Chemical leaching and baby bottles: a danger to children?

I've been waiting for this news to hit the mainstream media, and finally it has arrived. The National Institute of Health is finally taking seriously laboratory tests that indicate that plastic baby bottles and sippy cups may be leaching chemicals and feeding babies and children more than their parents have bargained for.

The chemical in question is bisphenol A, and it's used to make plastic food ware, including five popular brands of baby bottles. Environmentalists have been warning of the danger of the chemical for quite some time now, and fear that it may cause neurological or reproductive problems in exposed children down the line. The NIH agrees that the chemical mimics female sex hormones and causes reproductive issues in lab animals, and has agreed to to review recent tests.

Manufacturers defend themselves, saying that the amount of chemicals that leach into liquids are so small that they don't cause harm to young children and that the tests that environmentalist groups rely on for information are sensationalized. I can't tell you who to believe, because until all the research is in the debate is still on. But I can tell you that shortly after I first heard this news, our plastic sippy cups found themselves in the recycling bin and were replaced with these. Just in case.