A Toxic Receipt?
Written by Evan SchumanWith all of the business reasons retailers should be moving away from dead-tree receipts, the Environmental Working Group is offering yet another: Huge amounts of the carcinogen BPA were found on 40 percent of the receipts collected from “supermarkets, automated teller machines, gas stations and chain stores.”
This study gave particular notice to Safeway supermarkets, which, according to this story in The Washington Post, “contained the highest concentration of BPA. A receipt taken from a store in the District contained 41 milligrams of the chemical. If the equivalent amount of BPA was ingested by a 155-pound adult, that would exceed EPA’s decades-old safe exposure limit for BPA by 12 times.” BPA is not the only health hazard posed by printed receipts. An earlier study found they trigger asthma attacks. Mobile receipts, anyone?
-Marc
July 30th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
I often refer to electronic cardholder data stored on retailers’ systems as “toxic waste.”
Golly, I didn’t realize how right I was, nor how it included their paper receipts, too!