Bisphenol A tainted money and receipts

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDDec 8 2010

Bisphenol A (BPA) has been found in many household items and other common objects and is known to be an endocrine disruptor linked to infertility, genital abnormalities, cancer and more. Now it has been detected on ‘cash’. Since BPA is used to make plastic, manufacturers use about 8 billion pounds of BPA that is moulded, cooked or poured into toys, baby products and other merchandise each year. On these products BPA is chemically bonded but it is simply applied in a powdery film to paper, making it easy to rub off with a touch.

A non-profit Washington Toxics Coalition (WTC) conducted a study of 22 restaurants and retailers in 20 states and the District of Columbia to look into the threat of cash-borne BPA. They found that 11 of the 22 samples crossed the BPA threshold that they called “very large quantities” - about 2.2% of the total weight of the receipts. More troubling, it took only 10 seconds of holding a receipt for 2.5 micrograms of BPA to be picked up by the skin. The WTC collected 22 bills from 18 states and Washington, D.C., and found that 21 of them carried detectable levels of BPA. In another study since June researchers have found that BPA levels are high in cash-register receipts.

Biologist Erika Schreder, the report’s author and a WTC staff scientist said, “We knew BPA in receipts is present in a powdery coating, so there was every reason to believe it could come off on money.” Greenbacks likely acquire their BPA, she says, from receipts-tainted fingers or by money rubbing against receipts in a wallet or pocket. Concentrations found on bills were low, from 0.12 to 11 parts per million. But emerging data on the ubiquity of BPA in receipts, food, kitchenware and more now argue that “even the most careful consumer can’t avoid exposure,” says Schreder. She added, “Unregulated uses are so pervasive that they’re contaminating money… And I wouldn’t be surprised if other things weren’t also contaminated from receipts.”

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and the Washington Toxics Coalition are pushing for updates to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which governs the use of chemicals in the United States.  According to the report, two bills currently in Congress would increase the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to curb the use of toxic chemicals.