There's a lot in the subject to get your head round.

I'm fed up of acronyms, so I'm going to refer to bisphenol, and you can presume I'm talking about bisphenol A.

I don't think "the acidity of the tomatoes" would encourage the bisphenol to leach out. If they were alkaline, that would encourage the bisphenol to leach out.

I do not have a valid opinion on the subject, and frankly, I doubt if anyone does.

Analytical science is advancing, and people are finding new techniques for precise and accurate evaluation of low level contaminants in lots of situations every day.

Legislation, on the other hand, is slow and ponderous - it cannot keep up with those advances, and the people "making the laws" are not equipped to make effective judgements.

I've sat and watched over the years those situations where the legislators have said "this is bad", and the manufacturers have said "what else can we use that they haven't researched?", "what will keep us in business?".

Remember the noise about freon refrigerants affecting the ozone layer? The alternatives used are mostly just as bad, but not legislated against.

They got it right a couple of times with timber treatment chemicals, so the treatments used now are less harmful than they had been - but the places they sorted out in the meantime? Nobody talks about that.

Paints with harmful solvents? You hardly encounter them now - you just buy paint that doesn't stick to whatever you paint with it, it flakes off a lot easier than the old stuff.

Pitchblende is a Uranium ore. There's a lot of it under Cornwall, England. At one time it was fashionable to decorate pottery with a glaze called Uranium Orange. The extracted ore spoil was also sold as fertiliser, and ploughed into agricultural land.

If you live in Cornwall, your house is monitored for radon (a radioactive gas), and some homes are deemed unsuitable for children to live in, if the radon level is high. Nobody is mining the uranium ...

There is a lot we have to learn about. When I was younger I lived on the philosophy "If you can see something is harmful, do something about it".

As I grow older, I am getting more worried about things that are controlled, because they can be seen to be harmful, as opposed to things that have not been fully evaluated, so they cannot be easily legislated against. I see a lot of things that were useful being abolished because of hypothetical concerns, and things that should be stopped left to go on because there is insufficient evidence to stop them.

I read that too. The article suggested tomatoes in glass jars as an alternative, but I don't recall seeing those anywhere.

Well I wouldn't dare to refute anything Kyplos wrote :), and I too would have to admit to being no expert, but I would like to add a couple of small points.

I never buy tinned goods that look bashed, tomatoes included. I think the problems occur when the surface of the metal can becomes damaged and particularly once this is then allowed to oxidise in air. So avoid cans with dents and other obvious damage.

The second, related point, is that you should never store food in opened cans. So if you don't finish your can of tomatoes, sweetcorn,peaches, whatever, transfer the remainder into an alternative container. This is quite obvious really as the metal taste taints the food, and this must mean something 'extra' is going into the food. Again, I 'believe' (from vague memories of Chemistry lessons at school) that is it to do with oxidising of the metal.