Warning for any aluminum can pot users

[Charles Mason]

There are three diversions on health and safety issues which usually come up. Firstly the jokes which are not funny and tedious. Secondly the personal philosophies of life and look at 'devil-may-care' brave me 'life-is-short' attitude which are worse by being unintelligent, boring and irresponsible considering numerous historic cases of ignorance. Finally monetary motivations which make individuals or organizations put the lives of others at risk even when the issue is not exactly related to their specific product(s). This unsightly solidarity of greed applies evenly from large corporations to home/cottage industries.

Heineken has been silent on the use of their pots for cooking. They make no noticeable money from people cooking with their pots. I assume they prefer it never happened. However if they announce that cooking with plastic which is in their linings is hazardous , then that would be a negative health association in the zeitgeist with their brand that they could do well without. Even if %99.99 of their sales has nothing to do with people ripping open the top and cooking with the disposable part-plastic can. So their silence is understandable as is the silence of people out there making small amounts on the sales of the cans as pots and happy to continue to do so even if it is a potential risk to their customers. No surprises there. However the real issue is:

Since: storage, usage (eating out of and stirring and contact with hot food), cooking and finally washing up scrapes the plastic lining, these particles will unavoidably end up in the people using them. And thanks to the poster above, we now know these particles will not be passed by the body but are permanently absorbed which is frankly shocking. Even if they are not carcinogenic in all cases once the absorbed doses build up over time (highly unlikely), they can not be ruled out from causing other diseases in some cases if not many by regular users given enough time.

It is clear to me that as a fairly educated conscientious community, if we don't raise the alarm no one will. And that many future cases of diseased users will be on our conscience.

[David Lewis]

So… any thoughts on how to remove the lining? We're just boiling water… most of us… so we don't really need a 'freshness' lining.

[darren stephens]

Have people started re joining BPL under a different name in order to hide there identity or is all this paranoia just rubbing off ????

[Max Hoagland]

I'll tell you what is a conspiracy: the person who started this post only created it so that all of you guys will ditch your aluminum cans and but really expensive titanium pots from BPL!!!!!

[Daniel Strange]

There is a pretty big difference between storing food in plastic and cooking/boiling in plastic. The "leach" or chemical diffusion rate increases dramatically with temperature. I doubt any of the tests paid for by the Chemical Industry were performed at anything resembling boiling. At one point in time I did published research on the leaching of lead from leaded crystal containers. I would not hesitates to drink wine from a leaded glass but I would NOT boil anything acidic in them! You can easily exceed the recommended exposure limits. The amount of lead release at 90C is about 20x the lead release at 22C. (And, much like BPA, the "exposure limits" are entirely arbitrary since there actually is no known "safe" dose).

I don't microwave my food in plastic containers and I wouldn't boil in a plastic container either. Maybe overly cautious, but hey it's not too hard to find substitutes.

EDIT:

I just found a link which says that BPA leaches out of polycarbonate bottles 55 times faster using boiling water instead of room temperature.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-01-29-plastic-chemical_N.htm

[Joshua Mitchell]

Rule of thumb (from my Chemical Engineering education), the rate at which chemical reactions proceed approximately double with every 10 Deg F increase in temperature.

Obviously, this is a rule of thumb, and really only works for smaller increases in temp (say 90 Deg to 120 Deg) but it's a good way to highlight what D Strange mentioned.

I'm not surprised at all that the 'junk' leaches at 55 times the normal rate at boiling (actually its far less than what I would knee jerk believe if someone told me as 212-80=130, 2^13 > 8000).

[Dylan Skola]

The plastic _particles_ produced by mechanical action are not going to be "absorbed" by the body. The digestive system only absorbs small molecules, which is why proteins and fats have to be enzymatically digested and emulsified before they can be absorbed across the intestinal mucosa. Any particle of plastic is going to be absolutely huge at these scales and should be passed without a hitch (you know where to look for them).

