BPA-Free, Here We Go Again!
BY STEVE HENTGES | MARCH 28TH 2017 02:32 PM

The headline almost jumps out at you – “BPA Substitute Could Cause AdversePregnancy Outcomes.” That alarming headline appears in an industry publication,
but the same story was widely reported in the popular media, which tends to coverscience only when they can create scare stories.
The article reports the results of a new study from a group of Chinese researchers
on health effects associated with a substance named fluorene-9-bisphenol (BHPF),
which the authors claim is now a common alternative to bisphenol A(BPA). According to the researchers, and amplified by the media, BHPF is now
used in a wide variety of plastic consumer products including baby bottles andwater bottles that are labelled as BPA-Free.
But if you see the media articles, you really need to read beyond the scary
headlines. What you read may be closer to fake news than real “news that you canuse.” The reason was touched upon by Popular Science, which noted that “none ofthis matters if we’re not coming into contact with BHFP (sic) – it’s only a potential
problem if humans are exposed to it.”
As it turns out, the evidence that BHPF is used in consumer products is surprisingly
thin. But in spite of the shortcomings of the research, and the media coverage thatlacked much fact-checking, the theme of the study nevertheless reveals twounderlying truths.
First, as suggested by the study, replacing BPA may be counter-productive if thereplacement is not well-tested and found to be safe for its use. Second and more
importantly, BPA is one of the best tested substances in commerce. Based on theextensive scientific data available for BPA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) answers the question “Is BPA safe?” with an unambiguous answer –“Yes.” If we listen to the science, there’s no need to replace BPA at all, especiallywith something of uncertain safety.
So, should you be concerned about BHPF? In a word, no. You’ll probably nevereven come into contact with it.

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A better question is whether you should be worried about products that contain BPA
or are labelled as BPA-Free? The choice is yours, but keep in mind that BPA is welltested and confirmed to be safe. The replacements, maybe not so much.
The Story Behind the Story
As a result of recent attention to BPA, many consumer products are now labelled asBPA-Free, implying they are better or safer than a product made withBPA. Scientifically speaking, that implication might best be described as ahypothesis that requires scientific data to know if it is true or not.
The scientific process is designed to test hypotheses and that’s exactly what many
scientists are now doing with various BPA replacements. New studies are regularly
published in the scientific literature on chemicals that are said to be substitutes forBPA.
The recent study from these Chinese researchers examined the potential for BHPF
to cause reproductive effects. The substance was reported to exhibit antiestrogenic characteristics and the researchers noted that “[s]erious developmentaland reproductive effects of BHPF … were observed in this study.”
The results are certainly novel. A search of PubMed, which is acomprehensive biomedical literature database, revealed noother health effect studies on BHPF. And, as reported by theresearchers and the media, the results of this particular study
are also alarming.
But are the results important for consumers? As noted by Popular Science, theresults only matter if people are actually exposed to BHPF. If not, the results are
only of academic interest.
Are You Actually Exposed to BHPF?
According to the researchers, BHPF is used to make a variety of plastics and resinsthat are used in a wide range of products. The San Francisco Chronicle bluntly
stated that the plastics industry is “manufacturing so-called ‘BPA-free’ water bottles
made with an alternative compound called flueorene-9-bisphenol (BHPF).”

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Suspiciously though, the researcher’s claim of widespread use is not supported byany reliable references. Of the four citations provided in the study, none verify any
commercial use of BHPF and one doesn’t even relate to BHPF at all.
The researchers also report the presence of BHPF in water held in various plastic
water bottles and baby bottles, which may seem to offer proof that BHPF is used inthese common consumer products. But these results are questionable at best as
the actual bottles were never tested for the presence of BHPF.
The analytical method for BHPF in water is reported to have an extraordinarily low
limit of detection of 0.1 ng/L (0.1 parts per trillion!), but data to validate themethod are suspiciously sparse. Making it even more dubious, that limit is 2 to 3
orders of magnitude lower than the limit of detection for BPA, which has been thesubject of well over a hundred studies by analytical chemists worldwide. Are theseresearchers really good, just lucky, or perhaps mistaken about BHPF?
Claims that BHPF is commonly found in human blood suffer from the sameproblems with the analytical method. A more plausible explanation for thereported findings of BHPF in water and blood was reported in the Popular Science
article: “It’s more likely that the detected substances were contamination fromtheir lab equipment … or the substances were misidentified.”
So What Can We Learn From the Study?
The claims that BHPF is in widespread use and that people are commonly exposed
to BHPF are simply not credible. In spite of the alarming headlines about serious
health effects from BHPF, there is no sound, scientific basis for alarm.
Nevertheless, the new study can be instructive. Although BHPF is not a concern,
the researchers, as highlighted in Popular Science, have identified an importantunderlying issue:“We think,” wrote Hu to PopSci, “that toxicity of substitutes should be assessed
comprehensively, and regulations for substitution of chemicals should bedeveloped in the future.”

3/4More eloquently, Professor Richard Sharpe, Group Leader of the Male Reproductive
Health Research Team at the University of Edinburgh highlighted the twounderlying truths behind this new study:“As far as regulatory bodies such as EFSA and FDA are concerned there is noconvincing evidence for replacing use of bisphenol A by substitute chemicals,
though environmental pressure groups continue to press for a ban on use ofbisphenol A and its replacement. This study highlights that such replacement
may be jumping ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, by showing that one of
the suggested replacement chemicals may itself have potential to cause
adverse endocrine effects, although it is unclear from the studies if humans
would be exposed sufficiently for this to cause harm.
“A huge amount is known about bisphenol A in terms of its activity, humanexposure, metabolism etc, and it is this level of understanding that has enabledregulatory bodies to determine the risks that our exposure poses to ourhealth. In contrast, we have very little understanding about the suggested
replacement chemicals. Therefore this study, which appears generally welldesigned and executed, reminds us that replacing use of one chemical byanother needs to be an evidence-led process, otherwise we may do more harmthan good.”
Perhaps the most important lesson to learn from this recent study and the alarming
media coverage that ensued is to not take scary headlines at face value. The story
behind the story may be far more important than the story itself.

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