Top baby bottle leached more chemicals

Now the good news: Cheaper alternative yields safer results than big-name brand, Health Canada finds.

A top brand of baby bottle leached more than double the amount of a hormone-disrupting chemical linked to breast and prostate cancer than a cheaper house brand, new Health Canada tests show.

The tests involved government scientists filling two polycarbonate bottles containing bisphenol A with boiling water and heating them for six days.

The study, uncovered during an Access to Information request, showed that the bottles, purchased from an Ottawa store, were not created equal.

It found that the concentration level of BPA, an estrogen-mimicking chemical, in the water in the Philips Avent's top-selling baby bottle, Avent Naturally, was 516 parts per billion (ppb).

In the Teddy's Choice bottle, manufactured by Loblaw Companies Ltd., it was 228 ppb.

The Avent bottles containing BPA are no longer sold in Canada. Loblaw Companies did not respond to a request about the status of its Teddy's Choice bottles.

Nevertheless, consumer advocates say parents should take note of the results because older, hand-me-down bottles are still in circulation in households, despite a pending ban of BPA in baby bottles.

Chantal Vallerand used Avent bottles for her three-year-old son when he was a baby. When her daughter was born last spring, she switched to glass bottles after Health Canada announced steps to ban BPA in plastic baby bottles.

Health Canada said "uncertainty" raised in some studies about the possible detrimental health effects on babies when exposed to "low levels" of the chemical warranted the ban.

The Health Canada study concluded the Avent bottles likely started out with a higher level of BPA residue.

"Because all bottles were under the same migration conditions, the differences between the migration levels are likely due to the different levels of residue BPA in the product," the report said.

A separate Health Canada study of undisclosed brands also found a similar range when researchers filled bottles with boiling water and let them sit at room temperature; the concentration levels of the hormone disrupter in the water ranged from 1.7 ppb to 4.1 ppb.

Philips Avent stopped selling baby products with BPA in Canada last summer in response to market pressures and the pending ban, expected to come into effect later this year.

The company made the switch in the United States in January.

A spokesman for Philips Canada declined to comment specifically on the test results, but the company maintains its entire line of bottles are "considered to be the best designed, best engineered in the world."

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