Normally, I wouldn’t raise the red flag on alarmist, hypersafe parenting, but in the case of baby bottles I am choosing to do so. On the logic that infants come into contact with them every 90 minutes or so, and suck on them, vigorously at times, it seems like a valid precaution. I was recently forwarded a post on the Baby Bargains Book Blog, rescinding their recommendation of Avent and Dr. Brown’s bottles made of polycarbonate plastic (the very clear, glass-like, hard plastic). A better reference is the L.A Times discussing the presence and potential hazards of bisphenol-A in polycarbonate plastics as found by a group of scientists and doctors.  Some correlation of this compound to significant health risks, with greatest risk for infants and newborns, was indicated by their experiments.
The group has issued the warning that these types of plastics may be hazardous, particularly when exposure happens in early life.  Well, the jury is still out on this, Europe and Japan have decided that the findings are “inconclusive” and have not suggested any restrictions.  The FDA and other regulatory folks will proceed to opine on this in weeks (months) to come.
The two major brands of baby feeders that are impacted are Avent Natural and Dr. Brown.  My thinking is this: With these bottles used so frequently for such a short period of time, we’ll just change until the end of the year when the kid is onto the sippy cups made of good ol’ colored, opaque, farm fresh, homemade, plastic.
We used Avent bottles through Zubin’s infancy and have been using them for Yash as well. In order to leverage the infrastructure we have in place already our plan is to switch to the disposable “drop-ins” for the remaining bottle feeding period. Seems like a good strategy for those with the Avent system in place already.