Considering Baby Bottle Safety

The reports released lately on baby bottle safety are pretty frightening! Chemicals, which the plastics industry has been telling us for years are safe and harmless, have now been shown to leak into the milk our babies are drinking, which have people questioning baby bottle safety.

The chemical, Bisphenol A (BPA) is the chemical compound used to make polycarbonate plastic. Lots of food and drink containers are made of this hard, clear or tinted, lightweight plastic; including baby bottles. In fact for many years these polycarbonate bottles seemed the ideal bottle when it came to baby bottle safety, because they could not shatter like glass and they were lightweight and easy to clean.

But recent studies, such as the ones performed by the group Environmental Defense from the University of Missouri-Columbia sounded the alarm for baby bottle safety when they found that when polycarbonate baby bottles are heated the BPA leaches into the liquid held in the bottles at very significant levels.

And we now know that BPA threatens baby bottle safety because the chemical has been shown to imitate estrogen, and the fear is that this hormone disruptor causes adverse health risks such as breast and prostate cancer, early puberty in girls, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and obesity.

Although you can reduce your baby’s exposure to BPA by washing polycarbonate bottles by hand, instead of in the dishwasher, and by not heating the bottle in the microwave, baby bottle safety experts advise that parents throw out their polycarbonate baby bottles and start fresh with glass bottles. Considering the amount of times your baby feeds from a bottle, reducing any chemical exposure is incredibly important. Keep baby bottle safety in mind and get rid of the plastic!

Want to learn more about baby bottle safety? Get your copy of The Baby Report today!