Warning for any aluminum can pot users

[Ryan Gardner]

Affecting spermatogenesis? That means a massive spermatoexodus!

[Max Hoagland]

"How about these:

Lower you consumption of sodium by a third to lower your risk of silent high blood pressure that is directly related to heart attacks, heart disease and kidney disease.

Eat a plant based diet high in fiber to significantly lower your risk of colon cancer.

Live outside a city in the country to lower your intake of heavy metals and other pollutants.

If on a well have your water tested twice a year for pollutants, disease and heavy metals.

If you live in an old house get tested for lead levels.

Keep your oral health in top shape. Not only will you have healthy teeth but you can prevent heart disease and other issues.

Abandon your car and walk everywhere. Not only will you get in good shape you won't sitting inside a box that spews toxins in and outside.

Lest us not forget, only wear natural clothing that was treated organically. So don't go buying all them fancy hiking clothes….

Oh yeah, throw out your toothbrush, your commercial toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soap – all which contain many interesting chemicals. If you cannot read the package or understand what the words mean start looking them up."

In addition to these things, I don't want to eat food cooked in a plastic container.

[Rob Blazoff]

"dihydrogen monoxide"

Come on! Someone throw me a friggin' bone here, people.

[Mike W]

…

[Joshua Mitchell]

====
"dihydrogen monoxide"

Come on! Someone throw me a friggin' bone here, people.
====

I got it, I'm just late to the party.

PS – If you want a wide-mouthed stainless… check out Guyot Designs…

PPS – Okay, injecting colloidal SS into your body is way different than holding items in SS. The chemistry and temps are way different… that study was done to determine if SS implants were feasible (like permanent bone supports and such)

[Ryan Gardner]

For all who fall into the camp of "I don't want to drink from water bottle A or eat my food out of a Ziplock bag" etc.

I realize the can and liner issue extends beyond backpacking, and some of this discussion is much broader in scope. But for backpacking, and the water bottles or bag-meals specifically:

Would you still refrain from using the product if you were only using it 3 days a month (the amount of time I actually am able to get out backpacking)? I might think twice if I was doing triple crown hikes every other year, but do you really think for the weekend-warrior the amount of contaminant is worth worrying over?

(This isn't a rhetorical bash, I am curious as to your thought).

[Lynn Tramper]

I do a lot of things when I'm backpacking that I don't otherwise do, including wearing synthetic clothing, not washing my hands (or any other body part) as often as I should, drinking water of unknown purity, sometimes taking sleeping pills, and eating a lot less fresh fruits and veggies. I also use a Platypus on trips. It's all about balancing risks and benefits, and I feel the "perceived risks" of drinking out of my Platypus a few days a month is worth the benefits.

I don't eat a lot of canned foods either, so when I occassionally do, I don't worry too much about trace toxic chemicals. But I DO have a stockpile of foods stored in cans and plastic in my attic for emercencies. Again, in an emergency I wouldn't think twice about consuming them, but on a day-to-day basis I prefer to eat freshly prepared foods made with fresh ingredients. Fortunately, where I live the tap water is superb, so there's no need for me to expose my drinking water to plastics on a day-to-day basis.

[Roger Caffin]

> Lest us not forget, only wear natural clothing that was treated organically. So don't go buying all them fancy hiking clothes…

Two of the most destructive agricultural crops in the world are cotton (massive water consumption draining rivers and massive pesticide use) and wool (devastation of rangelands due to sheep eating plant roots as well as stalks, causing huge wind erosion soil loss).

Compared to those fibres, the production of synthetics is actually a relatively benign process. So much for 'folk wisdom'.

[t.darrah]

One must also consider that many of the synthetic insulation's being used today, by Patagonia and others, are derived largely from recycled plastics. A win win for hikers and the planet.

[David Lewis]

According to the FDA at least… you'd have to eat something like 500 pounds of canned for PER DAY in order to get the levels of BPA in your system above the "safe limit".

[Max Hoagland]

Particles of all kind enter your body, when you use a wooden spoon to cook soup, microscopic particles from that spoon end up in your soup. If you cook in copper pots or iron pots your body will absorb copper or iron molecules from the food you cook. Same with whatever you drink out of, be it plastic water bottles, aluminum bottles, or steel water bottles. The problem is however, that all these substances that end up in your body can be passed, except for plastic (and pesticides which is why you buy organic foods (health reason wise)). Plastic particles are stored in your body fat and can end up in different parts of your body depending on many variables, and possibly causing any number of health risks (mostly chemicals in your body end up in your lymph nodes and create tumors and/ or cancer). Granted you have to have a lot of these chemicals in your body to create health problems. These chemicals can also be ingested from the fat in other animals (fish in the ocean who are filled with toxic plastic particles and other pesticide particles – and other edible animals.)

