You’ve probably heard of the chemical known as Bisphenol A, which lurks in various water bottles and beverage can liners and other products we regularly put in or near our food-holes. There doesn’t seem to be conclusive proof that this stuff is bad for us, but there’s certainly some worrying information out there.
To be honest, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time stressing over this issue because, I don’t know, I’ve got a finite amount of headspace to devote to the various subjects that freak me right the hell OUT. But I have started thinking about it lately, as I re-evaluated the bottles I’ve been using with my newborn. I used plastic bottles with Riley — I’d never even heard of BPA at that point — and I just figured I’d use the same ones with Dylan, but after warming a bottle for the fiftieth time the other day it occurred to me that I could make a fairly simple consumer choice to eliminate one more kid-related worry. Specifically, the nagging question of whether or not I was POISONING MY BABY with his bottle.
As I consider some of the plastics we use on a regular basis in our house, I’m thinking it wouldn’t hurt to upgrade to a safer alternative. Especially for the things we run through the dishwasher over and over, etc. Here are some of the kid-friendly, non-BPA products I’ve been looking at:
Dr. Brown’s Baby Bottles. I’ve been using these with Dylan and I think they’re great. There’s something kind of nice about the way a glass baby bottle feels, it somehow makes the experience of having half-digested milk horked down my shirt less unpleasant. Well, not really, but hey — glass bottles! Heat them all you want! Even the internal plastic vent system thingie is BPA free.
Sigg Kids Reusable Bottles. My friend recommends these aluminum, epoxy-coated bottles for toddlers and having seen them firsthand they do seem pretty cool. They look like the sort of hip water bottle most of my fellow Seattlelites carry everywhere they go, in case there’s a last-minute excursion to the top of Mt. Rainier or something. They’re lightweight, come in a plethora of designs, and have a leak-proof top.
Corelle Livingware. Corelle supposedly makes dinnerware that “can’t be broken or chipped”, made from three layers of glass laminated for strength. I bet if you throw it against the floor hard enough you could break it, but assuming your kid puts it through normal wear and tear, these are some pretty alternatives to standard plastic kidsware.
Those are just a few items that have caught my eye, there are some useful (and far more comprehensive) lists of BPA free kids’ products out there.
So tell me, has the controversy over Bisphenol A — or other environmental toxin concerns — motivated you to make any changes to items you give your kids?
We avoid plastics half heartedly, or when it’s convenient. The kids drink and eat off glass and safe ceramics and we have few plastic toys, but I can’t drive myself nuts over one more thing.
Jennifer | February 27th, 2008 at 3:28 am
That Correlle stuff is cute! I don’t know though…I know they say it’s unbreakable, but I gotta think that if you dropped that on a ceramic tile floor it would break.
I thought about switching from my Avent bottles (supposedly the worst ones for BPA!) to glass, but a few things stopped me: 1) my daughter is breastfed so she only gets a few bottles a week 2) we’ve never heated our bottles in the microwave, although I guess they’ve been run through the dishwasher a lot. hmmm. 3) nobody seems to sell glass bottles (like Target, the grocery store, Babies r Us, etc.) and I don’t want to have to go to a specialty shop or buy them online.
I much prefer non-plastic toys, and we do have a lot of wooden Melissa & Doug stuff, wooden blocks, and fabric things like handpuppets. But totally ridding oneself of plastic toys? Not very easy to do.
I’m going to have to check out those Sigg bottles though ’cause those are really cute!
Cara | February 27th, 2008 at 5:15 am
I LOVE the idea of the Corelle dishes for my kids. I have been wondering what I’m going to so for dishware for them since I have a 4 and a 2 year old. They are past baby bowls since they east real food, but when my daughter launches a plastic kid plate, it breaks. So we’re down a few pieces. I think I’ll look into the Corelle. Thanks for the idea!
Bunny | February 27th, 2008 at 10:01 am
We have a bunch of Ziploc plastic containers, and since I use them to store and heat baby food, I freaked out temporarily. Then I went to the web site (getting the facts before panicking: the new hotness!) and Ziploc says they don’t have the chemical that may or may not be dangerous, so I stopped worrying.
Swistle | February 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Wow, I never even really thought of BPA. Eric does have one of those aluminum bottles but hardly ever uses it. Every morning I make him Carnation Instant Breakfast in his plastic Spiderman cup and heat it up in the microwave! Oh no!
Eric's Mommy | February 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
The Corelle stuff is a great idea - I need to move on from the old skanky Scooby Doo and Dora plates I think.
Regarding BPA, the easiest way to tell if your plastics have it is to look at the recycling number on the bottom. Number 7 has BPA.
foodmomiac | February 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
For those of you wondering about the integrity of the Corelle dishes, my 3 year old has been eating off the same plates and bowls (the same ones shown here actually) for about a year. He doesn’t toss his plates or bowls so I can’t comment on what might happen there, but I can tell you they have been dropped off the table and not broken or even chipped. The color stays on well too, even through multiple dishwashings.
Ashley | February 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I freaked out about BPA when I was pregnant with my second, because…I was going crazy being pregnant, honestly. I have a SIGG for my 3 year old, and he’s all “eh” about it. They make plastic BPA free bottles called Born Free, which I use, but my baby is mostly breastfed, so I stopped freaking out a little bit. Oh, and the postpartum hormones stopped making me insane, too.
