Water bottles and BPA scares

This isn’t necessarily political, but I had to post something about this phenomenon of people being afraid of using (or re-using) plastic water bottles. I’ve always kind of rejected the idea that using a water bottle 4-5 times before you put it in the recycling bin is dangerous for me. Didn’t this chemical that was supposedly released need a stimulus like heat? Was it just old bottles with the problem?

Well, this stuff is very confusing and especially when filtered through your circle of friends, so I’ve sought out every article I could find… and now understand why people are confused. There is a lot of contradictory “studies” out there… but let me put out a few consistencies that you can count on:

1) the BPA chemical might be released at room temperature, but the real danger is with boiling water being put into them. That’s when it’s “potentially” dangerous. (note they don’t know if it’s actually dangerous)

2) supposedly non-disposable bottles like Nalgene makes are also susceptible to this. Damn!

3) the age of the bottle doesn’t seem to matter. Just the heat of the liquid.

Here’s a goodScience Daily article that got me started on this quest.

Here’s the wikipedia article and a quote from it:

Bisphenol A has been known to leach from the plastic lining of canned foods and, to a lesser degree, polycarbonate plastics that are cleaned with harsh detergents or used to contain acidic or high-temperature liquids

And even though this must be taken with a grain of salt, bisphenol-a.org (which is run by the chemical industry) says that polycarbonate bottles are perfectly safe… and while I’m inclined to believe them and that these reports of late are mostly scare stories, my big question is: “Are these safe levels set by the government really safe?”.

Here’s the article on their site I read and their conclusion:

A complete review of the scientific data, as has been conducted by government and scientific bodies worldwide, reveals that polycarbonate bottles are safe for use and that migration levels of bisphenol A from polycarbonate plastic under real-life conditions are well within science-based safety limits.