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Does BPA in Nalgene affect lab results?

by Eva Amsen

So, Nalgene drinking bottle contain Bisphenol A (BPA), and Bisphenol A is about to be banned in Canada from baby bottles etc.

But forget the water bottles: if you work in a lab you’ll know Nalgene as the company that produces pretty much everything that’s made of plastic in your lab: plastic big beakers, measuring cylinders. There’s a big Nalgene pipette washer behind me as I type this.

If they change the composition of their plastics, won’t that affect someone’s lab results at some point? I mean, those buffers stored for months in Nalgene, for example, won’t they take up way more BPA than the water that’s in your bottle for half a day? Dialyzing antibodies in a 4-liter Nalgene beaker overnight, would that make a difference with or without BPA?

(This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I’m really curious. Just not really worried.)

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1 comment

Cath Ennis April 16, 2008 - 9:35 PM

My gut feeling is that this will make less of a difference than batch to batch variations in biological reagents such as serum, proteins, polyclonal antibodies etc. But of course I’m not basing that any evidence or anything. If you wanted to investigate, I’m sure the resulting paper would be very highly cited!
How many of the people who are freaking out about drinking water from plastic bottles still smoke, drink too much and eat lots of red meat I wonder?

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