On January 15, 2010, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shifted its position on the safety of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA), expressing for the first time some concern about safety, announcing further research, and providing tips for parents to minimize infants' exposure. As a result, competitive companies will be compelled to shift how they communicate about BPA and their search for innovative options to better align themselves with consumer concerns. Some companies could gain reputational benefits and free media attention from supporting proposed legislation restricting use of BPA.

Major users of BPA in the U.S. and Canada already have exited the market for polycarbonate baby bottles and cups containing BPA and others are pursuing strategies to reduce reliance on BPA for lining food containers. Replacing food can linings is technically tougher, because of the need to satisfy numerous food safety, durability, and other requirements.

BPA was studied as a possible estrogen therapy in the 1930s but was discarded in favor of other methods. In subsequent decades it grew in importance for plastics manufacture. Since the late 1990s a growing body of evidence has linked BPA to a broad array of health effects, particularly due to exposures to low doses of BPA during critical windows of development.

In 2008, two market-shaking events occurred. Health Canada, Canada's overseer of food, drug, and product safety, announced in April that it intended to ban the import, sale and advertising of polycarbonate baby bottles containing BPA because of concerns about the health impact of low dose exposure. In September 2008, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) stated in its final report on the developmental effects of BPA exposure that it had "some concern" for effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and children at current levels of human exposure. These two announcements effectively shut down the market for polycarbonate baby bottles in the U.S., as major retailers renounced their sale and as bottle manufacturers shifted to alternatives.

There was a similar movement away from polycarbonate sport bottles, such as those sold by Nalgene and Camelbak. As detailed in an Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) report, the winners in the marketplace were those who saw the science changing and were prepared to make a shift. Whole Foods Market had made the move two years earlier, having become aware of the accumulating science and having been further encouraged to act by a shareholder resolution.

In 2009, BPA action moved forward on the scientific, political, and market fronts. More new scientific studies were published, with independent academic studies raising continuing concerns while some large scientific studies funded by industry dismissed them. Questions were raised as to whether industry lobbyists had inappropriate behind the scenes access to FDA staff and whether FDA staff was giving undue weight to industry studies as they assessed whether FDA's existing standard for BPA was sufficiently protective. European policies remained unchanged. Also in 2009, using funds from the economic stimulus package, NIEHS, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, awarded $30 million in research grants to further refine scientific understanding of the routes of exposure to and the health effects of BPA.