The bottom line is you don't want these plastic particles – or any synthesized material – in your body.

I started this post originally questioning whether people knew about the plastic coated lining in the aluminum cans they use to boil water. Or if they had any opinions or knowledge about this, like if there was a method to remove it.

Thanks

[David Lewis]

Max,

In all of the posts here and all of the research I have done… I have not be able to find out if the plastic in the lining even contains BPA in the first place!! So this entire discussion may be moot anyway. The only thing I could find on Google is that pretty much ALL canned foods have a lining that contains BPA and "some" aluminum can linings also contain BPA. Some. Not all. As for finding out which ones do and don't… good luck! I had no luck finding any information on this at all.

Bottom line for me is… I very much appreciate the info you posted above. It is something to think about for sure. Good point. But personally, I'm not too worried about the dozen or so meals a year I might eat that are made from boiling 2 cups of water in my beer can stove.

As for removing the lining… I imagine it could be burned off… but then you're boiling water against raw aluminum… which might bring up other issues?

Anyway… the first real step would be to find out for sure is those Heineken can's even USE BPA in their lining in the first place.

[David Rowenhorst]

I have to believe that the paint heating up on the outside of the can would pose a much much greater risk. And thats the thing – while I can not say that there is no risk, it is such a low risk compared to the rest of my living conditions that I have much bigger issues to take care of first.

For example, I live in Washington DC, with all sorts of nasties coming out of car tail pipes, buses, coal fired power plants, etc etc. These are much bigger carcinogen risks than a can I might cook out of a dozen nights a year.

Having said that, I choose not to drink out of Nalgenes on a daily basis (or for that matter on the trail, but that has a lot more to do with weight). I just reuse my old soda bottle that I get my diet coke out of for a couple of days, then recycle it (diet coke, which has nutrisweet, which will probably give me cancer, and there is probably something in PETE that will kill me too).

The sun is probably your biggest cancer risk while backpacking, but getting some sun to me is part of the fun.

[Martin M. Clark]

Though not ultralight maybe we should all switch back to stainless steel or maybe even cast iron cookware. Or since those are metals and may also further expose us to health risks we should revert to the safest and most primitive options. Leather water bottles, and hand spun pottery for a cook pot. Sure it'll carry a weight penalty, but it will give you a peice of mind, and go with your new ultralight clothing: a loincloth.

[steven rarey]

I cant believe I just read this whole thread…

I think I refuse to live in fear.

That does not mean that I choose to live ignorantly. I prefer to be well informed, but I promise you that I willfully put myself at FAR greater risk solo camping 15 miles from the road for 3 days than I do when I take a sip out of my platypus.

I am quite certain that if you put stainless steel, aluminum, wood et all through the same rigors that polycarbonate has recently been exposed to you would be appaled at what you are ingesting into your body.

[Rick Dreher]

I've just discovered a heavy backpack can kill.
Coupled, evidently, with a rare case of too much beer.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004326678_backpack04m.html

[David Lewis]

The opinions about risk management have been beaten to death. We get it. No need for everyone to add their own analogy. And I don't disagree with any of those opinions either! But you know… a little less crowing and a little more facts would be more productive and I'm sure the original poster would appreciate it too. I'd be interested to know if the lining in aluminum cans (specifically Heineken cans) contains BPA. Almost no chance that would stop me from using it to boil my water… but regardless… facts are a good (and interesting) thing. Yet another soliloquy about how it's more dangerous to breathe the air (yup) or eat cheese whiz (no kidding) than drink from an aluminum can… not so interesting.

[David Lewis]

Ok… I reviewed that link from the second post in this thread. I still can't find out for sure if all beverage can coatings include BPA (I found one google hit that said "some" or "many" of them do while ALL food cans do)… but there were a few interesting points on that page…

---

1. Using appropriate analytical methods, no BPA was detected from beverage/beer cans with a limit of detection of 5 parts per billion. Bisphenol A migration levels from food cans averages 37 parts per billion.

---

So… no BPA detected in beverage cans.

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2. The estimated daily intake of BPA from canned food and beverages is over 450 times lower than the maximum acceptable or reference dose for BPA of 0.05 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day.

---

So… you'd have to eat 450 cans of food per day to get your daily BPA dosage over the "safe" level of 5 parts per billion.

[Max Hoagland]

Thanks for keeping us on track David.

