BPA- Write to F&P, ResMed, Respironics!

[starkisma]

Could we write to the manufacturers to eliminate BPA and other harmful chemicals from our humidification system. Campbell Soup company has decided to eliminate BPA from their canned goods. Here is the link to the campaign This announcement happened as a result of consumers who wrote, tweeted, called, emailed the company via a campaign generated by the Breast Cancer Fund. Couldn't we do the same in the apnea industry? What do we have to lose? We have 31,000 members on this forum alone and we have the power to voice concerns to Philips Respironics, ResMed, Fisher & Paykel and many others. The CEOs from Philps, ResMed, Fisher & Paykel need to hear from us!! Write to these companies and we can make a difference in the quality of air we breathe. Something like this may be effective. Please feel free to post if you can think of better ideas for writing.

Dear [Decision Maker] (taken and modified from the Campbell Soup campaign)

As a consumer I am very concerned about BPA, PVC and phalate.
I am concerned that there is BPA, PVC and phalate in the CPAP humidification products your company makes and I purchase as a consumer.
My health is important to me, so I don't want to purchase these equipment with BPA or unsafe alternatives.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]

Here are some of the addresses I've found on their websites. There are many other companies to write to if you would like to help post contact infos.

Fisher & Paykel
Phone: +64 9 574 0110
Fax: +64 9 574 0176
Address:
15 Maurice Paykel Place
East Tamaki, Auckland 2013
PO Box 14 348
Panmure, Auckland 1741
New Zealand

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Inc
15365 Barranca Parkway
Irvine, CA 92618
United States of America

ResMed
USA
ResMed Corp
9001 Spectrum Center Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92123
+1 (858) 836-5000
+1 (800) 424-0737 (toll free)
+1 (858) 836-5501

Philips Respironics
Pittsburgh (Murrysville, HCHQ)
Respironics, Inc.
1010 Murry Ridge Lane
Murrysville, PA 15668-8525

[Uncle_Bob]

People can check out Resmeds take on the use of BPA at the link to a .pdf document below

http://www.resmed.com/us/service_and_su ... c=patients

Personally i'm not concerned.

[chunkyfrog]

I cannot help wondering if much of the BPA ruckus was scare tactics to get us to go back to bottled water,
or buy new water bottles. Imagine all the unknown plastic ware that has been thrown out!
No doubt SOME bad stuff got the boot; but somebody scored some major green, for sure!

[Janknitz]

I think the BPA concerns are real, BUT, there are similar estrogenergic compounds in almost all plastics, so it's not necessarily going to solve the problem if they simply switch from BPA to another plastic that just isn't on the radar YET.

It does worry me, we are breathing in the volatiles all night long, and it has close contact with our skin, too. But unless they switch to glass, I don't think there's a good solution. And I'm sure I'd die a lot quicker and harder if I don't use my CPAP. I am working hard to eliminate plastics in my kitchen, so at least I'm not eating it, too.

[Wulfman...]

If anyone bothers to do a forum search on "BPA", they will find that this subject has been discussed ad nauseum since April of 2008.

I wasn't concerned then and I'm not concerned now.


Den

.

[archangle]

Sorry, but you've been duped by the internet nutjobs and sensationalist media.

Even if BPA is a legitimate concern for disposable drinking bottles, which is dubious, there's just not that much BPA that will come out of a CPAP chamber. Some small amount may leach out while new, but it's not going to keep leaching out of the plastic in large quantities.

For something like a disposable drink bottle, the water goes into a new bottle, which could leach out BPA for weeks and months as it sits in storage.

BPA is not some highly toxic chemical like dioxin. BPA was actually used in medicine in much larger doses than you'll ever get from a drink bottle with no major side effects.

Don't get me wrong. I think big business would kill us in our sleep and sell our organs if they thought the profit vs. risk was good. It's just that nutjob campaigns like this one take the emphasis against the much bigger real health concerns.

Why don't you spend your efforts complaining about something like DHMO?

[ChicagoGranny]

Sorry, but you've been duped by the internet nutjobs and sensationalist media.

Well said.

"Based on the overall weight of evidence, the findings of the previous assessment remain unchanged and Health Canada's Food Directorate continues to conclude that current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children," Health Canada's Bureau of Chemical Safety wrote in its report. Sept. 27, 2012

[CowFish]

archangel said - Sorry, but you've been duped by the internet nutjobs and sensationalist media.

I believe Starkisma is an internet nutjob. We kept our old water bottles with BPA.

[Otter]

I believe Starkisma is an internet nutjob.

Well, yes, but aren't we all? Seriously, think about the threads on this forum and tell me that any of us are sane.

[chunkyfrog]

I did not buy into Y2K, either.
Just another "marketing-by-fear" ploy.
Some sheeple never learn.

[archangle]

I did not buy into Y2K, either.
Just another "marketing-by-fear" ploy.
Some sheeple never learn.

Actually, Y2K was VERY real. I worked to help fix a lot of things that would have broken on Jan 1, 2000. Luckily, the hype was big enough that the fools in upper management took notice and let the smart people fix things.

Without all the fixes, you probably wouldn't have have had things like airplanes falling from the sky and power plants exploding, but you would have had things like companies not being able to produce bills to their clients, banks not being able to process checks or tell you your account balance, airline reservations disappearing, warehouses not having any clue what inventory they had, etc.

It wouldn't probably have been that life threatening, but you would probably have a lot of companies going out of business because they were "skating on thin ice" with their cash flow and couldn't recover from the lost business.

[BlackSpinner]

I did not buy into Y2K, either.
Just another "marketing-by-fear" ploy.
Some sheeple never learn.

That is because you didn't work overtime for more then a year to prevent it.

[hyperlexis]

Assuming that BPA is harmful, has anyone determined: 1.) It is present in current (or old?) CPAP breathing circuits; 2.) It can be absorbed or absorbed in dangerous amounts from water vapor or droplets from a CPAP heated humidifier; 3.) If yes, that the amount absorbed by a patient using CPAP would be significant enough to be considered above safe levels of exposure.

[chunkyfrog]

Y2K was not a surprise.
Any "emergency" was created by decision-makers who deferred action for some unknown reason.

[Otter]

I did not buy into Y2K, either.
Just another "marketing-by-fear" ploy.
Some sheeple never learn.

Actually, Y2K was VERY real. I worked to help fix a lot of things that would have broken on Jan 1, 2000. Luckily, the hype was big enough that the fools in upper management took notice and let the smart people fix things.

Is that what happened? By the time the mainstream media started warning us about the impending digital apocalypse, the industry had been working on the problem for years. I suppose that without the doomsday stories a few companies would have been caught napping, but I think anything remotely important would have been quietly patched even without the fuss. And if your IT or dev department needs hysterical stories in the mainstream media to become aware of something like this, things probably aren't running very smoothly anyway.

The need to use more than two digits to indicate the year was real, but the idea that no one saw this coming or that they couldn't do anything about it was very silly.