Photo editors gone wild.

On 3 March, Suffolk County, N.Y., voted to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from use in baby bottles.  Newsday covered the story. It's a big deal ... the first governmental body in the US to take action against BPA.  Canada made a similar move last year. At least 10 states around the US are contemplating similar actions this year.

Newsday's reporter Reid Epstein did a fine job covering the story, picking up on Canada's ban as well as moves by Wal-Mart and other retailers to replace BPA with substitutes. He also covered the controversy at the FDA, where while the agency itself has said BPA is safe, FDA's scientific advisory board "accused the agency of not considering research that found BPA dangerous."

The big blooper goes to Newsday's photo editors.  They opened the story with a photograph of a collection of plastic bottles and the caption "Suffolk lawmakers are ready to ban the reuse of plastic bottles, which they say cause serious health problems."

Newsday

These above are PET, not BPA-based bottles.

The problem is that none of the bottles in the photograph to the right, from Newsday's story, are baby bottles -- the focus of the new law -- and none of them are BPA-based polycarbonate.  The proposed law isn't about reuse of plastic bottles, it's about risks to babies of one specific type of bottle, that made with bisphenol A.

 

 

 

J.P. Myers

This (to the left), in contrast, is a polycarbonate (BPA) baby bottle. It may be labeled PC-7 or 7 in the recycling code.  It is rigid and transparent. The PET bottles above are more flexible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By 10 a.m. on 4 March, the misleading photograph had been replaced on Newsday's website with one that properly showed examples of BPA-based baby bottles (replacement to right).