Canada to Place BPA on List of Toxic Substances

Environment Canada has reportedly announced its intention to place bisphenol A (BPA) on the country’s list of toxic substances within eight to 10 weeks, thus ending a regulatory process started in April 2008 when the government first banned polycarbonate baby bottles. According to a recently released letter from Environment Minister Jim Prentice, the agency has formally rejected the American Chemistry Council’s July 15, 2009, request for a review board because the group purportedly did not supply “any new scientific data or information with respect to the nature and extent of the danger posed by bisphenol A.” Environment Canada will provide opportunities for further comment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act “following the publication of instruments for the preventive or control action of bisphenol A, such as a proposed regulation.” See Postmedia News, August 17, 2010.

The news came shortly after Statistics Canada released a study examining lead and BPA concentrations in the Canadian population. Researchers used data from the 2007-2009 Canadian Health Measures Survey to determine that 91 percent of the population ages 6 to 69 had BPA in their urine “with a GM [geometric mean] concentration of 1.16 μg/L (1.40 μg/g creatinine).” In addition, the authors reported that “children aged 6 to 11 had significantly higher GM creatinine-standardized BPA concentrations than did other age groups.”

These results were evidently comparable to the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which detected BPA in 93 percent of Americans aged 6 or older. “The higher GM BPA concentrations in children may be due to food consumption in relation to their body weight,” stated the study authors, who noted that their findings may also reflect “differences in absorption, distribution, metabolism, or excretion of BPA, creatinine metabolism or excretion, or the use of products containing BPA.”