The issue is individual _molecules_ of plastic in solution, which can potentially be absorbed. BPA is one of those compounds, as it does slowly dissolve or "leach" into water. It is not present in all plastics. The presence or absence of BPA, rate of leaching under various conditions, and the health significance of such leaching are the relevant issues. Merely scraping up your pot isn't going to embed plastic particles permanently in your fat tissues or anywhere else. It may, however, increase the rate of leaching by presenting more plastic surface area to the water. These particles may leach the BPA they contain (if any) more rapidly under acidic digestive conditions, but from what I remember for polycarbonate, BPA is actually much more soluble under alkaline conditions than acidic.

Now back to our broadcast . . .

[Ryan Gardner]

I didn't bother posting it because I assumed others would have already jumped on it, but on Yahoo (they have those articles) there was an article about BPA's in food containers and some recent studies done. The next day there was an article saying that Nalgene is phasing out their BPA containing bottles.

[David Lewis]

Do you have a link Ryan?

[Max Planck]

"Some of us read about the fabulous Roman aqueducts and plumbing systems — the most advanced in the world in their time — and shake our heads at how the Romans could be 'stupid enough' to line some of the pipes and containers with lead! I bet some Romans had suspected something wrong all along, but the experts of their day didn't have the technology to detect the cause/effect of lead.

Who's to know if a few hundred years into the future, folks will shake their heads at the way we poison ourselves — what with cell phone radiation, plastic and aluminum "food grade" containers, etc.??? Unfortunately, we don't have definitive ways of measuring the cause/effect today — nor do we have any safe/economical ways of replacing/eliminating plastics and metals…"

Oh, there are ways. One of these ways is called "scientific experiment," or "rational inquiry." These experiments are being performed all the time, and the results are published in peer reviewed scientific journals. The Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Nature, etc.

Peer reviewed scientific journals are the closest you can get to the truth, short of performing your own experiments, as any student of science will tell you. (I know, I majored in Chemistry and minored in Mathematics.)

If you read many of the peer reviewed scientific journal articles that have been published regarding human health, and compare what these studies suggest with what government/industry recommends, you will be shocked.

It's true that industry/government tries to squash such information, and that honest studies of potentially hazardous consumer product materials/ingredients tend not to receive funding, but such studies occur nonetheless, due to some Universities' and Professors' commitment to scientific and academic integrity.

http://www.storyofstuff.com

[David Lewis]

Ya… same story. God forbid anything should ever get in the way of making money. Everything comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. Meat regulation and inspection for instance is far more lax in the US than in Europe. When filling orders for shipment to Europe, processing plants have to slow the line down. The best thing you can do as a consumer I guess is just to be informed and vote with your wallet. I'm trying to cast more "votes" at my local Farmer's Market lately.

[Rob Blazoff]

http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/technical/bpaInfo.html

http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/

Links to Nalgene Bisphenol-A phase out.

[Charles Mason]

Imminent Canada & US declarations/actions probably forced greedy Nalgene into action, not their conscience. Will they be sued in future like the tobacco industry?

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/04/18/wal-mart-nalgene-move-away-from-bisphenol-a/?mod=WSJBlog

[Chris Chastain]

> Reference: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Thanks for citing that reference!
In my opinion, she has even less credibility than Al Gore.
Her book was probably (indirectly) responsible for more human deaths than Mein Kampf.
If indeed she did have any valid arguments, it was completely accidental, with scientific evidence ranging from weak to nonexistent even to this day.

DDT is the safest (to humans), most effective and cheapest (thus making it a life-saver to Third Worlders) insecticide ever invented. That alone should be enough to discredit any other claims she might make.

BTW:
This is not to say that DDT wasn't being terribly abused, probably because of it being so safe and effective along with its lack of expense…

I think maybe I should go off and hide now.

[Dave T]

.

