September/October 2010 Issue

Which Canned Goods Contain the Most BPA?

The surprising list.

Stephen St-Maurice/iStockphoto.com

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Read also: Plastic liners leach BPA into our food. So why have manufacturers and regulators failed to act?

CONSUMERS UNION recommends ingesting no more than .0011 micrograms of BPA daily per pound of body weight. But it found at least 20 times the limit for a typical adult in a single serving of several canned foods it tested.

 

Product/Model BPA PER SERVING (AVERAGE IN MICROGRAMS) EXCEEDS DAILY LIMIT BY A FACTOR OF
Progresso Vegetable Soup 22.0 115
Del Monte Blue Lake Fresh Cut Green Beans 14.9 77
Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup 10.2 53
Annie’s Home Grown Organic Cheesy Ravioli 7.70 39
Hormel Chili with Beans 6.10 31
Green Giant Whole Kernel Sweet Corn 3.80 19
Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli in Tomato Meat Sauce 2.50 12
Nestle Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Apple 2.3 11
Libby’s Corned Beef 1.8 8
Vital Choice Tuna 1.15 5
Similac Advance Infant Formula (concentrated, liquid) 0.85 3
Slim Fast High Protein (extra creamy chocolate, liquid) 0.78 3
Bush’s Best Original Baked Beans 0.6 2
Swanson White Premium Chunk Chicken Breast 0.47 1
Starkist Chunk Light Tuna in Water 0.2 Less than Limit
Valley Fresh White Chicken in Water Organic 0.19 Less than Limit
Eden Baked Beans with Sorghum & Mustard Organic 0.15 Less than Limit
Hunt’s Tomato Sauce 0.04 Less than Limit

Source: Consumers Union; based on limit for a 173 lb. adult.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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