it seems that other items we use also aid in the estrogen production/masking game. Some chemicals in certain Anti-Bacterial handsoaps will do it. Soybeans can do it. There are numerous foods we eat that cause overproduction of estrogen in fetuses and babies (oh my god what about the children!)
next time you go out with your trendy friends to the ultra hip Sushi bar, skip the edamame. It really isnt good for you.
but the cursing of beer cans while holding your $55 ti pot above the crowd like you know something we dont, well thats just fresh.

Edited by mikeinfhaz on 12/30/2008 08:31:08 MST.

Michael,

Where did you find a Ti pot for only $55.00?

> speculation with little scientific evidence is so much sexier to the average un-informed
> media/consumer relationship than evidence based science

Take a bow, Allison!

Cheers

I agree with Allison.

I agree with rcaffin. Take a bow Allison

"But he said new evidence continues to pile up, pointing to the detrimental health effects of bisphenol A on adults.

"There's new science coming out on a weekly basis pointing to this chemical being a health concern for adults. Baby bottles are a good start, but the government now needs to take a look at getting this chemical out of the lining in cans."

The latest research, the first large BPA study in humans published last month by the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, found a "significant relationship" between exposure to the ubiquitous estrogenic chemical and heart disease, diabetes and liver problems."

Woo-hoo. Good to know it's that darn BPA causing the heart disease/diabetes instead of the poor food choices and lack of exercise. Now we can all be junk-food eating couch potatoes and not worry about it as long as we don't eat out of plastic lined cans???

LOL

>Michael,

>Where did you find a Ti pot for only $55.00?

Dennis, you must have missed out on the 40% off end of year BPL sale!

Urpp... Hey Bro, pass me another brewski!

I've wondered how long an item will continue to leach chemicals-- is an older beer can safer as there is less left to leach? That lining is *thin*.

As others have said, there's probably more to worry about in the water than the can lining. I am certain that we all get more chemical exposure while driving to the trailhead than we ever would from the can lining. The stuff pouring out of the stacks on that 18-wheeler that just passed you going uphill is a LOT stronger than the BPA that *might* be in the cooking water, with very well documented health risks.

We're funny about things. We fret over things like the BPA, but we will happily climb into a car that pollutes the air and water, makes for all kinds of noise and dirt, kills 40,000 people a year in the US alone, and injures 250,000 more. You get in a wreck and how do you get home from the hospital? Yup, climb right back in a car.

Wear your seat belt, watch the booze, don't smoke, eat a decent diet and get some exercise. Get a physical once a year. Floss. You'll live a long time :)

Thanks Dale, always rational.

Dale's philosophy is sound to a certain extent. Here is a brief background to what is an "endocrine disruptor", as a prelude to why we may not worry too much about cooking in an empty can, but we definitely SHOULD worry about getting chemicals like BPA out of the environment.

Endocrine just means hormone. There are hundreds of different hormones in our bodies, and the balance of them controls practically everything we do and feel. Everything from insulin to dopamine to melatonin to estrogen and testosterone. These hormones can be disrupted in a variety of ways from outside influences. Some compounds destroy or deactivate the hormone. Some can cause a direct increase in our bodies own hormone production (insulin is a classic example). Some compete with the hormone for it's receptor binding site. This receptor competition can be antagonistic, that is to say the compound stops the receptor from acting. Other compounds are agonistic in that they mimic the natural hormone by stimulating the receptor. BPA is in this last category. Like a lot of known hormone agonists (as they are often called), many of these chemicals (including BPA) are MUCH weaker than your natural hormone. So if you have lots of your own hormone floating around, these weak agonists don't really get a lot of chance to do damage. So what's the problem???

Unborn and young animals often have very low to no level of these hormones floating around before puberty. In this situation, even though the agonist (BPA) is weak and at low concentration, it can have a large impact as it's basically a hormone that shouldn't be there at all until much later in development. And it's not just humans that are affected. Most of our hormones we share a lot in common with other animals, and sometimes even plants. So dumping billions of pounds of BPA into landfills to leach out into our waterways and soil is just plain bad ecological practice, as it can change the development and survival of unkown endangered organisms.

