Is BPA Banned in the US? What's Actually Lining Your Cans

Short answer: no. BPA is legal in American food packaging, with two narrow exceptions, and the FDA’s official position is that it’s safe at the levels found in food. Europe just banned it. Here’s the full picture, including where BPA still hides in American life and what “BPA-free” really buys you.

What BPA is and why it’s in food packaging

Bisphenol A is an industrial chemical used since the 1960s to make two things you touch constantly: polycarbonate, the hard clear plastic once standard in water bottles, and epoxy resins, the thin protective lacquer sprayed inside metal cans so your tomatoes don’t taste like tin. Tiny amounts migrate from packaging into food. That part isn’t controversial; the fight is over whether those tiny amounts matter.

BPA can act like a weak estrogen in the body. European food safety scientists concluded in 2023 that it affects the immune system at extraordinarily low doses and cut their safe-intake benchmark by a factor of roughly 20,000. The FDA, looking at largely the same evidence plus its own long-running CLARITY-BPA study, concluded current exposures are fine. Two serious agencies, same molecule, opposite conclusions. That disagreement is the whole story of this ingredient.

What the US actually restricts

The FDA has banned BPA in exactly two places: baby bottles and sippy cups (2012) and infant formula packaging (2013). Both bans came about because manufacturers had already stopped using it, and the FDA formalized the abandonment. Neither was a safety ruling.

Everything else remains authorized: can linings, jar lids, adhesives, bottle caps. A petition from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Endocrine Society, Consumer Reports, and other groups asked the FDA in January 2022 to revoke those approvals. Federal law gave the agency 180 days to answer. As of mid-2026, it hasn’t.

Some states have moved on their own. Washington became the first state to ban all bisphenols in receipt paper as of January 2026, and California’s Proposition 65 requires BPA warnings. But there’s no federal limit on BPA in food packaging.

Where you’ll still find BPA in the US

Canned food. The industry says more than 90 percent of US food cans now use BPA-free linings, mostly acrylic or polyester. That’s real progress, but it’s voluntary, unlabeled, and unevenly distributed; some imported and acidic canned goods still use epoxy. Brands that have verifiably moved away include Eden Foods, which switched its bean cans in 1999 and sells its tomatoes in glass, and Amy’s Kitchen, whose can linings avoid BPA, BPS, and BPF.

Receipts. Thermal paper is coated with bisphenols that transfer to skin. A 2023 Ecology Center study found bisphenols in 80 percent of US receipts tested, most of it BPS rather than BPA. The EU restricted BPA in receipts back in 2020. Declining the receipt is a legitimate exposure-reduction move.

Older reusables. Polycarbonate bottles and containers from before the mid-2010s, the hard clear kind, are likely BPA-based. Recycling code 7 is a hint, though not proof.

The “BPA-free” catch

BPA-free means one molecule is absent. Manufacturers commonly substitute bisphenol S or bisphenol F, close chemical relatives that early research suggests behave similarly in the body. Scientists call this regrettable substitution. It’s why Europe’s new rule was written to cover hazardous bisphenols as a class rather than BPA alone, and why Washington’s receipt law bans BPS too. In the US food supply, no rule prevents a BPA-free can from being a BPS can.

If you want to minimize all bisphenols rather than just BPA: favor glass, cartons, and fresh or frozen over cans when convenient; look for brands that name their can-lining chemistry; skip receipts you don’t need; and don’t microwave food in old hard plastic. That’s prudence, not panic. Dietary BPA exposure for most Americans is small, and the science on harm at those levels is genuinely disputed.

How the rest of the world compares

The EU’s ban on BPA in food contact materials became enforceable for most packaging on July 20, 2026, with canned fruit, vegetables, and fish getting until 2028. France got there in 2015. The UK planned to follow the EU and postponed indefinitely in May 2026 after industry lobbying. The US permits it federally, everywhere except baby products.

The verdict: Not banned in the US. Banned in the EU as of July 2026. The gap between “safe at current levels” and “20,000 times too much” is the widest disagreement between American and European regulators anywhere in the food supply, and your can of tomatoes sits right in the middle of it.