Canada moved Saturday to formally ban BPA in infant bottles, after determining earlier this year that BPA should be classified as a toxic substance.

From the Toronto Globe & Mail:

None of the major infant formula makers has figured out a way to cut BPA seepage from their liquid formula cans, according to interviews with company officials, although the industry has begun working with can makers to review new packaging.

“We're looking at alternatives now and keeping [Health Canada] informed at every step of the way,” said Gail Wood, spokeswoman for Evansville, Ind.-based Mead Johnson, which sells several brands of infant formula in Canada. ... Ms. Wood said her company initially estimated that it would take five to seven years to find replacements, but she said “it's not going to be that long.”

Indeed. As the auto industry has so amply demonstrated over the last decade, industry reps are really not useful sources when it comes to discussing the level of hardship that might result from higher standards. We collected data on BPA in infant formula packaging last year, and as the inevitable shift occurs in Canada away from BPA-lined cans over the next few years it will be interesting to see if a company breaks out of the pack and begins distributing alternative cans in the U.S. too. With infant formula, a single brand breaking the silence on the issue could see a major market advantage before competitors were forced to fall in line.

We still see several questions for Canada, including:

• If BPA is banned in bottles, shouldn't it be banned in pacifiers and infant teethers, too?


• If BPA is banned in liquid formula cans, shouldn't it be banned in glass jars of semi-liquid baby food with lids coated with the same BPA-containing epoxy? It's in all of them. And are the BPA-containing lids of cardboard containers really acceptable, or should we go ahead and get those changed, too?


• If the period of primary concern is "up to 18 months," shouldn't this include sippy cups instead of just bottles? And what about exposure levels for pregnant women? Could warnings be an intermediate step for adult items?

We'll see over the next two months just how the ban shapes up, as the government writes the regulations and works towards finalizing them. The most interesting part of this story may then be how much adults should be exposed to BPA. From the Mail:

While Health Canada has concluded the chemical isn't a hazard to adults, that position has been undermined by research issued after the government began its assessment.

A study in the influential Journal of the American Medical Association last month linked bisphenol A to heart disease, diabetes, and liver abnormalities in adults. Earlier this month, a study from the University of Cincinnati found that BPA interferes with chemotherapy used to treat breast cancer, raising the possibility the chemical undermines the efficacy of cancer-fighting drugs.