While not exhaustive, the data represent a wide range of major retail stores visited by people in their daily lives. states and Washington, D.C., with the majority from southeast Michigan. Contributors were instructed to fold receipts with the printed side in to avoid transferring chemicals from one receipt to another. Volunteers collected cash register receipts from January to November of 2022. We used a rapid screening technique to identify the developer chemicals, including BPS, BPA, and non-bisphenol alternatives present on the receipts. The “developer” layer is the target of this study. Nearly all receipts are made from thermal paper, which is coated with layers of chemicals that allow an image to form when a special print head applies heat. Also, California’s Assembly Member Phil Ting has proposed legislation to prohibit bisphenols in receipts and to require stores to allow customers to choose a no-receipt option. As of early 2023, the state of Washington’s Department of Ecology has proposed to prohibit the use of bisphenols as a class in receipts and would be the first state in the country to do so. We emphasize that the best solution is for businesses to reduce printing receipts in the first place by offering no receipt and digital receipt options. We also found that BPA-based receipts have been almost entirely replaced by BPS. We found bisphenol (BPS or BPA) receipt usage among these companies decreased from 93% in 2017 to 80% in 2022 and the use of non-bisphenol alternatives increased from 2% to 20%. The most common were grocery stores, restaurants, and big box stores. We tested 374 receipts from 144 major chain stores in 22 U.S. Bisphenols, particularly bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol S (BPS), are chemicals linked to reproductive harm that are present in high concentrations when used in receipt paper. In 2022, we followed up on an earlier study we published in 2018, More Than You Bargained For, to assess retailers’ progress in eliminating receipts containing bisphenols. Purchase receipts are an underrecognized source of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our bodies–especially for workers who frequently handle receipts.
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