BPA on the receipts you handle

[glatt]

To be fair, it's not clear how much of the BPA will rub off of the receipts and onto you when you handle them.

In an effort to quantify how much BPA would transfer to a person’s hand, the laboratory performed wipe tests on four BPA-laden receipts. In all four cases, BPA transferred from the receipts to the wipes. An average of 2.4 percent of the receipts’ total BPA content wiped off, suggesting that a person who handled receipts would be exposed to some BPA in the thermal paper. There have been no published studies of BPA residues inside pockets, purses and wallets, on wet produce in grocery bags or on the hands of people after they crumpled and discarded a receipt.

So if that McDonald receipt in my first post contained 126 times the BPA found in a very contaminated can of ravioli, and the tests show that 2.4% of the BPA rubs off a receipt, then rubbing the receipt will expose you to about three cans of that BPA laden ravioli. Eating the receipt will expose you to the full 126 cans of ravioli.

So like Bruce says, don't eat the receipts. And don't rub them either. And wash your hands before you do eat. But you should do that anyway.

[Flint]

Great. Every time I go to the store with the kids, I let them hold the receipt on the way to the car, and I explain to them how goods are exchanged for money, and how the numbers on the paper represent the goods purchased and the amounts of money, and how I go to work every day to exchange work for the money which in turn we exchange for goods. This is the basic concept of modern man representing objects and transactions with commonly understood symbols (written language).

But I want to stress this part: I do not let them eat the receipts.