EU bans BPA in food materials | Hacker News Reader

EU bans BPA in food materials

food.ec.europa.eu

82 pointsgeox10 comments

Awesome. I already look for BPA free stuff. Now it will be so much easier to browse through products because it will be against the law.

It is my understanding that other plastic softeners can also have estrogenic properties. How long will it take us to list and ban them all from food storage? N++ years for the u.s.a. or Canada to protect consumers from products and packaging that are known to be bad for us, who wants to start a website to list the known dangers?

I don't think it will ever happen, any more than I think the EU might ban cured meats for their known carcinogenic properties. There's a wide variety of valuable benefits to plastic food packaging in general - the reason a BPA ban makes sense is that there's few if any use cases without BPA-free equivalents.

That last bit doesn't make sense to me — why would it make sense to ban BPA if the BPA-free products are also bad? When the EU banned BPA in receipts, manufactured switched to BPS en masse https://echa.europa.eu/-/bisphenol-s-has-replaced-bisphenol-...

I think the alternatives haven't had the same depth of scrutiny as BPA. I just skimmed the beginning but this points to some issues with alternatives [0], I feel like I've been hearing about BPA and alternatives for over a decade, the speed that we move to protect ourselves and the environment is so slow compared to how fast we can turn out shiny new technology, and once an industry is on its feet theres always money to bury science that doesnt support the new product.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014765132...

(Edited to share my hypothesis)

> why would it make sense to ban BPA if the BPA-free products are also bad

You don't need to solve every problem in the world to solve one problem. It makes sense to ban BPA because BPA is shown to be harmful. Whether or not BPS is also harmful is completely irrelevant to evaluation of BPA. I have no doubt one day BPS will also get the axe.

Hopefully companies come around to enumerating what they're actually selling as a differentiating factor in the market. "This is just stainless steel" is a pretty good marketing technique.

in my opinion the problem is not solved at all. It’s been temporarily fixed and the can kicked down the road, so to speak. Furthermore, uneducated consumers end up confused because they think the problem is solved, and will then be confused when they read a similar “BPA alternative X is bad for you” in 5 years. Basically it confuses the public and solves nothing.

Solving the problem for real might look like:

- permanently banning BPA and all similar classes of products by default, and only lifting a ban if a specific one is proven to be safe. Only allow very specific exceptions, like for single use packaging in the medical industry, etc.

- fund large grants and maybe even offer a massive cash prize to anyone that creatively invents an alternative to plastic for food or beverage use, that does not require lining the product with more chemicals (that’s what happens with cardboard food and drink containers today.

- short term, encourage people to use reusable glass containers with silicone sleeves (silicone has been proven pretty safe), or stainless steel containers. Offer businesses an incentive to allow customers take leftovers home in their own containers.

> There's a wide variety of valuable benefits to plastic food packaging in general

Yea, it's cheap and makes an effective seal. I still think 95% of it is unnecessary, and some of that 95% is probably actively worse in its damage compared to its benefit. I'm no chemist, nor no doctor, but the amount of plastic that's intended to be used in cooking food itself at high temperatures makes me extremely uncomfortable. This goes for restaurants, too, it's not just frozen dinners and instant ramen.

Legislating use of chemicals—particularly around industrialized food production—seems extremely difficult, but I think it's still worth the effort

BPAs are waterproofing and fire retardant agents and commonly used in food wrappers because they repel grease. They show up in those serving papers that repel grease at BBQ restaurants, in the paper linings for cupcakes, in paper straws. BPAs are a forever chemical meaning they never break down so they bioaccumulate continuously and eventually causes organ failure. USDA banned them for food material in the US earlier this year.

Perhaps you’re thinking of pfa a plasticizer and known endocrine disrupter found in plastics. Different, and in my opinion less terrible.

Finally!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com