Trivial pursuits addendum: The biggest known endocrine disruptor in humans are processed carbohydrates and excess overall calories. Teenage males raised on a western high GI diet have testoterone levels twice as high as males raised on traditional low GI diets (think of the Masai as an example). This higher testosterone is a result of elevated insulin levels, and leads to higher estrogen (and a lot of other follow on hormonal effects such as acne and early puberty), not to mention tooth decay and often obesity and type 2 diabetes (which increases risk of cancer, heart diseases, kidney disease etc...). This is also true in women, though women convert more of their testosterone to estrogen, which may be why western women have higher rates of breast cancer, etc...Higher testosterone in women is also associatecd with our very high rates of PCOS, and obesity itself becomes a viscious cycle in that fat tissue generates it's own estrogen. So please, keep your children away from BPA, but also teach them good eating and exercising habits, as these really will make the biggest difference to their long term health.

Edited by retropump on 12/31/2008 11:58:37 MST.

Dale said:
"We're funny about things. We fret over things like the BPA, but we will happily climb into a car that pollutes the air and water, makes for all kinds of noise and dirt, kills 40,000 people a year in the US alone, and injures 250,000 more. You get in a wreck and how do you get home from the hospital? Yup, climb right back in a car."



Isn't this also akin to saying that because there are already so many toxic/dangerous things we have added to our lives, we should not worry about adding another?
Granted there are bigger risks to humans than BPA, no doubt, but why continue adding to the list? Combine one little chemical with all the other crap we spew out of our laboratories and put in our food and you do start having a problem.

This thread is about whether there are toxic chemicals in the beer can linings or not, not about its comparative risks to all other substances in the world.
If you think you its hype or you feel your too strong to be worried about it fine. But why tell or imply people like me who try to take care of our selves that we are somehow unreasonable or hysterical?
I dont (or try hard not to) eat any thing with artificial flavors, preservatives, or soy and whey isolates. I also try not to east anything with the "white death" i.e. refined sugars and flour. All of these things cause an increase in estrogen. The white death is another story.
increases in estrogen in men and woman cause cancers like prostate and breast cancer, obesity ,impotence, and overall crappy health.
Babyboomers have less testosterone than their parents and each generation is getting worst.
So go ahead, laugh at me- I laugh at you every time I see a viagra ad!

well i think its fair then, to consider any health risks that may be associated to boiling water in titanium... would you not agree?

I agree, please name them

"any health risks that may be associated"
this does not imply that there are indeed health risks, so how would I be able to name them?

fwiw, I dont think any agency is too concerned about any titanium health risks, there are far too few users of titanium utensils and cookpots. I dont know if the FDA or public college is going to spend possible Tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps much more, to study health effects on the miniscule amount of backpackers using ti pots. DO you?

Im really not jumping to a conclusion here man, just saying that IF science does indeed prove that titanium has either an immediate or a long term exposure health problem(s) then we will all know what's what.

Craig,
I agree with your comments, and cringe when I hear people paint a broad brush of things being dangerous or harmless. Read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It's decades old, but still relevent and wonderfully written.
Tom

>This thread is about whether there are toxic chemicals in the beer can linings or not, not about its comparative risks to all other substances in the world.

There ARE toxins in pretty much everything we come into contact with . It is appropriate to weigh up the risks of stuff we come into contact with, via skin, air, food or water. Brian is unusual in his dietary regime, and good for him! It is a move in the right direction IMHO. I have also weighed up the risks, and I have concluded that the risks of cooking in a coated beer can are so miniscule to non-exsistent that I am not going to worry about, but I AM going to worry about the impact of all that BPA being dumped into the environment.

>Babyboomers have less testosterone than their parents and each generation is getting worst.

This is true for the middle-aged and older crowd, but the curious thing is that testosterone in YOUNG males is increasing each generation. Again this is most likely due to a cruddy lifestyle, though we don't know if BPA levels in pregnant mothers are a contributing factor. Early and harsh puberty followed by a rapid decline in virility and an increased rate of reproductive disorders and cancers is the price we pay for our modern lifestyle. At least we are still living longer...as I head for 50 years of age, I am looking forward to a vibrant and active lifestyle that previous generations never dreamed of.

As for titanium, me thinks that anything that can withstand the rigours of being a joint replacement is probably not going to be very toxic to cook in, but we may never know as titanium cookware is so uncommonly used outside of our little group of fanatics. Those that choose to worry about these things would best avoid titanium as it's "unknown" if it's toxic or not.

