Whole Foods 365 Private Label Cans DO Contain Some BPA
February 15, 2008
I finally heard back from Whole Foods regarding whether or not their 365 brand contains BPA in the lining of their canned food products. Here is the response (I think he repeats himself, but this is the unedited email):
Trisha,
Thank you so much for your email. We are committed to helping our customers protect themselves and their families and as such are concerned about the growing body of research which connects BPA and other estrogenic compounds, including phthalates, to certain health effects. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that such materials are appropriate and safe, we are currently evaluating certain products and packaging materials on a variety of criteria, including endocrine activity, toxicity, recyclability and functionality. Our goal is to help our customers avoid endocrine active materials in products and packaging where functional alternatives exist.
We are staying on top of the latest academic research regarding the endocrine activity of substances present in plastics, including BPA. When appropriate, we have stopped the sale of certain products and/or provided information to our customers about the products. For example, as of January 2006 we stopped selling baby bottles and child drinking cups made from polycarbonate plastic or other plastics with added phthalates because of the emerging scientific evidence on their risk.
We have begun the process of examining the plastic packaging materials we use to package foods in our stores, and are working with a leading testing firm to design a laboratory test to accurately assess the endocrine activity of these materials. We will continue to search for the safest and most functional packaging materials for our stores.
Some of the canned products sold in our stores may have small amounts of bisphenol-a in the lining material. We are actively assessing the safety of the packaging materials used in our stores, as we are committed to helping our customers protect themselves and their families and as such are concerned about the growing body of research which connects BPA and other estrogenic compounds to certain health effects. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that such materials are appropriate and safe, we are currently evaluating certain products and packaging materials on a variety of criteria, including endocrine activity, toxicity, recyclability and functionality. Our goal is to help our customers avoid endocrine active materials in products and packaging where functional alternatives exist.
We are staying on top of the latest academic research regarding the endocrine activity of substances present in plastics, including BPA. When appropriate, we have stopped the sale of certain products and/or provided information to our customers about the products. For example, as of January 2006 we stopped selling baby bottles and child drinking cups made from polycarbonate plastic or other plastics with added phthalates because of the emerging scientific evidence on their risk.
We have begun the process of examining the plastic packaging materials we use to package foods in our stores, and are working with a leading testing firm to design a laboratory test to accurately assess the endocrine activity of these materials. We will continue to search for the safest and most functional packaging materials for our stores.
Jason Hays
Guest Services Content Administrator, Private Label
Related Articles:
Entry Filed under: Bisphenol A, Going Green, Household Products, Organic Food, Parenting. Tags: babies, Baby, Bisphenol A, bpa, canned food, children, cooking, endocrine, family, food, fruit, health, infant, kids, Parenting, pba, phthalates, toddler, whole foods.
3 Comments Add your own
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
1.
Suzanne | April 22, 2008 at 12:04 pm
This is all very terrifying, bc my children had something plastic in their mouths constantly from birth to end of teething. I’ve asked a scientist I know to lay out the facts on her blog at http://downtoearthblog.com, so forgive me for this blatant plug for another blog. I just thought some moms would enjoy seeing her dissect the scientific literature in mom-speak.
2.
Deb | May 1, 2008 at 11:39 am
Most food and beverage cans are lined with bisphenol-a epoxy resins.The chemical industry admits to an average of 37 ppb of bisphenol-a leaching into canned foods and 4 ppb leaching into canned sodas and beer; so the presence of the chemical is not disputed, only its safety is. Non-industry scientific studies show alarming consequences to very low doses of this chemical.
The FDA and other food safety authorities test for toxicological safety; however, this is an endrocinological issue; not the same at all. Bisphenol-A and other endocrine disrupters are dangerous as LOW levels; whereas other things are dangerous at HIGH levels. They are being asked to think in a new way … its a paradigm shift for them.
I think the issue is larger…. its one of choice and basic human rights. The food/chemical/coatings/plastics industries are giving weasly answers to our questions … as if they believe we have no right to know what they’ve added to the food we serve our families. In this they are sadly mistaken.
3.
Penny | June 1, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I just read Jason Hays un-edited e-mail, and it certainly seems he did alot of cut and pasting of paragraphs and didn’t even read it back to himself when he was finished. That or there has to be some underlying learning disability. He not only repeats what he is saying but it is done so in word for word paragraphs with barely a sentence in between.