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Comment by echoangle | Hacker News Reader

Is there any way to verify that without getting a Lab to do an analysis? I'm not sure if I can trust stuff labelled BPA-Free from Amazon for example.

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Even if they are, that doesn't mean they're safer

https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/are-bpa-substitutes-any-s...

That study looked at 6 similar plasticizers.

The alternative chemicals for thermal paper are totally different. That's not to say that they are guaranteed safe, but that study is inapplicable.

E.g. one type of paper claims to use Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C). No idea what else is in it of course, but it's not a BGA-analogue plasticizer.

> E.g. one type of paper claims to use Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C). No idea what else is in it of course, but it's not a BGA-analogue plasticizer.

How would you know it doesn't, if you don't know what's in it?

Regardless, my point is that many BPA-analogue containing products advertise their BPA-free status.

My comment was that BPA is not used in thermal paper as a plasticizer, which that linked study was examining.

Yes, it's a used as a developer, but as is common in many cases when replacing chemicals with other chemicals -- similar chemicals have similar properties. And in fact, some BPA-free thermal paper use BPS for example.

Buy from a reputable seller for anything important, instead of amazon.

Or, there are apparently at-home testing chemicals that look simple to use. I haven't done it myself though.

The question is who is reputable. Even when buying from a well known store, I don’t know how they audit their suppliers, because the paper is bound to be made by some company I’ve never heard of.

Yeah I would assume that given how easy it is to start a new Amazon seller account and how impossible it is for some random seller in China to face legal repercussions from the US, the likelihood of finding an “_____-free” item to actually be made of whatever the cheapest and most readily available formulation is. (Including the _____), is pretty high.

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