Breaking News: Boiling Water Increases BPA Leaching By Factor of 55

From today's Globe and Mail:

Adding boiling water to polycarbonate plastic bottles causes a dramatic spike in the amount of bisphenol A, or BPA, leaching from containers into drinks, according to a U.S. research team.

The finding suggests that parents sterilizing polycarbonate baby bottles by heating them in water or in a microwave may be inadvertently increasing the amount of the estrogen-mimicking chemical leaching from the containers. It also indicates hikers who use the bottles as a thermos to store hot tea or liquids may be doing the same.

The addition of boiling water increased BPA migration rates by up to 55-fold compared with water at room temperature, according to experiments run at the University of Cincinnati. A paper outlining the findings is being released today in Toxicology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal. [Link|Via]

Want to protect your child from BPA? Check out our Z Report on BPA in bottles, sippy cups, and pacifiers, or our critique of the Environmental Working Group's report on BPA in infant formula.