We have Corelle dinnerware that is ancient, and my parents have used Corelle forever, and, um, they DO break, AND, they shatter into a million and forty pieces instead of two or three like ceramic or glass, but only after many, many times of being dropped, after many years.
shal | February 27th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
This is one of my Hot Topics that DOES freak me the hell out. So I ditched our Nalgene bottles and replaced them with SIGGS (love!), registered for Born Free bottles, nipples AND sippy cups, and will get either a SIGG kid’s sports bottle that you mentioned or another brand called Kleen Kanteen. We’re also trying to do as many wooden ‘old school’ toys as possible to avoid the plastic problem. I’m glad you brought up the Corelle dishware because I’ve been looking for toddler plates, etc that were ’safe’ so now I think I’ll get some of those too!
samantha jo campen | February 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I just ordered the starter kit with a bunch of BPA free bottles from this website
http://www.thesoftlanding.com - you can try all the brands before you commit. I like glass, too, but hard to travel with
bigcitymama | February 27th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I don’t have kids, but I am your basic klutzy adult - and I’ve never managed to break any Corelle dishes. And believe me, I’ve tried really hard.
GoingLoopy | February 27th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Thank you for posting about this, Sundry. I’m kid-free but I know about this issue and have recently banished all plastics from my kitchen. I had wondered about what you do with kids and their bottles, sippy cups, and dishes, but I’d just put it out of my mind. Now I know there are alternatives! Yay!
ZestyJenny | February 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
My parents had Corelle dishes when I was a kid. They do seem to hold up better than your average plates… but they do break sometimes, and when they do it isn’t big old pieces… it is a million tiny shards.
Laughing Mommy | February 28th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’m not particularly concerned about BPA. The most recent news report I saw said you had to subject the bottles to 120+ degrees, which we don’t do. I’ve got my hands (and mind) full taking care of these babies already.
As for Corelle — watch out, because when it does break,as LaughingMommy says, it shatters into a million pieces. Did that a couple of times (usually by dropping something else on top of a Corelle bowl/plate) and never quite picked up all the little pieces.
Nancy | February 28th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
We went ‘no plastic’ and use Corelle for the kids’ and they have Sigg bottles. I can’t recommend either highly enough - very happy with them and no Corelle breakages to date.
Caitlin | February 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I am also on the no plastics. It just feels better. Klean Kanteen makes stainless steel sippy cups, the only ones I have found that aren’t plastic, although the spout is still plastic, it isn’t the part that the liquid is actually in most of the time so I’m ok with it. Kiddo loves her cup and since I only have one I always know where it is!
Amy Q | February 29th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Sounds like another good reason to breastfeed and limit exposure to the bottle. There was another article that listed the linings to formula cans as a source for BPAs. Many canned foods are lined with epoxy to prevent leaching or erosion of the can.
As far as Carnation Instant Breakfast in the cup in the microwave, seems like the colorings and sugar and food additives in the IBrfast might be more of an issue longterm than the plastic container. One-a-day vitamins and an extra shot of powdered milk in his cocoa would probably be cheaper…
frankie | April 19th, 2008 at 1:33 am
I see aluminum-lined containers as an option, but hasn’t there been studies associating this to increased likelihood of Alzheimer’s? I don’t want to replace one unsafe option with another.
Angela | May 1st, 2008 at 3:14 am
I have been nearly plastic free with my girls for 11 years. It can seem inconvenient to eliminate all those toxins from your home, but no one else is going to protect you or your child. We have to educate ourselves about the mass produced poisons in our daily environment..if we just follow along, we are essentially allowing our children to become lab rats for all these products. I prefer to stay on the safe (proven safe over many many generations) side of things.
moira | May 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am
I’m trying to ensure all my baby’s stuff is BPA free. It doesn’t “freak” me out, particularly, but I do agree that it’s something to be concerned about. The bottles we use (in the rare event that we use one as he’s BF) are Playtex nursers that are BPA free, and we never microwave it anyway, we just make it lukewarm by running hot tap water over it. His sippy cups are all BPA free. I don’t buy any products that have a 7 on the bottom of them and he doesn’t have a ton of plastic toys. I use Sigg bottles for myself and we mostly use glass for storage anyway. I definitely think it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s never too much work for me to ensure the safety of my little guy.
Mo | May 12th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
everybody is making a big deal out of the bpa thing. am just thinking 20 years ago and then some when our mothers where feeding us and they were all using plastic bottles, did anything happen to us? i just think that people are making a hbig deal out of it for no reason.
arg | July 28th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
An inexpensive, easy to find baby bottle that is BPA-free are the Gerber Clearview and Gerber Fashion Tints bottle. I bought a pack of three for something like $7.
ana | September 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
oh, and Correlle is virtually impossible to break. I have MS and break about one dish per month when my hands don’t keep up with my brain. I’ve had some Corelle and only once broke one when I froze something in it and dropped it right out of the freezer. Otherwise, it just spins around like a coin and slowly comes to a stop. Quite interesting to see.
ana | September 5th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I’ve next commented on a blog before (I know…weird) - but I just wanted to thank you for the info.
But also tell you that aluminum is also not such a great idea - it’s linked to several kind of cancers - try stainless steele!
But I know, we can’t catch everything - just an FYI!
Thanks!
Amanda
Amanda | May 13th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Are the aluminum part of the baby bottles
being exposed to heat? If they are, then aluminum
could be leeching into the warm milk.
ron harris | January 19th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
I don’t think that using ALUMINUM bottles for ANYONE is a good idea. Check out the vast quantity if info online about aluminum stored in the body. If in doubt, have your family tested for heavy metals by hair analysis. Aluminum is HARD TO get out of your body. Why put it in?
Vickie Honeycutt | April 21st, 2010 at 12:15 pm