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Today's Top News
BPA Spikes 1,200 Per Cent After Eating Canned Soup: Study
WASHINGTON - People who ate canned soup for five days straight saw their urinary levels of the chemical bisphenol A spike 1,200 per cent compared to those who ate fresh soup, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The randomized study, described as "one of the first to quantify BPA levels in humans after ingestion of canned foods," was done by Harvard University researchers and appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association's November 23 issue.
"This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use," said lead author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. (photo: Matthew Hurst)
"We've known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body," said lead author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.
"This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use."
The chemical BPA is an endocrine disruptor that has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animal studies at levels of 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight and higher, though it remains uncertain if the same effects cross over to humans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
This study did not measure BPA levels by micrograms per kilogram of body weight, but rather by micrograms per liter of urine, so a direct comparison to the EPA-cited danger level in animals was not possible.
However, previous studies have linked BPA at lower levels than those found in the Harvard study to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity in humans, Carwile told AFP in an email.
BPA is found in the lining of canned foods, cash register receipts, dental fillings, some plastics and polycarbonate bottles marked with the number 7.
Seventy-five people took part in the study, eating a 12-ounce serving of either fresh or canned soup for five days in a row. They were advised not to otherwise alter their regular eating habits.
After a two-day break, the groups switched and ate the opposite type of canned soup.
A urine analysis showed the canned soup eaters had 1,221 per cent higher levels of BPA than those who ate the fresh soup.
BPA is typically eliminated in the urine and so any spike is usually considered temporary. The researchers did not measure how long elevated BPA stayed in the body, saying more study would be needed to examine that question.
The U.S. government's health and environmental agencies are considering whether "further action is needed to address human health risks resulting from non-food-packaging uses of BPA," according to the EPA.
France's Agency for Food Health Safety (Anses) in September called for tougher preventive measures, warning that even "low doses" of the chemical had had a "confirmed" effect on lab animals and a "suspected" effect on humans.
Preventing exposure to BPA among infants, pregnant or nursing women was a "priority goal," Anses said.
Meanwhile, the Harvard study authors said their findings should encourage people who eat a lot of canned foods to opt for fresh instead, and should serve as a red flag to manufacturers who use BPA to make cans.
"The magnitude of the rise in urinary BPA we observed after just one serving of soup was unexpected and may be of concern among individuals who regularly consume foods from cans or drink several canned beverages daily," said senior author Karin Michels.
"It may be advisable for manufacturers to consider eliminating BPA from can linings."
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52 Comments so far
Show AllIs this true of all brands of soup and all canned goods?
Good Question, I wonder about Beer and my cat's food too since the damage study was on animals... I think I'll go back to more expensive bottles for now.
I just heard something on the radio which said the culprit was in the plasticized lining of steel cans containing food. I don't know about beer cans because they are aluminum--and because I can't see into the small hole at the top.
" ... I can't see into the small hole at the top. "
Especially after you have consumed the contents ;) ???
Aluninum cans are not lined with the plastic... You just get aluminum poisoning.
I was curious so I tried looking it up, aluminum poisoning that is. As far as I can find/tell, it just doesn't occur ~ the element is too happy to break down or bond with other things and be filtered by our kidneys and excreted, all with a smile. It would be possible, from what I can tell, if you intentionally set up someone to die by both causing the filtration process to be knackered AND injecting them with aluminum. No known records exist where someone wasn't already dying from the injection and the organ failure over the poisoning.
The aluminum poisoning was written in a joking manner... If fell flat. Buttt, actually aluminum is poisonous in food in certain instances.. See comments and links posted below.
"...companies like Coca-Cola continue to use the chemical in beverage can liners."
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/taco-bell-kfc-yum-brands-bpa-paper-as-you-sow/
Coca-Cola does that so we don't get aluminum poisoning.
All your "jokes" fall flat. Misinformation just isn't very funny, especially when cancer and heart disease are involved.
You are right,, I apologize,, no more jokes... But misinformation? Hmmm.
http://www.drpepi.com/aluminum-poisoning.php
Aluminum Poisoning - Chiropractic, Nutrition and Dietary .
http://www.hints-n-tips.com/aluminum.htm
Aluminum poisoning - a very detailed article on aluminum poisoning by Dr. Pepi, including the Dangers of Aluminum Toxicity and Sources of Aluminum.
