Education News – Kristin Decarr
“A new study released by researchers at Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that school lunches may contain unsafe levels of BPA, or bisphenol A. The chemical, most often found in canned foods and plastic packaging, mimics human hormones and can be harmful for the developing brains of fetuses, infants and children…“There are known sources of BPA being used in school food,” said Jennifer C. Hartle, a postdoctoral research fellow…However,the head of the Maryland-based School Nutrition Association and a spokesman for the chemical industry disagrees with the findings, noting that the levels of BPA found in the study were all below established safety limits…Hartle did acknowledge that the levels of BPA a student might receive from one meal would be well below the threshold set by the federal government. However, that standard was set by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1988. She added that since that time over 100 studies have been performed, finding that much lower doses of BPA have resulted in negative health effects in animals.”(more)