Scott Belcher & colleagues at the Univ. Cincinnati, Ohio, found that polycarbonate plastic bottles release up to 55 times more bisphenol A after they've been washed in boiling water. BPA is found in many plastic food & drink containers & has been linked to breast & prostate cancer. Because they are often reused, Belcher wanted to test whether old containers leached BPA into their contents faster than new ones. His team filled new & used polycarbonate plastic bottles with water & kept them at room temperature for a week. They found that the rate of BPA release into the water by new & used bottles was an average of 0.49 nanograms/h. But when the team mimicked sterilisation by filling the bottles with boiling water & leaving them to cool, they found the average rate of BPA release jumped to 18.67 nanograms/h.This continued even after the bottles had cooled & rinsed out. (Toxicology Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.toxlet.2007.11.001).