Here's an interesting study that shows that glass or cast iron is the only safe cooking material (and only glass if you have high iron disease)!

"Culinary utensils may release some inorganic elements during food preparation. Mineral migration can be beneficial for as long as it occurs in amounts adequate to the needs of the consumer or no toxicological implications are involved. In this study, the migrations of Fe, Mg, Mn, Cr, Ni and Ca, along seven cooking cycles were evaluated for two food preparations (polished rice and commercial tomato sauce, the latter as an acid food), performed in unused stainless steel, cast iron and soapstone pans, taking refractory glass as a blank. Minerals were determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. The utensils studied exhibited different rates, patterns and variability of migration depending on the type of food. Regression analysis of the data revealed that, as a function of the number of cycles, the iron pans released increasing amounts of iron when tomato sauce was cooked. The soapstone pans released calcium (35 and 26 mg/kg), magnesium (25 and 15 mg/kg) into the tomato sauce and rice preparations, respectively. Additionally, the commercial tomato sauce drew manganese (3.9 and 0.6 mg/kg) and some undesirable nickel (1.0 mg/kg) from the soapstone material, whereas the stainless steel pans released nickel at a lower rate than steatite and in a diminishing fashion with the number of cooking cycles, while still transferring some iron and chromium to the food. We conclude that cast iron and glass could be best for the consumer's nutritional health, stainless steel and steatite can be used with relatively low risk, provided acid foods are not routinely prepared in those materials"

And

"Migration of aluminum (Al) from packaging materials and cooking utensils into foods and beverages was determined at intervals during cooking or during storage by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy. High amounts of Al migrated into acidic products such as mashed tomatoes during normal processing in normal, non-coated Al pans. After 60 min cooking an Al content of 10-15 mg/kg was measured in tomato sauce. Surprisingly, the Al concentration was also increased up to 2.6 mg/L after boiling tap water for 15 min in Al pans. Storage of Coca-Cola in internally lacquered Al cans resulted in Al levels below 0.25 mg/L. In contrast, NON-coated Al camping bottles containing tea acidified with lemon juice released up to 7 mg Al/L within 5 days. The Al concentration in coffee was lower than that of the tap water used in its preparation, even if prepared in Al heaters"

And

"Stainless steels are widely used materials in food preparation and in home and commercial cookware. Stainless is readily attacked by organic acids, particularly at cooking temperatures; hence iron, chromium, and nickel should be released from the material into the food. Nickel is implicated in numerous health problems. Conversely, chromium and iron are essential nutrients for which stainless could be a useful source. Home cookware was examined by atomic absorption spectroscopy: seven different stainless utensils as well as cast iron, mild steel, aluminum and enamelled steel. The materials were exposed to mildly acidic conditions at boiling temperature. Nickel was a major corrosion product from stainless steel utensils; chromium and iron were also detected. It is recommended that nickel-sensitive patients switch to a material other than stainless, and that the stainless steel cookware industry seriously consider switching to a non-nickel formulation."

"INTRODUCTION: Stainless steel and commercially pure titanium are widely used materials in orthopedic implants. However, it is still being controversially discussed whether there are significant differences in tissue reaction and metallic release, which should result in a recommendation for preferred use in clinical practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A comparative study was performed using 14 stainless steel and 8 commercially pure titanium plates retrieved after a 12-month implantation period. To avoid contamination of the tissue with the elements under investigation, surgical instruments made of zirconium dioxide were used. The tissue samples were analyzed histologically and by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) for accumulation of the metals Fe, Cr, Mo, Ni, and Ti in the local tissues. Implant corrosion was determined by the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). RESULTS: With grades 2 or higher in 9 implants, steel plates revealed a higher extent of corrosion in the SEM compared with titanium, where only one implant showed corrosion grade 2. Metal uptake of all measured ions (Fe, Cr, Mo, Ni) was significantly increased after stainless steel implantation, whereas titanium revealed only high concentrations for Ti. For the two implant materials, a different distribution of the accumulated metals was found by histological examination. Whereas specimens after steel implantation revealed a diffuse siderosis of connective tissue cells, those after titanium exhibited occasionally a focal siderosis due to implantation-associated bleeding. Neither titanium- nor stainless steel-loaded tissues revealed any signs of foreign-body reaction. CONCLUSION: We conclude from the increased release of toxic, allergic, and potentially carcinogenic ions adjacent to stainless steel that commercially pure Ti should be treated as the preferred material for osteosyntheses if a removal of the implant is not intended. However, neither material provoked a foreign-body reaction in the local tissues, thus cpTi cannot be recommend as the 'golden standard' for osteosynthesis material in general."

etc...

