Saturday, December 19, 2009

Are Your Eco Friendly Water Bottles Safe To Use?

By Markus Smith

Whats the first thing you do when you are out of home and thirsty? Certainly you relent from drinking water from unknown sources. You don't want the unnecessary elements and bacteria to ruin your body. So what do you do? More often than not, you go to the nearest convenience store and pick a bottled water can and you consume the liquid down your throat, with the assurance that this will be the safest form of water that your body deserves. Well, unknowingly you might have now consumed much worse an ingredient than bacteria, and are contentedly oblivious of the consequences. Once you have emptied the bottle, you commit another error again in your ignorance. You chuck it into a garbage bin as a responsible citizen; however you have now harmed the environment as well. How so?

It is quite possible that the water that just imbibed was sitting in a bottle that leeched BPA or Bisphenol A. You are still shaking your head in disbelief, thinking of this as a bad joke. Moreover, almost everyone drinks bottled water and the bottles are so hygienic and clean. You are still counting on the numerous benefits these bottles offer. But then have you considered at what cost are you deriving these benefits?

Okay here are the hard facts if you want to know. That clean, transparent, innocuous looking bottle you have in your hand is made from a kind of plastic termed Bisphenol A or abbreviated to just BPA. It belongs to the family of polycarbonate, organic in nature. BPA is a combination of many important plastics and additives. It disrupts the function of the endocrine glands that provides us with hormones to effectively fulfill many of our bodily functions. It is a double agent. It mimics the hormones by passing off as the real thing. Even the prestigious Society of Endocrinology fears the ill effects caused by BPA in our system, as we get more and more exposed to it.

Added to this is the harm done to the environment when these non BPA free plastic water bottles are disposed off. The organic plastic is broken down easily releasing lethal doses of chemical particles into the soil where it lies low waiting for a chance to invade our bodies. And the effects of such plastics can be universal; plastics in general are derivatives of petroleum, a non-renewable source of energy. Oil is imported at tremendous costs and causes its own problems in the fields of international security, energy, health and environment.

Nevertheless one cannot survive without consuming water. And is there a solution to the plastic dilemma? In fact there is a solution in the form of stainless steel canteens which are made from food grade stainless steel, do not leech any chemicals, and are very durable and most importantly reusable. You can keep using the same container again and again, without having to worry about the quality of the contents you consume while at the same time providing the environment the much needed relief, since even a discarded stainless steel water bottle can be recycled. So its a win-win situation for all involved, you and Mother Nature.

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