It is particularly poisonous to the nervous system with a range of symptoms that can include disturbed sleep, nervousness, emotional instability, memory loss, headaches, and impaired intellect.
Maybe that's what is wrong with our leaders.. Too many pepsis,
Do not cook tomatoes or tomatoe sauses in an aluminum pan, or drink soft drinks from unlined aluminum cans.. No joke,, Howz that?
bottles with metal lids lined with plastic containing BPA?
Only if you shake the bottle
The bottle gets shaken and sometimes tilted all the way from the factory to your kitchen. I don't know of any study about absorption into food through a thin layer of air, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. Grow your own. Buy Eden foods. Write to your politicians and food companies and demand they ban BPA in food, reciepts and other places. (About 10 states have already banned it in baby bottles,)
Eden Foods is the only company I know of that does not use BPA in their cans, except for their tomato products - their website says that "The FDA hasn't approved any other type of can lining for highly acidic foods";
http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=178
"BPA is found in the lining of canned foods, cash register receipts, dental fillings, some plastics and polycarbonate bottles marked with the number 7."
Yeah,,, don't eat any cash regster reciepts.
Next they'll tell us we can't eat our paint chips.
When it comes to supposedly canned tuna CHUNKS, it would be better to throw the minced pieces of water soaked fish bits in the garbage and eat the can. Then never buy it again.
But the Nancy Pelosi family wouldn't like that, they own a lot of the stock for canned tuna and the island workers receive a lot less than minimum wages.
Large predator fish and aquatic mammals also have a lot of chemical toxins and mercury in their bodies. Check the Greenpeace experience when they asked the major tuna companies to improve their fishing methods to reduce collateral damages.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/05/14/175026/diseased-gulf-fish/
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fe20070801a1.html?fb_ref=article_life#.TmQG_1BTq6Y.facebook
I woiuld not eat any seafood from the Gulf of "Texaco", laced with BPs Corexit.
All along the New Jersey shore are large signs and written in red lettering are the warnings of which fish we should not eat, most of them.. Some are one serving a month and none for pregnent mothers or children. In Arizona most lakes and some streams we are warned to not eat any of the fish.due to mercury poison.
In Tennesse people use dead fish for flashoights because of atmic radiation... Well,, almost on that one, but don't eat any fish there inmost areas. .
BPA is also absorbed through the skin, and cash register receipts have higher BPA concentrations than food can linings.
"The receipt for a McDonald's Happy Meal™ purchased in Clinton, Conn. on April 21, 2010 had an estimated 13 milligrams of BPA. That equals the amount of BPA in 126 cans of Chef Boyardee Overstuffed Beef Ravioli in Hearty Tomato & Meat Sauce, one of the products with the highest concentrations of BPA in EWG's 2007 tests of canned foods (EWG 2007). "
http://www.ewg.org/bpa-in-store-receipts
"BPA is also absorbed through the skin, and cash register receipts have higher BPA concentrations than food can linings." Naturally
A week or two ago, I read a lengthy article about this issue. The article advised clerks who work in stores and handle receipts to wear gloves. Until I read the article I had NO idea that BPA was used as a finish to cash register receipt paper.
In Europe, they have already moved to ban some of the uses of BPA -- some countries have also banned the use of BPA in baby bottles.
Thanks for the link, and the additional information!
The gloves are plastic.... Wonder if those plastic gloves have any BPA?
you're on a roll, Wayne!
Yep vdb, a foot long hot dog,,, lol
Oh, I checked it out, lots of BPA in the gloves.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=is+there+bpa+in+plastic+gloves%3F+&form=OSDSRC
Nitride groves are safest, as some people are allergic to vinyl.
Interesting but provides more heat than light, more questions than usable information. If the dodgy chemical is being excreted, isn't that a good thing? Not necessarily but no data in this news piece. What kind of cash register receipts? Which kind(s) of dental fillings? And which food tins?
I greatly reduced my use of canned foods a year or so ago after reading about BPA being used in some plastic linings of cans used for tomato products. I started checking the recycling number on plastic beverage containers, too. One can't avoid all the harmful things in our daily environment, but some solid information would be helpful.
