this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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UPDATE: The article has now linked to the newly published study. It claims a maximum concentration of bisphenols of 351mg/kg, above the 10mg/kg limit proposed by ECHA, but they don't give any concrete numbers on how likely any of those bisphenols are to actually leech from the product into your body. The average sum of all bisphenols/sample was just 15. They note the parts not touching the skin often had more bisphenols than the parts actually touching the skin, with about 50% more of those areas than the non-skin-contacting ones being put in their "green" category, meaning it's fairly in compliance with most protective standards.
Of the parts touching the skin, 68% were green, 21% yellow, and 11% red.
And onto flame retardants, 100% of products with HFRs were green, and 84% with OPFRs were green.
For pthalates, 87% were green, and less than 1% were red.
Essentially, the TLDR is that most of the things they tested either met most standards, were very close to meeting them, or technically didn't meet standards but mostly just in areas that didn't even come in contact with the skin at all. AKA, it's mostly overblown.
Original Post:
No source linked by the article, no visible press releases that don't just pretend to be a real press release while citing the articles, no official blog posts, and the only official sounding mention of this that comes from a more direct source is a coalition on linkedin saying a person at a sub-group of the broader project was gonna talk with them about it.
No stats, no numbers, just "they found it" in the headphones.
You could find a chemical well under the safe limit in drinking water, and say "we found x in your water" and make a big scare of it when it's not a big deal.
While I have no doubt BPA and its counterparts could be used in manufacturing of headphones, without any actual data, this is literally no better than when your uncle at Thanksgiving starts yapping about how the government found some data one time and that means you should never drink tap water again.