[Charles Mason]

The link below was in one of the comments in the URL above and is worth a read, particularly the bullet pointed highlights in the gray box. I have never cooked with plastics, for example heating in the oven and never put them in the microwave despite printed instructions. Speificlly as microwaves are only a generation old and we don't know how they react with plastics fully over a long time of extended exposure. And no I'm not a health freak and regularly abuse my body to excess and have various problems as a result, mainly due to stupid negligence. However instinctively I never liked the idea of heated plastics next to food. Furthermore if one decides to ignore scientific warnings due to whatever current mental state, it is only ethical not to extend that decision to affect others, specially if they are children.
http://www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/plog/index.php?m=200804

[Lynn Tramper]

This is an emotive issue, and one which I swore I would try to keep my mouth shut on…but the BPA hype is really way overboard IMHO. I say this for several reasons:

1)A large study of urinary BPA in US citizens of all ages and gender showed the median intake of BPA was 3 orders of magnitude below the generally accepted "safe" level.

2) All the direct evidence linking BPA to cancers was done in rodents, and by-in-large the rodent strains were chosen/bred for their known sensitivity to estrogenic compounds

3) Even between differnt rodent strains there was a huge variation in sensitivity to BPA.

4) BPA is 1000-5000 times LESS ESTROGENIC than our own endogenous estrogens

5) And this one I consider to be the biggest reason we're scare-mongering up the wrong tree, is that obesity is far-and-away the biggest risk for excess estrogen exposure in humans. When these estrogen sesnitive rodents were exposed to either 50ug of BPA or 1ug of estrogen, the estrogenic response was still much greater in the estrogen treated rats. ESTROGEN IS A TOXIN (so is testosterone since it is the source of all estrogen in humans, but that's almost off-topic). We live in an obesogenic society, and the estrogen exposure to ourselves and our children from excess adipose tissue (body fat), for most people, completely swamps the effects of trace exposure to weakly estrogenic compounds. not to mention many women also choose to overdose on estrogens via oral contraceptives or HRT on top of carrying too much bodyfat

This is not to negate our own choices to be informed and select products that we consider to be safe, and to know the risks associated with different packaging or additives. But I honestly suspect most parents would do far better towards their children's future health to ask for bans on institutions like McDonald's, and teach/enforce good nutrition, exercise and weight control in their kids rather than obsess about trace amounts of weakly estrogenic compounds in their water bottles.

[Charles Mason]

No defender addresses the question of cooking with these carcinogenic plastics on a regular basis which is widely taking place.

[Lynn Tramper]

Well, that's an unknown for sure. For me, the question might be better phrased as "how much BPA might come from the lining of one Heineken can with repeated cooking"? Canned foods, are, almost by definition, exposed to a very high temperature and pressure at time of manufacture. I know normal cooking doesn't reach those kinds of pressure, and normal boiling doesn't reach those temps, but how bad is it to burn a meal in a heine?????? How many potential micrograms of BPA are in one can?

[Charles Mason]

I think the factory process is for a short time and not comparable to sticking a plastic lunch into the office microwave every day or regular cooking with a Heini or someone consuming their hot nourishment daily in a Nalgene, and so on. In fact the most worrying universal use is probably the baby food containers which have replaced glass and metal as they don't transfer as much heat. So it would be nice to see data on any research into such studies on 'sustained exposure' measurements which I am sure has been secretly done somewhere.

Secondly I would like to see figures on other agents than BPA too. It's not just BPA.

Thirdly, is it possible that some of these historically recent compounds which have not been examined for long could increase the triggering of genetic reactions in a person's body depending on the person's DNA and/or age?

It would be nice to hear from experts like you and also see any links to 'independent' studies on such issues.

[Lynn Tramper]

If you can access this article, it has all the relevant research cited at the end. it was published in February 2008, adn as of publication date, the authors state :

"Another critical research direction is for studies on bisphenol A, widely used to manufacture polycarbonate plastics and for the lining of metal cans (64). Because of the consistent animal data, epidemiologic studies on BPA are needed, especially in high-exposure subpopulations.