"If the dodgy chemical is being excreted, isn't that a good thing?" I would imagine that it might be better than if it were stored inside the tissues but in order to be excreted it has to pass through a number of rather important body parts and maybe it does damage at that point or leaves toxic residue. Anyway, at a minimum this stuff is coming in contact with the mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, the intestines, the kidneys, the bladder and connected tubes on the way out. Somehow "good thing" doesn't seem to fit what I'm feeling.
Besides heart disease and diabetes, BPA is also linked to cancer and birth defects (among other diseases.) Does that answer your question about BPA excretion?
See: http://ewg.org/chemindex/chemicals/bisphenolA
and the many very informative links therein.
Ya think? Imagine if they "studied" all the obvious environmental abuses...
Wow, now that would be scary, huh.
This bit of intelligence is so scarce in today's corporate economy as to not be noticed.
Not likely to wake up before it is too late to recover balance - this civilization.
Self care becomes TRULY essential in coming years. Don't trust your interests and
health are being protected by food manufactures, growers, and sellers. Most pesticides
have not been thoroughly studied, REALLY! None have been studied as they are applied
in multiples to given crops. That is, their effect when used with other poisons may not
just be cumulative but multiplicative. And that's just pesticides - think about all the other
crazy mindlessness in food and health "care." The sickness epidemic is one of the elephants
in the room that few see. Did you hear that world-wide all frogs are expected to be dead in 20
years? I got news for you ....
@Rootkoz - You said it there brother (or sister)!!
"It may be advisable for manufacturers to consider eliminating BPA from can linings."
You think?
Duz anybody no WHY BPA is used in can linings in the first place. So far, it hasn't been made clear.
"Duz anybody no (uh, it's "know"...) WHY...."... The lining prevents bleeding from solder joints in the cans which - at least they used to - contain lead. Perhaps can technology is different now?... I think BPA also acts as a bacterial barrier; botulism is a real drag! There was some famous Arctic expedition where the entire group got major lead poisoning from eating canned food & they all went nuts & died - & that was while they were practically freezing to death.... what a party!... It's possible, that the cure - BPA in cans - is worse than the "disease", but overall, fresh is better. It's a good sign that BPA is excreted; that's the body, in its wisdom, doing its thing.... 'course, it may not be enough to counteract the bad effects of BPA.... who really knows? Personally, I think our bodies are actually pretty good at eliminating toxins, but there's no need to keep over testing!
This has been known for about a decade now. I guess we need a government of the people instead of one that takes bribes, I mean free speech from corporate person-hoods.
"BPA is typically eliminated in the urine and so any spike is usually considered temporary. The researchers did not measure how long elevated BPA stayed in the body, saying more study would be needed to examine that question."
Ok, time out. Harvard runs a study at the behest of the U.S. government. After following the ethics of the USG studies over the years, I have to wonder a few things: 1. Were the guinea pigs, I mean participants poor black or brown people as is the common test pool in other USG studies? 2. Were they homeless and in need of food? 3. Who in their right mind would volunteer for a study of this type, especially when contraindications may not have been identified, or were the participants paid subjects?
And BTW canned foods are bad for us anyway. They are full of sodium and preservatives and other crap.
The answer to your 1 and 2 of wonderings:
No. The subjects were the usual subjects in many of these studies: university staff and students who volunteered.
The answer to 3 is that many people, whether they are in their right minds or not, do unhealthy things. Especially when the unhealthy thing is simply drinking canned soup.
Or, if you are genuinely curious a quick search would get you to the abstract of the academic paper for the study. To get the full text of the study, you would need to be a subscriber to JAMA, or be affiliated to some (academic institution) that subscribes to JAMA.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/20/2218.2.extract?sid=4ff9c3d7-9471-4148-8b9f-182cbf326a9f
We often have dried soup from a box, just add water and heat. It is still fast and the taste is better than canned soup, also the noodles don't soak in water for months like the soup in cans. Tomato sauce in jars, could be a better choice. Use the power of the purse to boycott canned food until they remove the toxic liners. There are other plastics that could be used. Frozen vegetables are another option.
