Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/bpa-dropped-from-some-plastics-amid-health-concerns Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a chemical commonly found in hard plastic bottles such as Nalgenes and other everyday plastic products. However, increasing concerns about BPA's alleged toxicity has caused Nalgene to stop using it to make bottles. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, an update on a report we aired last fall about the possible dangers of a chemical found in plastic bottles. NewsHour correspondent Betty Ann Bowser has our Science Unit story. BETTY ANN BOWSER, NewsHour Correspondent: A chemical found in hard plastic, commonly seen on the sidelines of sporting events, has become so controversial that Nalgene will no longer make water bottles out of it.The Canadian government and at least one U.S. senator want to ban or limit its use. And a draft report by the National Toxicology Program acknowledged for the first time some concern that it may affect neural and behavioral development in fetuses, infants and children at current exposures.Dr. John Bucher is the head of the National Toxicology Program. JOHN BUCHER, Associate Director, National Toxicology Program: We have a little more confidence that this data is a little more solid than it was over the last year. And I think that, while we still have some issues related to understanding exactly what these early changes mean in relation to long-term health effects, and also certainly the extrapolation to human health effects, is another leap that we need to make.But we are becoming a little more certain that there are some emerging trends in the literature that do support the level of concern that our folks have indicated in our draft documents. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The chemical is Bisphenol A, or BPA. Even before the latest rash of BPA headlines, these mothers in Washington, D.C., were worried, because Parent magazine and two popular baby guides told them to stop using hard plastic baby bottles that contained the chemical. HEIDI PARSONT: Some of the studies are so scary and some of them are inconclusive. And some of them just say, you know, they don't really know. And so it's hard to decide how to proceed in a day and age when everything is made of this. KIM TRUCANO: I also saw that could be possible issues with the nervous system, and that worries me.