Build a Toxic-Free Future

A toxic chemical in baby food

When we go to the grocery store to buy infant formula, baby food or toddler food, toxic chemicals and threats to our children’s health are the last things on our mind. We trust these products to nourish our children and help them grow.

Yet some of the food on Maine’s store shelves for babies and young kids contains the toxic chemical BPA (bisphenol-A). BPA seeps into our children’s food from the metal tops of jars and the linings of metal cans, exposing them—even in the first months of life—to a chemical with serious health effects, including the early onset of puberty, obesity, and even cancer.

We’re working to convince the Maine Board of Environmental Protection and the Legislature to protect our kids and ban BPA in children’s food.

BPA harms children

The science is clear and overwhelming—BPA harms children. More than 150 peer-reviewed studies have been published showing BPA’s dangerous health effects.

BPA has been a known hormone disruptor for 70 years, so it comes as no surprise that it’s causing problems today.

Exposure to BPA in the womb, during infancy, or in childhood can set the stage for lifelong adverse health effects. We can’t knowingly continue to expose children to BPA.

Food is a major source of children’s exposure to BPA

Research shows that getting BPA out of food could reduce BPA exposure by two-thirds.

The good news is that safer packaging for children’s food is already widely available and affordable, like the pouches of baby food now on every supermarket shelf across the state.

It’s time to get BPA out of baby and toddler food

Last year, with the help of citizens across Maine, Environment Maine and the Alliance for a Clean & Healthy Maine, a broad coalition of Maine health and environmental organizations, won a ban on BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, and all reusable food and beverage containers sold in Maine. Now, we’ve come together again to extend the ban to infant formula, baby food, and toddler food—an important step toward a broader ban on BPA in all food and an absolutely necessary move if we want to protect the health of Maine's children.

In June 2012, Environment Maine and the Alliance for a Clean & Healthy Maine joined with a group of Maine moms to submit a citizen-initiated rulemaking to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection to ban BPA in children’s food. The Board will make its decision by the end of the year and then send the rule to the Legislature for approval.

Unfortunately, the chemical industry is trying to block these common sense protections for our children’s health. The chemical industry’s stall tactics are taken right from the tobacco industry’s playbook. They’ve already called in hired guns to create confusion about the science on BPA using discredited arguments and outright lies.

But the facts are clear, and there’s just no excuse for continuing to allow Maine children to be exposed to toxic BPA. For the sake of our kids, we have to act now.

With your activism and advocacy, we can win

Your activism and our advocacy are a powerful combination. Together, we’ve taken on the chemical industry—and won. And now, we need your help to do it again and ban BPA in our children’s food.

Join our campaign by signing our petition today to the Board of Environmental Protection and the Maine Legislature. Let’s protect our kids. Let’s get BPA out of children’s food.

Click here to urge the Board of Environmental Protection to get BPA out of our children's food.