The current status of bisphenol-A, which is teetering somewhere between near-unilateral corporate disavowal and a patchwork of outright bans, is what it is because we - parents, consumers, and part-time, practical activists - made it that way. That means we also have the power to decide what Health Canada's discovery of trace levels of BPA in non-polycarbonate bottles means to us. And the choice we make as consumers can have a big impact on whether there is a bright future ahead for "BPA-free."

We disagree with the argument that you should not be worried because the study is flawed. Yes, the study needs to be replicated. But our primary concerns - the apparent lack of a control and the lack of disclosure of detailed information - have both been cleared up. We now have all the data, an explanation of how they established a control group (in glass!), and the bottom line is, HC probably correctly identified that there are trace quantities of BPA in "BPA-free" products.

The question is, what does this mean?

In the week following the release of this report data we have seen some bloggers working to publicize it in as sensational a manner as possible. Worse, we have seen hardworking brands dedicated to providing the safest products possible declared to be liars who acted in bad faith by presenting BPA-containing products to consumers as BPA-free.

We don't see it that way, for a couple of reasons.

First, these levels are really, really, really small. The highest levels of BPA detected in non-polycarbonate plastics was under 2% of that found in polycarbonate, and that was found in pure water. In a 10% ethanol solution, which is more comparable to breast milk or formula, there was no detectable amount.

Second, non-polycarbonate bottles aren't the only place you wouldn't expect to find BPA, but will. Remember, this BPA probably came from dust present in the manufacturing facilities where the bottles were made. Trace amounts of BPA have been detected in drinking water (the Health Canada study corrected for it), and in human breast milk, not to mention infant formula (in higher quantities still). If you use recycled toilet paper, there is probably BPA in it, because there is BPA in the heat-sensitive paper used in credit card receipts, which is a significantly recycled paper product, and for all we know there could be BPA in dust in paper mills as well. It is the very ubiquity of harmful chemicals in our environment that make them, on the whole, so worthy of excommunication from the chemistry of our lives.

In other words, if a study that showed virtually every non-PC baby bottle on the market during lengthy exposure to fatty liquid simulants showing a complete non-detect for BPA has you worried, you're missing the forest for the trees.

We say all this from the perspective of people who have helped shepherd people through an intense period of consumer self-examination. After reporting for a while on BPA leaching from polycarbonate bottles, mainstream media interest and coverage of the issue picked up, and a couple of watershed announcements got everyone searching online for answers. At its peak we had parents emailing us daily telling us they could not sleep because they had poisoned their babies and asking how could they get the poison out. It got to the point where we spent more time reassuring people that their children were going to survive than we did recommending safer bottles and sippy cups. But when you're talking about sperm counts, anogenital distances, possible links to upticks in diabetes or other problems, the specter of an unknown relationship to long-term cancer risk, and effects on fish and wildlife, you are not talking about children being poisoned by their own parents, you are talking about a population and an environment that is being subjected to exposure to a chemical that should be swiftly retired from the scene.

For that reason, many activists, including Z Recommends, Non-Toxic Kids, Eco Child's Play, the Environmental Working Group, SafeMama, and many others, worked hard from the start to address this issue on all fronts: To encourage consumers to buy products that were not made with polycarbonate plastic or were free of BPA using widely-validated methods of detection; to pressure companies to educate themselves about chemicals in their products, to allow ZRecs to share that information with consumers, and to find alternatives to BPA-containing plastics, which were usually quite close at hand; and to tell Congress that we as consumers believed this substance should be legislatively removed from the market.

In that case, the mass parental freak-out had a net positive effect. Parents abandoned BPA-rich polycarbonate plastic in droves, migrated to new companies using safer plastics or to glass bottles, and their children are genuinely better off for it. And ultimately, companies decided it was not worth their time to battle for a plastic that parents didn't believe in anymore, and they gave it up.

But this time, it's different. If you, as a parent, choose to freak out about trace amounts of BPA found in bottles not made using it, at levels far below the sensitivity of any prior established testing method and far below the level banned by the country at the forefront of BPA regulation (Canada); if you choose to demonize companies that have tried to protect your children from BPA, and done a very good job of it; and if there are enough parents who join you in freaking out about it, you will make every company that went into BPA-free products and had the temerity to say as much wish they had never had anything to do with you. You will make them wish they had continued to ignore and defy and work around you until you got so disgusted with the so-called responsiveness of the free-market system to consumer choice that you fed your children out of borosilicate test tubes.

We have read a few breathless accounts of the demonic duplicity of companies like Medela, Born Free, and Adiri, who are now "not really" BPA-free, and to those with such misplaced hostility we say: What planet are you on? We'd suggest you - as a consumer, a parent, and an advocate for change - do the same. The same parents who led the charge for change in the marketplace (change that has come to us, by leaps and bounds, over the past year) have the power to say, We have realistic expectations and reasonable concerns.

And from the looks of it, that's where this situation seems headed. Parents are not (at the moment) freaking out about these trace readings - perhaps because they understand the data, or perhaps because Health Canada took such pains to explain that they weren't worried.

What BPA-free will ultimately mean

We believe the U.S. government, if and when it gets around to regulating estrogenic chemicals like BPA, will have to set levels of tolerance, not outright bans. Like lead, phthalates, and other chemicals we wish to regulate for the protection of human health, we must set a level of "free-ness" that will be a clear standard to which companies will be held. Otherwise, "free" will be a slippery term dependent on the capabilities of scientists to measure, rather than the ability of companies to perform up to established expectations.

Companies have a right to expect this kind of treatment, and companies that have taken the lead in providing BPA-free products should be prepared to be the leaders on this, too. Our job as consumers and activists is to let them know that we're ready to hear that conversation happen whenever it needs to happen, and we will continue to support the companies that have supported our needs and our concerns. If you agree, don't be shy about it. If others dogpile on companies whose commitment to providing safer products for your children has made a positive difference in your life, say so.

It will still be up to the scientists to determine what level of exposure to chemicals like BPA may cause harm. But we do not believe a zero tolerance approach is a practical response, and we also don't believe that "BPA-free" must mean zero tolerance now and to whatever decimal place technicians can arrive at, any more than "fat-free" means truly free of fat or "phthalate-free" means truly free of phthalates (in fact, it means it has less than 0.1%).

If additional testing confirms the trace levels of BPA found in these non-polycarbonate products, we will flag items in the ZRecs Guide to Safer Children's Products to alert parents to that fact, but with the caveat that we don't think these levels should currently be seen as a concern. Unless and until established and realistic levels for what "BPA-free" means indicate that a given product doesn't meet the standard, we will not be changing our labeling of these products in the ZRecs Guide from "BPA-free" to mark them as containing BPA. The levels are too low, and the results too uncertain, for that to be either useful to consumers or fair to companies.