Prohibits the manufacture, sale or distribution of business transaction paper containing bisphenol A

Summary of provisions

The bill prohibits any person, firm, partnership, association, limited liability company or corporation from manufacturing, selling, offering for sale of distributing any thermal receipt paper containing BPA after October 1, 2015. If the USEPA does not identify safe, commercially available alternatives to BPA, then no person may shall manufacture, sell, offer for sale of distribute such paper after July 1, 2017.

Section 4 preempts any local law or ordinance, or any rule or regulation promulgated governing receipt paper containing bisphenol A vesting all jurisdiction in these matter exclusively with the State.

Justification

Recently the NYS Governor signed legislation that would prohibit the use of BPA in child care products, including sippy cups, baby bottles and straws intended for use by a child under the age of three. BPA is an estrogen-mimicking endocrine disrupting chemical that has been found to be toxic at low doses and is linked to breast cancer, early onset of puberty, obesity ad prostate cancer. Very small amounts of hormones can produce immense biological behavioral changes.

BPA has been used in carbonless copy paper (e.g. credit card receipts) and thermal imaging papers for many years. A powdery layer of BPA is coated onto a piece of paper along with invisible ink which merge and provide "color" when subject to heat or pressure. The Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, co-founded by organic chemist John C. Warner, has been testing cash register receipts and has found an alarming amount to BPA on these receipts. The average receipt using the BPA technology was found to contain 60-100 milligrams of free BPA, which is a thousand times above levels leaching from polycarbonate bottles. Free BPA is not bound into a polymer, but just individual molecules lose and available for uptake. The paper has been published on July 28th in the peer-reviewed journal "Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews".

The Environmental Work Group (EWG) in Washington DC had a testing program conducted by the Missouri Division of Biological Sciences laboratory on receipts from major retailers, including Wal-Mart, Safeway, McDonalds, the U.S. Postal Service, and Bank of America ATMs. The laboratory found that the total mass of BPA on a receipt is from 250 to 1,000 times the amount of BPA typically found in a can of food

or a can of baby formula. Forty percent of 36 printed receipts collected from fast food restaurants, big retailers, grocery stores, gas stations and post offices in seven states and the District of Columbia contained BPA.

Bio-monitoring surveys by the federal Centers far Disease Control and Prevention has found BPA in the bodies of 93% of Americans over the age of 6. The EWG analysis of the CDC data found that people who reported working in retail industries had 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than the average U.S. adult and 34% had more BPA than other workers. As of May 2009, I in 17 working Americans - 7 million people were employed as retail salespersons and cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nation's largest manufacturer of thermal paper, Appleton Papers in Wisconsin, stopped using BPA in 2006 because of a growing concern about the safety of the chemical.

Legislative history

New Bill.

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

This act would take effect immediately.