Hi Allison,

Thanks for the excellent information, I read with interest about using iron cooking pots as I have members of my family with high iron disease (haemochromtosis).

Some years ago in an oceanography modeling experiment I had to use some very pure Milli Q water and after talking to the chemists on how to store it I was told not to use glass as pure water is acidic and leaches chemicals from glass (and air), I was advised the best way to store Milli Q and distilled water to keep them from contamination was to use plastic containers but only after several uses did they stop leaching chemicals out of plastic.

I am wondering if this would be the same for BPA it would stop leaching out after a few uses.

I still think the main danger is from the fumes from some of the alcohols used to heat water in the beer cans.

Tony

>I have members of my family with high iron disease (haemochromtosis).

Yeah, ast iron is good for people with iron deficiency, bad for haemochromtosis. But in reality (this being BPL) I don't imagine any of us would consider cast iron OR glass as alternative cookware!

>I am wondering if this would be the same for BPA it would stop leaching out after a few uses.

Myself nd several others I have spoke with feel this is likely to be the case with beer cans, as the lining is so thin that it might not be a very big reserve of BPA. Polycarbonate plastic containers, OTOH, are an almost endless reservoir of BPA if used at hime temps. Even I would avoid cooking in these.

>after talking to the chemists on how to store it I was told not to use glass as pure water is acidic and leaches chemicals from glass (and air), I was advised the best way to store Milli Q and distilled water to keep them from contamination was to use plastic containers but only after several uses did they stop leaching chemicals out of plastic.

Depends on the plastic and how it's treated. For chemically pure water, glass with an inert gas over the top (often argon) is still the gold standard, though polypropylene plastics are a good second. However, if I were going to treat my water to high temps (eg autoclave), I would still go with glass. You can get pharmaceutical grade water in both storage formats, so there's not much in it at low temps.

>I still think the main danger is from the fumes from some of the alcohols used to heat water in the beer cans.

I think the world is full of dangers, and amazingly the human body is well equipped to deal with much of what it encounters. Brian mentioned falling testosterone levels as being a bad thing, yet testosterone is a pretty toxic chemical, and probably indirectly results in more deaths than any other compound the human body is exposed to. Eunichs live, on average, much longer than entire men (and the same thing is seen with neutered pets and livestock). So don't sweat the small stuff. I worry more about war, famine, climate change and crime than I could ever get uptight about cooking in a beer can (or using an Esbit stove etc...). Last year in NZ (population ~4 million) almost 400 people died in car accidents alone. I think getting to the start of the hike is the biggest risk I take when I go backpacking.

"At least we are still living longer...as I head for 50 years of age, I am looking forward to a vibrant and active lifestyle that previous generations never dreamed of."

I am personally highly skeptical of this popular view.
Yes "on average" we may make the claim but it says nothing at all about the HEALTH of people in the past. For instance a Spartan was as healthy as a horse, yet we in a society that has an obesity and diabetic epidemic (just to name a few) claim to have a vibrant and active life style like they could only dream? All thats changed is the math- An ancient Greek or Roman (lets assume they arnt poor and starved) IF he could survive war and infection after
surviving childbirth would live as long if not longer than anyone today and I wonder if he would not be healthier as well. Since they had good nutrition, had decent hygiene for ancient standards, and regularly exorcised. In fact they invented all those things! But most of all they eat nothing but organic foods, whole grains and mostly wild game and fish. No chemicals like BPA at all. Well, the wealthy Romans had lead pipes -but if they knew it dangers....

"testosterone is a pretty toxic chemical"
Lets overlook the feminist view on this one;)
But ALL hormones are toxic when they are out of balance which is my point. My focus on estrogen was relevant to BPA.
Avoid toxins and eat well and your hormones (thyroid) will thank you