Canned foods sold in Canada contain twice as much of an estrogen-mimicking chemical as plastic baby bottles and water bottles — which have been shunned because of health concerns — according to testing conducted for The Globe and Mail and Canadian Television.
The first time everyday foods have been reviewed in Canada, the testing indicates there is widespread exposure to the chemical, also known as BPA, among those who eat canned goods.
“These results provide further evidence that Canadians are marinating in this chemical on a daily basis,” said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto advocacy group that has been lobbying Health Canada to ban bisphenol A from food and beverage containers.
The highest amount of bisphenol A was found in a children’s favorite, tomato sauce, which had 18.2 parts per billion.
The news organizations tested 13 other canned goods, including beer, ravioli, apple juice and cream-style corn. Bisphenol A was found in every sample.
Tomato juice had 14.1 ppb, chicken noodle soup as much as 9.9 ppb and ravioli 6.2 ppb.
Based on the results of animal experiments, researchers have linked low amounts of BPA to effects such as breast cancer and the earlier onset of puberty in girls, among other conditions, with exposures during fetal development and in early life the most damaging.
The amounts of chemical leaching “are well below any regulatory limit” and have been “deemed to be safe by numerous expert panels,” said John Rost, chairman of the Washington-based North American Metal Packaging Alliance, a trade group.
Cans contain BPA because the chemical is used to make the resin that lines their insides.
Ana Soto, professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, said she believes that very small doses of BPA constitute a risk, and consequently avoids canned foods.
“If people stopped eating canned food, nothing bad will happen to them,” Soto said.
Soto also said the safe exposure to BPA is not known among scientists studying the chemical’s effects at low exposures.
“It is very difficult to determine what is safe,” she said. “The government cannot say that they know that there is a dose that is safe. They cannot say that today because we do not know that as scientists, so they don’t know that either.”
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