Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: All about BPAs

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Are BPAs safe? Of course not. Does the FDA care? Of course not. Learn all about what and why today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff.

I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. So this is short stuff about the beware of the BAs. That's right. We're talking about BPAs, specifically, well, BPA, which is, how do you pronounce that, Josh? I'm going with bisphenol or bisphenol A. Bisphenol A. There are other bisphenols, apparently, which I didn't know. And apparently, you know, none of these are good for you, even though the FDA is like, it's fine in the amounts that you're getting it. Stop being so uptight, everybody. Yeah, they're used in all sorts of plastics, polycarbonate, and prer.

particular, but that stuff shows up everywhere. It can be in the stuff that lines tin cans. It can be in your dental work. It can be in contact lens storage containers. Baby bottles used to be. I don't think it is anymore. But it was everywhere. It's also now still today, the greatest exposure that people get on average is from holding receipts, thermal paper receipts. Oh, interesting. Those are coded with BPA. So just be aware of that. I saw a study that said just holding one for 10 seconds exposed you to unsafe levels of BPA.

You know, many years ago when we lived in Los Angeles, and it's the jokes, Emily still laughs at to this day, because it's just very me, very sardonically Chuck, was we left a blockbuster video, and it was like print, print, and they did that thing where there was a ticker tape of like three feet of receipts, each connected by a little tiny piece of paper. And he handed them to me and I just went,

thank you for the receipts. And Emily thought that was the funniest thing ever and she still says it to this day. Yeah, I can see being in the right place and the right frame of mind and just finding that awesome. Yeah, like really stoned it Blockbuster. Sure.

Do you remember what you rented? Oh, no, no, no, who knows? But now that I don't feel so bad now that I know that those things are loaded with BPAs, I don't want those in my pocket. No, you don't. And the reason why we're even, like, talking about BPA is all thanks to a geneticist named Dr. Patricia Hunt, who was studying the ovaries of mice back in the late 90s, 1998. It was her jam.

She was not looking for BPA. She was not studying BPA at all, but BPA came and found her, essentially. Yeah, she saw these chromosonal errors start popping up. they went from 2% to 40% in these mice that she was studying in the control group and that, you know, there was miscarriage, there were birth defects in these little baby mice, it's all very sad. And she ran some more tests and she was like, you know what, all of these cages and water bottles that these mice are drinking out of have BPA in them.

And I think that's where it's coming from. So she swapped that stuff out with non-BPA stuff. Everything returned to normal. and she was like, I think I found something really bad here, everybody. Yeah, she did. She also really started to examine what BPA did. Disrupted fetal development. The eggs of the fetus that had its development disrupted.

That fetus is eventual babies. Those were also disrupted as well. So, yeah, she was like, I think something is really bad here. And what she turned up is that BPA acts as an endocrine disruptor, meaning it mimics a hormone in our body, which does all sorts of stuff, because our hormones are very well precisely timed. And you go over here and do this, you go over here and do that. And if something shows up en masse and is like, we're going to do all of this at once, there's all sorts of catastrophic things that can happen to the human body. Yeah, for sure.

And in this case, in the case of BPA, what it really does is affect estrogen. And estrogen has a huge effect on a lot of stuff. I think it can affect the behavior of more than 200 genes. And almost every organ and tissue in the body can be affected by estrogen. So this was a big deal. At the time, there were a lot of initial reactions of like, you know, we're not sure how bad this stuff is for you. We're not going to do anything right now. Like the evidence is like not really conclusive because we're not mice.

And so we're not necessarily going to experience the same. health effects. And again, these limits are like the amount that we're getting shouldn't harm like, you know, children and adults. Right. That was wrong. It turns out that the limits that we were being exposed to were considered very harmful now. But what's something weird, just a little thing to kind of put aside. It actually turns out that low doses of BPA have worse effects than larger doses of BPA. Yeah, that's weird. I didn't see anywhere. that that was explained. So I came up with my own explanation. It's Three Stooges Syndrome, which is how, remember, Mr. Burns had every disease, but none of them were affecting them because

they were all trying to get through the same door at once. I think that's what happens. When you have a bunch of BPA, they all get stuck trying to get through the same door at the same time, and it doesn't affect you like a little bit does, which can make it right through the door. All right, Dr. Clark, we're going to take a break and ponder that, and we'll be right back with more on BPAs. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I-Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii.

My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi.

You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I got to say, I'm very impressed.

