可口可乐环保瓶（饮料瓶里的有害物质BPA终于能被去掉了）

2019.11.29

周五 Friday

endocrine

['endə(ʊ) krɪn]

adj. 内分泌的

图片来源：视觉中国

自20世纪80年代起，食品和饮料容器中的双酚A（BPA）就引起了科学家和非政府组织的关注。

Scientists and NGOs have been raising concerns since the 1980s over the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in food and drink containers.

这种用于制造聚碳酸酯塑料瓶和食品储存容器的工业化学品，以及罐头食品中的环氧树脂衬里与内分泌疾病有关。

The industrial chemical, used to make polycarbonate plastic bottles and food storage containers, along with the epoxy resin linings in canned goods, has been associated with endocrine disorders.

在过去的10年里监管机构已经做出了回应：2012年FDA（美国食品药物管理局）禁止在婴儿奶瓶和儿童水杯中添加这种化合物，而且到2018年90%的钢制食品罐头都不含这种成分。

Regulators have responded over the past decade: The FDA banned the compound from baby bottles and children’s drinking cups in 2012, and by 2018, 90% of steel food cans were being manufactured without it.

但饮料行业一直难以去除铝罐中的这种化学物质，因为很难找到一种能同时有效地阻止钢和铝腐蚀的替代涂层。（由于生产需求，罐头行业需要一种对两者都适用的化合物。)

But the beverage industry has struggled to get the chemical out of aluminum cans, stymied by the difficulty of finding an alternative coating that stops the corrosion of both steel and aluminum effectively. (Due to manufacturing requirements, the can industry needs a compound that works for both.)

与此同时，由于消费者希望减少对环境的影响而避免使用塑料瓶，因此对金属罐的需求正在上升。毕竟金属食品包装可以回收无数次。

Meanwhile, demand for metal cans is rising as consumers look to decrease their environmental impact by avoiding plastic. Metal food packaging can be recycled an infinite number of times.

受食品公司和客户需求的推动，涂层解决方案公司威士伯（Valspar）从零开始，用了10年时间开发了一种名为valPure V70的新型环氧树脂，它可以在不影响内分泌活动的情况下防止腐蚀。2017年威士伯公司被制造业巨头宣伟（Sherwin-Williams）收购。

Driven by demand from food corporations and customers, coating-solutions company Valspar—part of manufacturing giant Sherwin-Williams since 2017—has spent 10 years developing a new epoxy from scratch, called valPure V70, which staves off corrosion without affecting endocrine activity.

该公司积极与领先的非政府组织、科学家及消费者健康安全组织（包括自然资源保护委员会、公共利益科学中心以及更安全的化学品，健康之家组织）合作，以确保其涂层满足他们的安全性要求，而这可能是工业涂料行业的首次尝试。

In perhaps a first for the industrial coating industry, the company worked proactively with leading NGOs, scientists, and consumer health and safety groups—including the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Center for Science in the Public Interest; and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families—to ensure that the coating satisfied their safety requirements.

“威士伯付出了令人难以置信的努力来证明他们的化合物不是雌激素类化合物，”卡内基·梅隆大学绿色科学研究所化学主任特伦斯·科林斯说道，该大学参与了valPure V70的测试。

“Valspar went to incredible lengths to show that their compound was not estrogenic,” says Terrence Collins, chemistry director of the Institute for Green Science at Car­negie Mellon University, which was involved in testing valPure V70.

但他也提醒道，要想知道除此之外它是否是安全的，“我们还需要看看它在进一步测试中的表现”。

But he sounds a note of caution. To know whether it’s safe beyond that, “we will need to see how it performs” on further testing.

然而，饮料业立马开始使用valPure V70。虽然根据合同条款，宣伟不能透露它与哪些食品饮料品牌合作，但该公司表示，市面上已经有数十亿个贴有valPure V70涂层的易拉罐，特别是加州市场（在加州，含有BPA内衬的易拉罐上必须有健康警告）。

The beverage industry, however, has wasted no time in embracing valPure V70. Though it can’t contractually divulge which food and beverage brands it works with, Sherwin-Williams says that billions of cans coated with valPure V70 are already on the market, especially in California (where cans that contain BPA liners must carry a health warning).

该产品的推出表明，即便是最稳健的行业也能从采纳消费者反馈意见中受益。

The rollout is proof that even the most stalwart industries can benefit from embracing consumer feedback.

完

参考资料：

https://www.fastcompany.com/90411190/we-got-bpa-out-of-plastic-bottles-soda-cans-are-next

编辑：梅园西墙的王半仙

翻译：李然

,