Green beans, peas, soup, even food labeled "healthy" or "organic" are all some of the canned foods found to be contaminated with bisphenol A (BPA) in a report released today by the National Workgroup for Safe Markets, a coalition of U.S. public health and environmental health groups.

An FDA-certified lab tested 50 cans of food for the group. Cans were collected from across the U.S. and one Canadian province, and testing found nearly all canned food is contaminated with BPA at an average of 77 parts per billion (ppb). In contrast, in FDA's last canned food testing done in 1996 of just six samples of vegetables found an average of 16 ppb, nearly 5 times less than the average level of contamination being reported in this much larger sample.

I've blogged before about green beans being contaminated with BPA, after testing done by Consumer Reports. This testing confirms that some of the foods that we consider the most "healthy" in our diet are also the most contaminated with BPA. DelMonte French Style Green Beans, Great Value Sweet Peas, 365 and Healthy Valley brands of organic soup, and Healthy Choice chicken soups were some of the foods found to have the highest levels of BPA.

DelMonte green beans were the most contaminated, one can had a whoppping 1,140 ppb, though there was a lot of variation found both within brands and between different brands of food. The bottom line is that consumers can't avoid BPA by relying on a particular brand, type of food, price, quality, or nutritional value of canned food. This is a problem we need our government to solve!

The FDA has been slow to acknowledge the harm caused by BPA and has been reluctant to regulate the use of this chemical in food packaging. While they continue to conduct research and deliberate when there will be enough evidence to compel them to act, Americans continue to be exposed on a daily basis to this chemical which has been linked a wide array of harmful effects. And while it is great that some companies have voluntarily moved away from using BPA, we remain in the dark about what alternatives are being used and what their potential toxicity may be. The Natural Resources Defense Council is working on federal legislation that would ensure the safety of new replacement can linings before they are introduced onto the market.

The good news is that it is possible to eat your vegetables and have them be BPA-free. Previous tests of frozen food or food packaged in boxes or pouches have found much lower or non-detectable levels of BPA. Like previous studies, canned tomatos contained relatively low BPA levels - similar to those found in frozen food - which suggests it is possible to can food with little to no BPA contamination.

This study found higher levels of BPA than were found in previous studies, perhaps because they directly tested the food in the cans rather than the amount of BPA that leached from the lining. Obviously, this type of testing is more realistic of what the average person might ingest when eating canned food. In fact, the report found that an average woman consuming just a few meals prepared with canned food would ingest between 1-2 ppb per day, levels of exposure that have been associated with harm in laboratory animal studies.