[pct-l] Love your nalgene bottle, think again

[Brick Robbins]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 8:06 AM, David Stewart
<davidalexanderstewart at gmail.com> wrote:
> that goes for gatorade bottles as well....in fact, an engineer friend of
>  mine told me about how gatorade bottles are even worse than nalgene, because
>  they are not meant to be re-filled....

First off, none of these plastics are very toxic in an overt way,
otherwise, there wouldn't be any controversy.

The biggest problem is the way they effect young children. The
chemicals mimic estrogen, and can cause developmental problems in
children and fetuses.

And it is not just water bottles. Several years ago, there was a scare
about metal from cans (toxins) getting into the food, so to protect
our health, they started lining the inside of the cans with plastic.
That plastic contains Bisphenol-A. Since some canned food is
pasteurized AFTER it is canned, and heat promotes leaching, this may
be the biggest problem.

There are several different plastics that watter bottles are made
from, and two major suspect chemicals

The two chemicals are bisphenol-a and pthylates. You find bishphenol-a
in Polycarbonate bottles  ( recycle #7 like nalgene and sparklets 5gal
bottles.) Pthylates are found in the PETE (recycle #1) bottles, like
the common evian water bottles.

PollyPropylene (PP - recycle #5) and Low-density polyethylene (LDPE
recycle #4) are both supposed to be Bisphenol-A and Pthylate free.
Most "bicycle bottles" are LDPE. In addition PolyPro is supposed to
have the lowest environmental impact too.

That being said, the 3 things that seem to cause the most leaching are
1)Heat - so don't wash them in the dish wasther, or leave in the sun
2)Cracking or scratching, don't drop or abrade them
3)Time - don't let your water sit in them for a long time.

HYOH, YMMV.