From Environmental Health News:
As water treatment plants struggle to keep up with the chemical cocktail heading into our pipes, researchers say they’ve come up with a solution to remove one of the most ubiquitous contaminants—BPA.
Chemists were able to remove about 99 percent of bisphenol A (BPA) from water using a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and engineered catalysts, according to a study released today in the journal Green Chemistry.
The findings are a potential game-changer. Water treatment plants were not designed to deal with chemicals such as BPA, which is used to produce polycarbonate, epoxy and phenolic resins and largely used to make plastic hard and shatterproof, but also used in thermal receipt paper and food packaging.
Comment: This is encouraging news. BPA is linked with a variety of serious health problems, including cancer, infertility, birth defects, and heart disease, and is used in making of many consumer goods. “BPA-free” products are often no better, as one endocrine-disrupting chemical is replaced with another. ANH petitioned the US government to remove BPA from cash register receipts, but so far we haven’t received any response at all.
