Printed receipt from ATM or Kirana store can be fatal: Report

HIGHLIGHTS
Do you often handle shopping receipts while buying groceries from stores or withdrawing money from ATMs?
Beware, receipts carry an under-recognized source of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our bodies.
This information has been revealed in a report. According to the Ecology Center, an American non-profit working for environmental health.

Do you often handle shopping receipts while buying groceries from stores or withdrawing money from ATMs? Beware, receipts carry an under-recognized source of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our bodies. This information has been revealed in a report. According to the Ecology Center, an American non-profit working for environmental health, receipt papers contain high concentrations of bisphenols, particularly bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol S (BPS) linked to reproductive harm. .

For their report, they examined 374 receipts from 144 major chain stores in 22 US states and the District of Columbia. The most common were grocery stores, restaurants, department stores, drug stores, gas stations, and more. They found that about 80 percent of the receipts had the presence of bisphenols (BPS or BPA). Receipts are a common exposure route to hormone-disrupting bisphenols that are readily absorbed through the skin, Melissa Cooper Sargent, an environmental health advocate at the Ecology Center of Michigan, said in a statement. Our studies show that most retailers use bisphenol-coated (coated) receipt paper. That said, switching to non-toxic paper is an easy change. We urge retailers to stop providing chemical-laden paper to their consumers and not put employees at risk.

The report also showed safer chemical alternatives, such as BPS, in 20 percent of receipts. However, the researchers noted that BPS is marketed as a safer replacement for BPA, both of which are endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to health issues including cancer. The report said that apart from consumers, people working at these stores may be at higher risk. The report calls on retailers to remove bisphenols from receipt paper and stop printing receipts altogether, and offer digital receipt options to their customers and employees.