IB Chemistry HL IA 7점

Modeling of How Much Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) Required for Hydrolysis Degradation of Bisphenol A (BPA) Leaching Out from Plastic Goods in Human Body

1. Research Question

To what extent does the increasing concentration of Bisphenol A (BPA) from 0.01M to 0.05M at 0.01 intervals affect the concentration of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) needed to neutralize during the back titration?

2. Background Information

Bisphenol A, C15H16O2, is a ubiquitous raw material employed in polycarbonate and resin industries to make certain plastic products. Despite its usefulness, many people are likely to seek for BPA-free products as long-term exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) can have serious consequences to human health such as being a potential endocrine disruptor (Rubin, 2011). The intake of BPA is indirect – that is to say, BPA susceptible to high temperature (100°C or above) may leach into hot foods or drinks that people normally consume from plastic goods. One study suggested BPA migration will be increased up to 55% in boiling water (Le, 2008). From here, I developed my investigation to figure out how much BPA would leach out from different types of commercial plastic goods in boiling water and then to examine whether further use of them is acceptable or not. As a pilot experiment, plastic water bottles, plastic wrap, plastic bag, plastic dish, and plastic cutlery were all put into boiling water and conducted ferric chloride test to inspect the presence of phenols by color change. Intriguingly, any of samples for three trials did not express any changes at all, coming into a conclusion that BPA input to create plastic goods may be inconsiderable in nowadays. With this finding, I went for another perspective of any chemical reaction involving BPA that have already accumulated in our human body and found out hydrolysis degradation of BPA with sodium hydroxide (NaOH). We often ingest sodium hydroxide through food additives or in the form of ‘lye water’ that is very diluted. Specifically, the intake of chocolates, pretzels, ramen noodles can increase the consumption of NaOH. In order to produce traditional ramen noodles, the NaOH is a key ingredient that increases pH of the dough (Chakravarty, 2016)…