an additional bias towards environmentally-sound solutions that we find more problematic. While we appreciate the need to distill information and simplify it for harried parents looking for straightforward answers, we find it troubling that EWG chose to list glass bottles as their sole safe bottle recommendation. Below, a detail shot from their otherwise solid "cheat sheet" PDF:

"Bottle: Use glass," the list reads. "Plastic bottles can leach a toxic chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) into formula. Avoid clear, hard plastic bottles marked with a 7 or 'PC.'"

It is difficult for us to understand why an advocacy organization would present such a drastically curtailed set of options for parents when it comes to bottle selection, unless they were doing so because of the environmental impact of plastic versus glass bottles. I asked Sonya Lunder if there were known issues (estrogenic or otherwise) with commonly used bottle plastics like polypropylene or polyamide. She said no, although they were looking into potential leaching from polyethylene (plastic inserts) in bag-and-bottle systems.

Given EWG's agreement that there are no known risks of toxic exposure from non-polycarbonate bottles, the wording in this report is unfortunate at best. We cannot count the number of times we have shocked a parent by mentioning that there were alternatives "unsafe" bottles besides switching to glass, and although the EWG report does mention in its "additional notes" that "more manufacturers are also making bottles and sippy cups out of safe plastics which are polyethylene, polypropylene or polyamide," it's the shortlist and the graphic that make headlines, and there is already a widespread perception out there that glass is the only "safe" option.

We support companies that offer alternatives to polycarbonate plastic bottles and sippy cups, whether that be glass or polypropylene or polyamide or stainless steel or aluminum, and in our conversations with the manufacturers of these products, we know how many of them have staked their reputation or even their livelihood on providing non-polycarbonate options. We don't think that telling parents about non-PC plastics is too much to ask; in fact, we believe it is our responsibility to do so, both to the companies investing in this issue and in parents, who are coming to us to learn one thing: how to avoid exposing their children to Bisphenol-A.

The fact that many children in daycares are not allowed to bring in glass bottles only reinforces the fact that parents need information, not oversimplification, in order to make intelligent choices for their families.

Conclusion

We highly recommend that parents read the EWG report, and we were encouraged and aided by the detailed description of their study methodology, which will impact our own future data collection methods when conducting research for Z Recommends. The openness of EWG in presenting their findings, both in their report and in their interactions with bloggers like ourselves, are exactly the kind of airing out this topic needs, and we look forward to more great work for this tireless organization. But we do encourage parents to remember that they have a variety of options when it comes to baby bottles, and we encourage everyone participating in the discussion about Bisphenol-A to delineate between potentially competing issues so that we provide parents with the information they need to make decisions that will work best for their families.