Hazards of Hydration

Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club

Choose your plastic water bottles carefully -- Clear, lightweight, and sturdy polycarbonate plastic bottles are standard equipment for millions of hikers and babies. (They are usually labeled #7 on the bottom; Nalgene is the best-known producer.) Since polycarbonate bottles don’t impart a taste to fluids, many users assume they are safer than bottles made out of other kinds of plastic. But now an accidental discovery has cast doubt on their safety.

"We just stumbled into this," says Hunt, "but we have been stunned by what we have seen."

Most at risk, says Colborn, are people with developing endocrine systems: pregnant women and newborns, followed by young children, and women who might get pregnant.

Link: November/December 2003 - Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club.

Comments

[Kristin]

I was saddened by your lack of research in terms of polycarbonate. You site one article, saying that it is unsafe, but in fact if you did extensive research you would find research deaming it very safe and some research raising some small question about its safety after overly extensive exposure (an adult would have to intake 1300 lbs. daily for a lifetime to come into contact with the level deamed unsafe, which is 4000 times lower than the FDA standard). I feel that you are not presenting all of the facts truthfully to your consumers. The US EPA, US FDA and US CDC has approved polycarbonate as safe for use. Before you take a stance and raise a consumer's alarm by deaming a material unsafe...you should do some of your own research instead of reading and posting one article. You are being misleading to consumers.