I stated before my skepticism about how truthful information is about BPAs that comes from a site financed by the American Plastics Council (part of the American Chemistry Council, in case anyone was wondering), which is a group financed by plastic and other chemical industries. This is where those "plastic makes it possible" commercials and ad campaigns come from.

That being said, EVERY aluminum can does have a plastic lining (which do contain BPAs). Here is a popular picture from google that shows the lining of the can once the aluminum has been removed.

And again, your body cannot pass plastic. Once you ingest it, it stays in your body.

"Health effects attributed to endocrine disrupting compounds include a range of reproductive problems (reduced fertility, male and female reproductive tract abnormalities, and skewed male/female sex ratios, loss of fetus, menstrual problems, changes in hormone levels; early puberty; brain and behavior problems; impaired immune functions; and various cancers." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor)

Plastic is an endocrine disruptor! So for those of you that think you have to eat over 50 kg of BPA a day (the considered safe amount to ingest by the EPA) to see health risks, you're wrong. Not only is it not uncommon to ingest over 10 kg a day, but if you take into account how many days you live in your life – that's a lot of endocrine disruptors in your body.

Demand your food be wrapped in containers without known toxins!

And don't use aluminum cans to boil water in!

[Rog Tallbloke]

Ok, so I've removed the BPA laden lining from my aluminium pot. But wait a minute, aluminium ingestion is associated with alzheimers disease.

Hmm

Any problems with Titanium?

On a lighter note, 5 parts per billion is a lot less than max's 10kg a day. Eating that much will certainly increase your packweight and bodyweight.

hat does BPA stand for again?

Billionth Perennial Ambiguity?

[JR Redding]

Someone asked if anyone had long term experience with the aluminum cans. I didn't see any response to that so I thought I would offer one.

I have been using the Heineken 24 ounce in a variety of ways and tests now for the past 8-9 months. I have a couple of them that got way too overheated during outdoor snow tests (flames from stove crawling too high) wherein the outside and the inside of the pit got discolored. However, no material came off. Regardless, I relegated those particular pots to the testing only pile. I have 3 or 4 that we have been using steadily on our trips since February that are just fine.

I realize there are a great deal of opinions on this plastic topic but, I eat from freezerbags, and I boil my water in a Heineken pot. I have been in remission from Non Hodkins Lymphoma now for 7 years. Do you honestly think it really matters anymore? Alot of you are probably the same people that go and purchase ground beef from a grocery store. Got nay idea what's in that? Or how about that water your drinking? How many parts per million of anti depressants and other drugs does it contain?

Ya know, since my cancer battle a long time ago, I don't really care that much about every scenario there is. All I do is try to eat as healthy as I can and live as clean a life as I can. That's all that matters.

GrinchMT
Bozeman, MT

[Roger Caffin]

> Not only is it not uncommon to ingest over 10 kg a day,
Ah … has someone got the units wrong here? I don't think many people on this planet would ingest 10 kg of FOOD per day, let alone that much plastic!

> And again, your body cannot pass plastic. Once you ingest it, it stays in your body.
It would help if you could give a reference for this rather extreme claim. The body is very good at getting rid of all sorts of things. Slowly maybe, but enzymes are very clever things.

> I stated before my skepticism about how truthful information is about BPAs that comes from a site financed by the American Plastics Council (part of the American Chemistry Council, in case anyone was wondering),
I agree entirely with a healthy dose of cynicism, but in fact industry organisations like that do have to be a bit carefull these days about what they publish. Organisations like the FDA and EPA can and do prosecute. Just read carefully.

[Roger Caffin]

> But wait a minute, aluminium ingestion is associated with alzheimers disease.
Another urban myth.

ONE (note: ONE) research paper claimed that aluminium had been found in Alzheimers plaques. In true human mass-hysteria fashion this precipitated a landslide of 'ban aluminium from cooking' messages.

More careful research in the form of many studies, which of course never got the same treatment in the popular press, found zero correlation between aluminium and Alzheimers. Odd?

Then some very careful research found that the aluminium which had been found in the plaques tested had been put in there as a contaminant during sample preparation AFTER the patient had died. Do you think this got the same degree of publicity in the popular press? Of course not. We love our urban myths too much.

Sigh.

[darren stephens]

Ill Have to remember not to get caught around the campfire with you cheery lot…

[Max Hoagland]

kg = mg/kg or ppm (sorry)

"And again, your body cannot pass all *plastics"
Sorry about that, meant to say BPA, not plastic. Why: BPAs are endocrine disruptors, which stay in your body. Reference: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (granted she never uses the term endocrine disruptors; I don't think the term was around back then.)

The skepticism comes from the fact that the American Chemistry Council gives money to the U.S. congress.

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