WASHINGTON — BPA was banned from baby bottles and sippy cups in 2012, but a new study indicates that the chemical may not be as harmful to babies as previously thought.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that, while 92 percent of Americans age 6 and under have BPA in their bodies, probably because so much food is stored in packaging that has it, they may be able to rid their bodies of it, CBS News reports.
“Even though we’ve removed BPA from bottles, this work shows infants are still exposed to it,” study leader Rebecca Massa Nachman tells CBS News.
“But the good news is that our study also shows healthy newborns are better able to handle that exposure than we thought.”
BPA, which mimics estrogen in the body, has been linked to diabetes and some forms of cancer. The Food and Drug Administration has concluded that the level of BPA found in food is safe, but it was banned in bottles and sippy cups because it was assumed that newborn livers wouldn’t be able to handle it.
The new study — the first one to examine healthy newborns — shows that not to be the case.
The study was conducted between December 2012 and August 2013 on 44 full-term babies, and found that while 70 percent of them had the harmless form of BPA in their urine, none had “free BPA” –- the kind that’s used in consumer products and which can be worrisome.
The study is published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
