Toxic Chemical in Infant's & Children's Feeding Products

A year ago while I was looking for a gift for my baby niece in-law, a doctor friend strongly recommended me to buy a special feeding bottle. The special thing about this bottle was that it does not contain the chemical "bisphenol-A" (雙酚A in chinese or BPA in short) .


Okay, that was the first time I heard about this chemical. I read the brochure and roughly know that it is harmful to health. That's about it.


Now that I am pregnant, I start to pay more attention to the quality and safety of baby products (the melamine milk scandal just make me more paranoid). When I did my baby-stuff shopping in HK (where prices are generally 20% cheaper than S'pore), I realised BPA-free products have come into the mainstream market. Parents are careful in picking up only BPA-free bottles, sippy cups, eating utensils and even toys. A shop owner told me that BPA is a big topic among parents not only in HK, but in Taiwan (click here for a chinese news articleon BPA), Korea and Japan as well.


So why is there little awareness of BPA in Singapore? I asked my friends, the most "kiasu/ 怕輸" full-time-baby-sitting mothers (who only buy the most expensive and best quality products for their babies) about it, none of them heard about such issue.


According to Bisphenol-A Free, BPA is a "hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment. It has been known that scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles will leach this chemical into liquids."

As usual, depending on who is funding the research, there are conflicting research datas that either support the claim that BPA is toxic or it is not harmful to human health.


While FDA and European authorities are being rather fiddle-minded over the issue, Canada government is a little more decisive and it officially puts BPA under the toxic chemical list.

Though the controversy continues, I am not going wait for few decades for the scientists to be sure and I rather be kiasu to stick to the safe side. Why risk exposing my baby to any known potential harm?!

Luckily I found this excellent "Z Recommends" that gives a comprehensive Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products. This comes in really handy to help me purchase BPA-free milk pumps, milk bottles, utensils and toys etc for my little prince. I am glad that the expensive Combi training cups that I bought from HK are safe to be used.