Plastics Producers Call French BPA Report “Unrealistic”

PlasticsEurope, the organization representing plastics manufacturers, has slammed the French government's list of possible alternatives to bisphenol A as an "unrealistic simplification."

France's ban - plans for which were first broached in 2010 - would take effect on 1 January 2015. It was the first European country to banish BPA from baby bottles, in 2011.

The list is contained in one of two reports the government presented by the government at the end of November ahead of an upcoming parliamentary vote on banning the controversial chemical used in polycarbonate and epoxy resins from food packaging products.

Both reports use toxicological data compiled by the French health authority ANSES. France said the second report, based in part on input from industrial users, looks at possible substitutes for the chemical.

The outcome of the vote will be especially significant, as a ban would also apply to products entering the French market from other countries.

While France claims that polycarbonate already has been substituted "without major difficulty" in water fountain containers and that substitution of thermal paper for cash register receipts is not far in the offing, PlasticsEurope is sceptical.

Jasmin Bird of the association's working group on PC/BPA noted that the 96-page report has been published only in French, "making it very difficult for non-French market partners to access the whole content." Ralf Maeckler, head of the Epoxy Resin Group, said he fears that the French report could be misinterpreted as assurance that substitution would be easy.

PlasticsEurope also took issue with the fact that the report "provides no robust safety assessment of the proposed alternatives" to BPA."