Critical research directions for chemicals with widespread low-dose exposure overlap with those described above for chemicals with high exposure. Apart from identifying high BPA exposure subpopulations, we need to conduct studies among members of the general population with low-level environmental BPA exposure. Another critical research need is to design studies that collect data on and allow for analysis of risks from mixtures of chemicals. Individuals are exposed to most if not all of the chemicals and metals described above, and developing methods to understand fertility impacts of mixtures is desperately needed."

So, no, the human data is still lacking. The non-human and in-vitro studies are conflicting and not necessarily relevant to the human situation.

As for age, genetics and gender, I think there is little doubt that some folks will be more sensitive or at risk to some chemicals than other people. At present we don't have the technology to fully identify all the risk genes for all possible chemical exposures. The classic example of this genetic risk to "chemicals" was the smoking study showing that people who had extra copies of a liver gene called CYP2D6, were twice as likely to get lung cancer. This turned out to be because this gene's protein converts non-carcinogneic compounds in cigarettes to carcinogenic ones. The more of this protein you have (ie more gene copies) the more carcinogenic compounds you get exposed to when you smoke.

Of course many doctors/scientists would say this is a good reason to screen smokers for this gene. WHY???? How stupid. Just tell people to stop smoking and the problem goes away without spending billions of dollars doing genetic screens on smokers so that you can tell SOME of them to stop smoking?? That's craziness.

[Charles Mason]

cocktails.

[David Lewis]

Well… I'm very excited to see the new BPL Firelite Trappers mug. At 37 grams, it's a real pot/cup that actually comes close to the insanely light weight of a Heineken can.

Heineken – 26 oz volume, 29 gram weight (1 oz)
Trappers Mug – 17 oz volume, 37 gram weight (1.3 oz)

I never boil much more than a cup or cup and a half of water for my single serving meals… so 17 oz should be plenty. And now… no BPA lining! Of course… the debate above beats that dead horse a few times… LOL… but given a choice between a BPA lining or not… all else being ALMOST equal… who wouldn't choose to go BPA-free?

Pros (compared to Heineken system):
– No BPA lining
– Don't have to worry about accidently crushing it
– Works with BPL wing stove (which is LIGHTER than my stainless mesh stand + energy can bottom)
– Rolled lip means I can still use my BPL Ti rod handle
– Overall system weight is virtually identical!

Cons (compared to Heineken system):
– No lid, and my 3 gram aluminum cat food can bottom trick won't work :-(
– Less water volume

I really wish it came with a lid. You could always leave it at home if you are anti-lid. It's useful not just for boiling, but for stowing. Aluminum foil is fine for boiling, but useless for keeping things inside the pot (your stand, water treatment chemicals, windscreen, lighter etc.). Maybe I can find another solution.

BTW… my comparisons here are based on this stove… which I designed and have been using and loving for a couple years now…

http://www.davidlewis.ca/stove/

For the gram counters… here is the breakdown of my beer can system vs. this new option:

Trappers Mug System: 55 grams

---

Mug: 37 g
Wing stand: 11 g
Ti Windscreen: 3 g
Handle: 3 g
Lid: 1 g? (aluminum foil… 3 grams for something more solid?)

Heineken Can System: 55 grams

---

Can: 29 g
Stainless Stand: 14 g (7 g for galvanized)
Esbit holder: 3 g
Ti Windscreen: 3 g
Handle: 3 g
Lid: 3 g

[George Matthews]

Thanks for the excellent comparison between Heineken vs Trappers. Makes a good argument to get the Trappers if you have the BPL Wing. Looks like a good way to get a sub2 oz set up.

[David Lewis]

Ya. I'm pretty excited about it! I love the beer can… but I've always thought it would be nice to have a "real" pot… and I've always wanted to use my BLP Ti wing stove! The only thing, as I say, I'm not keen on is the lack of a lid. But I'll figured something out. Maybe tin foil for boiling and a super ultra light stuff sack for keeping stuff stowed inside the cup.

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