What BPA Is & How to Avoid It | Green Living

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Hi, Alegre from Ember Living here today to talk about BPA. What is it, and how to avoid it. BPA is an ingredient found in a lot of hard plastics, and it is a highly-toxic ingredient. It's also called Bisphenyol A, BPA is the short term for it, and it's something you definitely want to avoid. Unfortunately, it's found in a lot of water bottles, including all hard water bottles, the water bottles that are made out of polycarbonate. Any plastic that has the number seven on the bottom of it is likely to have BPA in it so you should avoid it. BPA is also commonly found in the lining of most canned food goods.

There's a few companies that have BPA-free linings, but the reality is that most metals are highly reactive and in order to keep your food from reacting from the metal, they have to add a plastic lining in there that typically has BPA in it, so it's leeching into your food. This is another good reason to avoid buying things in these tin cans. Maybe buy things in glass, or maybe don't buy canned fruits and vegetables, just buy fresh ones. And another place where BPA is often found can be in children's toys, so avoid that especially for young children who are maybe putting toys in their mouth all the time.

I typically try to avoid plastic toys by and large, but there are some safer plastic toys out there that you can use that don't have BPA in them, such as a company called Green Toys. We have some of their products here. And another place that BPA is commonly found that is pretty unknown and kind of scary is in receipt paper, thermal receipt paper. A lot of times, what the heat is interacting with in order to create the numbers on the receipt paper is BPA, and that BPA is even more highly concentrated and comes off, rubs off easily onto your hands.

So I try to avoid getting receipts whenever possible, especially the ones on the thermal paper because if you think about it, it's touching your hands, it's touching your money, it's touching your wallet, your clothes, you're putting your hands in your mouth. So whenever I touch a receipt I always make sure to wash my hands before I touch my face and I try to avoid receipts whenever possible. So avoid BPA, lots of things to think about there, but an important chemical to cut out of your daily life. Thanks.