🍼BPA and bisphenols

Chemicals that harden plastic and line metal cans, and the replacements sold as BPA-free. They behave like hormones in the body at very low doses. BPA-free usually means BPS or BPF instead, which are structurally similar and less studied.

Of the 11,795 products we have graded, 162 are flagged for it and 1 on reported or likely evidence rather than plausibility. Waterproof Earbuds & Cases is the worst category at 25% of what we scored there.

More than in anything else we grade. 4 of the 16 waterproof earbuds & cases we scored carry a flag for it, which is 25%. The full breakdown per product is on each product page.

In the categories where it turns up most, the highest scoring products with no flag for it are Klean Kanteen Double Wall Vacuum Insulated Stainless Steel Food Canister Container with Leak Proof Lid at 100, Pela Compostable AirPods Case at 100, Slow Cooking Liners at 90. Every one of those was graded on the same rubric as the products above.

A "BPA-free" claim, which usually means BPS or BPF was substituted rather than removed. Recycling code 7 or 3 on rigid plastic, and code 7 on older water bottles. The pale epoxy lining visible inside a food or drink can. It turns up in can linings, polycarbonate bottles and food storage, thermal receipts, and the resin coatings inside some reusable water bottles.

The FDA banned it from baby bottles and sippy cups in 2012 and from infant formula packaging in 2013, and continues to permit it broadly elsewhere. The European Union adopted a far wider ban on bisphenol A in food-contact materials that began phasing in from 2025. There is no United States requirement to disclose which bisphenol replaced it.

We do not lab test. Every grade here is built from published ingredient lists, materials, certifications, brand disclosures, recalls and third party lab results where those already exist. Where a product has been independently tested we use that result and say so, and where a brand publishes nothing we score the silence rather than guessing.