Coating cans of food has a quite long-standing and tradition, as coating on the inner-side can-body can well protect the contents in can from contamination and conserve them during longer periods of storage, take epoxy and PVC as examples, these two lacquers are applied to line the inner-side of the can-body for the purpose of preventing corrosion of the metal by acidic foodstuffs.
BPA, short for Bisphenol A, is an input material for epoxy resin coating. According to the Wikipedia, there're at least 16,000 scientific papers published via the relevant industries on the issue of the health effects of BPA and the subject of prolonged public and scientific debate. The toxic kinetic studies showed that the biological half-life of BPA in adult humans approximately 2 hours, but it doesn't accumulate within the adult humans in spite of BPA exposure is common. In fact, BPA exhibits very low acute toxicity as indicated by its LD50 of 4 g/kg (mouse). Some research reports indicate that: it has a minor irritant on skin of human, which the effect is even less than phenol. When ingested over the long term in animal tests, BPA shows a hormone-like effect that can impact negatively on fertility. Regardless, the negative effects on humans that is threatening human health did not appear yet, in part because of the low intake volumes.
In consideration of the scientific uncertainty, many jurisdictions have taken measures to deal with the problem of reducing the exposure on a precautionary basis. It was said that the ECHA (short for 'European Chemicals Agency') has placed BPA on the list of substances of very high concern, as a result of the endocrine properties identified. Furthermore, in view of the problem of infants may face a greater risk on this issue, leading to bans on the use of BPA in baby bottles as well and other relevant products by the US, Canada, and EU amongst others.
Post time: Jul-30-2022