BPA,,,aluminum.....what the heck...it has always been profits before people. At the risk of sounding arrogant…..Those of us who read, we have known about this for over fifteen years. Ya read, ya learn. You learn, you makes your choices. Those choices made in enough time could save your life and those of whom you love.
1) Book - Our Stolen Future – ( 1996 ) http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/
2) Wikipedia - Our Stolen Future -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Stolen_Future
Some canned goods are full of those.
The spike may be temporary but what about the effects? Aren't lifelong repeated temporary spikes of a harmful substance pretty much the same as lifelong high levels of a durable harmful substance?
It is a long term population control measure.
This is another perfect reason to eliminate the federal law against growing hemp,, not the marijuana hemp... HEMP, HEMP.
Platic products are just one of 5,000 commercial uses for hemp and they are all bio-degradable and not harmful for health or the environment... And it's' better and less expensive plastic than the oil base crap that almost all food products are now packaged with.
~Jacques Costea~ stated in his 1975 book, "The Ocean World", that it was difficult to film underwater anyplace in any of the oceans and not have a small piece of plastic float across the camera lens and ruin a photo... Wonder what it's like now, 37 years later?
Google or Bing __ (commercial uses for hemp).
.
Can't find the old bookmark, maybe tomorrow. But an industrial engineer says that the die used to stamp the can out of a sheet of metal must be bathed in Biocide to prevent green stuff from growing on the stamping machine. Also it requires liquid cooling fluid (cutting fluid like petroleum) and then the process uses solvent to wash out the metal filings left behind, etc, etc, etc. Lastly, a plastic polymer is painted to prevent corrosion.....
This is why beer tastes so much better coming out of a bottle as opposed to the same brand in a can!.
MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm, Good!.
Dont' cook the can of stew over the fire like we did camping! And don't use non-stick cookware like Teflon coated pans! You'll be sorry!.
The chit has been found to accumulate in your body. Every time Ralph Nader pointed this out to gov and industry, they just yawned and kept right on poisoning us. Sometimes I feel that the Joker at Axis Chemical has tainted all consumer items at the source and therefore there is no escape. .
But the problem is, we now have 100,000 Jokers in charge of wall street and only a handful of batfriends like Nader, Assange, Manning, Hedges, Gundersen....
IMHO, Only the Hackers and OWS can save us now.....
You sure are right about Teflon oated pans ~TJ~..
Aluminum pans aren't good either, and stainless steell is fine, (unelss) it gets scratched by SOS,, Brillo pads or knife scratches... Always use wooden utencils. with stainless steel pots and pans.
Glass or cast iron is best.
BPA is on many receipts. It is used in the heat sensitive ink and will rub off and be absorbed by the skin. Of the general population cashiers have been shown to carry the heaviest load in their blood. Wonderful because many cashiers are reproductive age women and the BPA will affect the development of the fetus and if the child is female, since she is born with her ova, her children will be affected. Great! Three generations in one receipt. The girls of high BPA mothers have significantly more behavior problems and the boys are born less masculine according to animal studies. They have a replacement for BPA on some of the receipts, but the replacement chemical has not been tested. All cashiers should wear gloves and all customers should throw their receipts in the garbage so they aren't recycled and so that children don't play with them.
Here is one article from Science News on the topic. They have several more.
http://www.sciencenews.org/index/generic/activity/view/id/61490/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__More_evidence_that_BPA_laces_store_receipts
BPA,,,aluminum.....what the heck...it has always been profits before people.
At the risk of sounding arrogant…..Those of us who read, we have known about this for over fifteen years. Ya read, ya learn. You learn, you makes your choices. Those choices made in enough time could save your life and those of whom you love.
1) Book - Our Stolen Future – ( 1996 ) http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/
2) Wikipedia - Our Stolen Future -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Stolen_Future
"Super Size Me" the Morgan Spurlock documentary should be required material by all Americans. Although not necessarily pertinent to the subject matter of this article, it is, nevertheless, representative of how the population is being systematically poisoned for the sake of profits:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/super-size-me/
I am concerned when an article gives only a percentage of the increase in concentration of BPA without giving the amount of the analysis. BPA is measured in parts per million and parts per billion. While eating nothing from a can the analysis could be .004 PPM and the "spiked" analysis be .0052 PPM (a 1200 % spike) and still be negligible.