DorlandHealth

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health have found that certain plastic drinking bottles long under scrutiny do, in fact, leach a potentially damaging chemical into people’s bodies. Studying people who drank from polycarbonate bottles for a week, researchers discovered that concentrations of the chemical in question — bisphenol A, or BPA — rose nearly 70 percent. This is the first study to prove unequivocally that the use of such bottles increases the levels of the chemical in the urine. Though its effects are not fully understood in humans, animal studies suggest BPA, which is used in hundreds of common products, may cause developmental problems in the young and the unborn. Canada restricted the use of BPA in baby bottles last year.