Thank you. But I feel like I should say I am not a doctor. And you really shouldn't listen to me with any medical stuff whatsoever. But I called you a doctor. Oh, well, then I'm a doctor. All right. So in the United States, the FDAs who was in charge of regulating the BPA use. And in 2010, they did a four-year review of BPA studies, which resulted in 2014, basically saying, you know what, we're upholding our previous no-observe adverse effects level label, as long as you don't get more than five milligrams of body weight per kilogram of body weight. per day, you'll be fine. Yeah, and I think that that is a level that most people are never exposed to, right?

Well, that's what they say. I mean, we should talk about some of the things, though. I know you mentioned a few things, but let me see here. Type 2 diabetes, potentially in adults, insulin resistance in children and adults, polycystic ovary syndrome, obesity, and hypertension, in children and adults. Yeah, a lot of terrible stuff. And again, this is not to mention like the preterm births. developmental abnormalities, like all sorts of different stuff that has to do with reproduction,

breast cancer, tumors. Like all of these things, like it used to be like, like you said, we're not mice and, you know, that whole settled science BS that like the merchants of doubt used to put out like just shamelessly. Like if you look at meta-analyses of studies about BPA and its effect on the human body, like you said, that's what comes up. It's obviously you can never prove anything like without a shadow of a doubt. That's just how science works.

But it's essentially to the point where you, the individual person, can feel pretty good about not wanting BPA anywhere near you. Yeah, for sure. Europe, of course, is leading the way in front of us in April just a few years ago in 2023. Their FDA, which is the European Food Safety Authority, said, all right, we've seen the research. and I think they lowered their safe level a lot. I think to point two, what is that, 0.2 nanograms, which is 2 billionths of a gram or 0.2 billionths of a gram per day for like a human body.

So that's way lower than ours is. Well, yeah, and it's even lower than what their previous one was. Their previous one was still way lower than ours. So ours was 5 milligrams. per kilogram, I think it's the same still. Their old one was four micrograms per kilogram of body weight. So now their new revised safe level

is 20,000 times lower than their own previous safe level, 10 billion trillion-ish times lower than our safe level in the United States. And when the European Food Safety Authority basically decided this. There were all sorts of like, like, you know, is this true? Is this right? You know, and of course, industry was pushing back on it.

The only paper I found that was critical of it, an academic journal paper that was critical of their methods of data collection, I was like, funded this. It was funded by the American Chemistry Council. So, like, it seems pretty, like the EFSA has,

over the years or since April 20203, continued to issue defenses of its decision and not like, we decided, so shut up. They're like, we decided, and here's why. We decided, here's all the data we did this on. So it seems pretty legitimate that they're like, this is way worse than we have been taking it, and especially in the United States.

Yeah, well, if you go to the FDA website today, what's the date, April 30th, 2026, It says FDA's current perspective based on its most recent safety assessment is that BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods. Based on FDA's ongoing safety review of scientific evidence, the available information continues to support the safety of BPA for the currently approved uses in food containers and packaging. But if you don't buy that, and I don't, I don't think Dr. Josh does. You need to look for a label that says BPA-free. that will indicate that the plastic does not have bisphenol. Is that what you said?

Yeah, you didn't. Bisphenol A. But like I said, it could have bisphenol F or bisphenol S or something else, and that may be just as risky. I don't know. Here's how you remember that. It's like a bisque made of polyphenol. There you go.

Oh, I love bisque. That's a shame. Yeah, so if you're like, okay, BPA-free, great. give it to me. It turns out, like you said, there's other bisphenols. Bisphenol F and S are now uses substitutes. They're not nearly as studied as BPA has been, but essentially the studies that are coming back are like, yeah, just as bad as BPA does all the same things. So essentially the focus on BPA itself should have been expanded from the outset to bisphenols, not just BPA. And so, yeah, now there's BPF and BPS all over the place.

And if you think that you, what you have is BPA-free, it probably still has bisphenols in it. Why don't you just find something else? Well, they did. It's called glass. But the problem is glass, stainless steel containers, they often come with plastic tops and lids. And you have to be careful with that, too, because even if the lids metal, it may still have a plastic liner on the top of it. And that probably has at least some sort of plastic associated with it that could be getting in whatever you're drinking. Yeah, but do you have to have abysphenol to have plastic at all?

I don't know. I guarantee if you really looked into it, it's like half a cent less than something safe. That's your answer. You know? Yeah. One day we're going to get there, Chuck. I hope we're still alive to see it. But one day we're going to get there where people actually take care of other people.

And we all care about one another. We all act like it. We're going to get there. That's right. In the meantime, you and I and every other. member of the stuff you should know is going to try and be squeezing through that same door together. That's right.

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