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Keeping your receipts may make good financial sense, but it can seriously harm your health.
If you are like me, you hesitate at the checkout counter whenever the cashier asks you “would you like your receipt”? If your inner accountant is alive and well, you will find yourself wanting to keep it, which means touch it. But on the other hand, if you are already aware of the information in this article, the idea of handling a bisphenol A saturated thermal printer receipt without gloves makes as much sense as handling gasoline or paint thinner without protection.
And if you are really “neurotic” like me, you may find yourself thinking about the health of the cashier, who undoubtedly has been handling receipts all shift long, and will continue to be exposed — often unwittingly — to a significant dose of bisphenol A throughout the course of their employment. This is why I cringe doubly when I refuse a receipt, because I realize that the cashier has no idea why I would do so, nor that they have suffered a harmful chemical exposure in the very act of offering the receipt to me.
All this might sound overly cautious if it had not already been proven that exposure to thermal printer receipts is one of the primary routes through which our bodies become contaminated with the toxic synthetic chemical known as bisphenol A (BPA), a potent endocrine disruptor, carcinogen, and neurotoxic and cardiotoxic chemical, linked to over 50 adverse health effects. BPA is also found in airline tickets, gas and ATM receipts, and paper currency absorbs the BPA contained within these receipts, making daily exposure even more likely.