Bisphenol A, Plastics and Baby Bottles

I looked up this information for a friend (she just gave birth a week ago!) and since I know so many other mummies who are due soon or have infants, thought I'll post this on my blog too.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a compound commonly found in plastic containers/bottles. More specifically, they are found in polycarbonate plastic (hard plastic containers) and can leach into the food and liquid that we store in these containers. To put it simply, BPA is cancer-causing, but is commonly found in unacceptable levels in our bloodstream and even in umbilical cord blood and in the placenta.

Here's a link to a good article about plastics and kids. This article also recommends safer alternatives: http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=77083 . Here's another similar article: http://tinyurl.com/23595a

For those of you in Singapore, here are your options if you want to use BPA-free bottles for your baby:

1. Pigeon glass bottles (if breakage is not so much a concern to you) http://tinyurl.com/2a79ku

2. Bfree bottles (sold at bigger Kiddy Palace stores, Baby Hypermart and Pharmaplus at Camden Medical Centre)

3. B-free bottles from Dr Brown (I believe I saw this at The First Few Years at KKH before)

4. Soft plastic bottles like those from Medela

During the first 4 days of DD's life, when I had to supplement her with special milk formula for low birth weight babies, I just used the glass bottles from formula samples they provided at the hospital. But do note that if you are feeding expressed breast milk (EBM) in the glass bottles, there are suggestions that nutrients from the EBM may cling to the side of glass bottles (more so than to plastic) and hence, not get ingested by baby. I can't seem to find references at this point in time that support that claim (although I know that I've read it somewhere before), so if anyone reading this can point me to the references, I would appreciate it if you could send them to me for posting on my blog. Thanks!