Two Minnesota colleges are joining a reported nationwide push among students to ban bottled water as a favor to the environment.

College of St. Benedict and Macalester College both are banning the sale and purchase of bottled water on campus. Bottled water results in landfills full of plastic bottles, not to mention causes consumers to pay for something that’s basically free, said students on the campuses in interviews with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. And then there’s the BPA issue–who wants extra estrogen in their water?

Reader’s Digest features an article on clean water on its cover for August. “We have the safest drinking water in the world–except for the pesticides that sometimes sneak in. And the rocket fuel. And the antibiotics…”

Trinidad and Tobago’s Newsday published an article today identifying the “Toxic Ten every day products you should avoid.” Number two (behind air fresheners) is bottled water.

A study at Penn State University School of Medicine found a correlation between fetal exposure to BPA and wheezing in infants. BPA, you recall, is the false estrogen that is used in manufacturing clear plastic bottles, lining food and beverage cans, manufacturing thermal paper for receipts, and so on.

Think you’re safe from false estrogens because you’ve got a “bpa-free” plastic water bottle? Think again.

The FDA and the EPA are using outdated testing and review procedures for chemicals, according to scientists representing societies from eight fields who signed a letter in the journal Science.

A new study in the journal Pediatrics found puberty starting in girls at the age of 7 at roughly twice the rate found 10 years ago. The researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital examined 1,200 girls between ages six and eight, in 2004 and 2006. They lived in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and East Harlem, N Y.  [...]

* The journal Reproductive Toxicology published a Harvard University study of 190 men that found correlation between BPA levels in men’s urine and damage to their sperm counts and DNA.
* Store receipts in many cases are loaded with BPA dust which rubs off onto your fingers. The Environmental Working Group tested receipts from a variety of stores and governmental units, and found large amounts.

And others, like me, sidestep the obesity question and point out that earlier puberty for females (and later for males) is a logical outcome for a BPA-rich environment. BPA, a synthetic estrogen, is used as an additive in clear plastic bottles, as liner for tin cans, and liberally covers credit card receipt thermal paper. It’s in the tissues of every one of us.

I don’t know about you, but I am very tired of getting email spam about Viagra. Apparently one reason for it, indirectly of course, is the use of BPA, bisphenyl A, in our environment: in plastic water and soda bottles, in tin can liners, and on our credit card receipts, and other places probably. Everyone has some levels of this contaminant in their urine. Now there’s proof that BPA, a synthetic estrogen, is adversely affecting male sexuality, according to a study by Kaiser Permanente, a health care provider in California.