Cash Register Receipts Contain Chemical BPA

The next time your retail salesperson or grocery store cashier asks you if you want your receipt, think twice about your answer. It turns out cash register receipts that use thermal paper account for high levels of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) in humans, new research finds.

BPA is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as water bottles, dental composites and resins used to line metal food and beverage containers. It's also used in thermal paper cash register receipts. If you take your receipt without question, chances are you have traces of BPA - a chemical first used as an artificial estrogen supplement. And while reaching for the hand sanitizer may seem like a good idea, it actually will just make things worse.

Subjects studied showed a rapid increase of BPA in their blood after using a skin care product and then touching a store receipt with BPA.

"Store and fast food receipts, airline tickets, ATM receipts and other thermal papers all use massive amounts of BPA on the surface of the paper as a print developer," lead author Frederick vom Saal from the University of Missouri-Columbia said in a statement. "The problem is, we as consumers have hand sanitizers, hand creams, soaps and sunscreens on our hands that drastically alter the absorption rate of the BPA found on these receipts."

In the study, researchers had human subjects clean their hands with hand sanitizer and then touch thermal paper receipts. As an added step, those who had handled the thermal paper then ate French fries with their hands. The result was that BPA was absorbed very rapidly, according to vom Saal.

"Our research found that large amounts of BPA can be transferred to your hands and then to the food you hold and eat as well as be absorbed through your skin," he explained.

Given that BPA acts as a hormone, it can cause reproductive defects in fetuses, infants, children and adults as well as cancer, metabolic and immune problems in rodents. But given that BPA from thermal paper is absorbed more rapidly, it can cause diseases like diabetes and obesity, too.

The findings are described in the journal PLOS ONE.