Plastics are everywhere. They’re in our clothes. They’re in our furniture. They’re even in our food, seeping in through all manner of bags, boxes, wrappings, liners and seals. Rip open any package and microplastic bits flood out.
Plastics helped bring about the modern era of affordable convenience. But that ease has also put our health at risk. For more than half a century, manufacturers have been making plastics stronger and longer lasting thanks to an industrial chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. But study after study has now shown that BPA is toxic to human brains, reproductive systems and more. BPA can cause fertility problems, possibly including miscarriage, as well as behavioral issues in children, and can even lead to an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes in adults. These revelations forced the industry to change.
“Bisphenol A started to get a really bad reputation,” says Washington State University reproductive biologist Patricia Hunt. “And as state legislatures started to ask for bans on BPA in baby products and sippy cups, the industry started to roll out replacement bisphenols.”
In recent years, this surge in fresh plastics has brought consumers some small manner of comfort. The BPA-free sticker makes us feel better about the water bottles we drink from and the toys we give our children.
But Hunt is here to burst the BPA-free bubble. There are now at least 50 BPA-free alternatives, with names like bisphenol S and bisphenol F. So little is known about their use that even scientists can’t really say how many are in circulation. What researchers do know is that these chemicals are structural analogs of BPA. And their similarities don’t stop at their chemical structure — they also disrupt how cells function in many of the same ways and cause similar toxic effects on the human body.
