The poison lurking in your plastic water bottle

The poison lurking in your plastic water bottle

A Potentially deadly toxin is being absorbed into bottled mineral water from their plastic containers. And the longer the water is stored, the levels of poison increase, research reveals. As the sell-by date on many bottled waters is up to two years, scientists have now called for extensive further studies.
The research by world expert Dr William Shotyk - who has vowed never to drink bottled water again - will be published in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal next month. It is sure to revive concerns about the safety of bottled water, the world's fastest-growing drinks industry, worth £1.2billion a year.

The tests found traces of antimony, a chemical used in the making of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, used by most mineral-water sellers.

Small doses of antimony can make you feel ill and depressed. Larger quantities can cause violent vomiting and even death. The study stressed that amounts of antimony were well below official recommended levels. But it also discovered that the levels almost doubled when the bottles were stored for three months.

More...if you can stomach it...

Great.... We already know our tap water is compromised... Now the stupid, expensive, environmentally destructive alternative will kill you too...

I suppose we should just give up drinking altogether, huh? ...oh, I forgot, that will kill you too...

Don't you just love those NO win-win situations?

:shk:

They've only just found this out?

It should of been tested a long while ago no???

Antimony naturally occurs in the human body. Also, we keep chemicals in our teaching labs in bottles of the same material at my medical school. We do quality control checks every two weeks and never find any contamination. Until I see actual research instead of just promises of such research, I'm going to have to call this as a researcher looking to get his name out there with exaggerated research.

~MFP

oh wow... thats not good...

I usually chew on plastic pen caps, or the little plastic rings around soda bottle caps. Guess i should stop doing that huh

This is very old news.

Scientists at Los Alamos (?) discovered leaching and contamination problems years ago - experiments were ruined by contaminants leaching from plastic bottles - so they developed the blue plastic bottles to deal with it.


It was common info in New Mexico back when...

this is just another example of how us humans cannot do anything in life without it somehow harming you. it seems every day in the news there is a story about how this and that will make you sick or kill you.

p.s. could there be antimony in plastic sex toys?

Originally posted by bsl4doc
Until I see actual research instead of just promises of such research, I'm going to have to call this as a researcher looking to get his name out there with exaggerated research.

A bit smug, aren't we? Where did you get "promise" of such research? Are you suggesting that he just postulated the problem without testing?

While I agree, these findings should be confirmed, I think it odd and specious, without foundation, to begin with doubt that ascribes his findings to personal gain.

Why don't you ask him directly about his research?

He can be contacted here:

Prof. Dr. William Shotyk
Institute of Environmental Geochemistry
University of Heidelberg
INF 236, D-69120
tel (06221) 54 4803
fax (06221) 54 5228
Email: [email protected]

Source.

[edit on 13-3-2006 by loam]

Originally posted by bsl4doc
Antimony naturally occurs in the human body.

And what is this misleading statement???

Antimony & compounds fact sheet

Heavy Metals

The most common source of antimony in drinking-water appears to be dissolution from metal plumbing and fittings. The form of antimony in drinking-water is a key determinant of its toxicity, and it would appear that antimony leached from antimony-containing materials would be in the form of the antimony(V) oxo-anion, which is the less toxic form. It is therefore critical that the study selected for guideline derivation be a drinking-water study.

www.who.int...

Also, small amounts of antimony in the body have been shown to stimulate metabolism, supposedly to help removal of antimony. Thus, it occurs naturally in the human body because there is a specific method of removal. I never said it was beneficial to the human body. Just that we have obviously been in contact with it long enough to adapt to it to an extent.

~MFP

Originally posted by bsl4doc
I never said it was beneficial to the human body. Just that we have obviously been in contact with it long enough to adapt to it to an extent.

BIG difference, don't you think?

And your comments regarding Shotyk's research?

Aside from this new info about antimony, dioxin is well known to leach from plastic into water.

Maybe the real problem lies with the formation of unanticipated compounds or interactome-type reactions between the macromolecules...


Related interest, last post here.

The only real solution is to drink distilled water. There are plenty of water distillers for sale.

Ok this really does make me worried...

I used a big 3 litre plastic bottle for work for like a year, filled it with water everyday and drank from it.

Oh oh....

- Nazgarn

22 March 2006 � The South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has patented a coating technology to improve the barrier properties of PET bottles.

The Oxyplete technology � which is based on a double-layered external coating system � can be successfully applied to PET as well as polypropylene packaging. It is expected to extend the shelf life of the more oxygen-sensitive beverage products such as juices, teas and flavoured water.

CSIR noted that while polymers such as PET have the best gas barrier properties of all standard polymers, and is a popular packaging format for soft drinks, it has insufficient barrier properties for many demanding food and beverage applications.

CSIR claims that Oxyplete performs better than any other passive barriers currently available and has a 30-times better gas barrier than normal PET. It is also suitable for demanding applications such as hot or cold filling for beer and baby food packaging.
source

No real need to click the link, I posted the whole article as its so short. I still think this is a lot of fuss over nothing much at all. More to do with corporate 'back watching' over fear of litigation, than any real health concerns

Originally posted by loam

Originally posted by bsl4doc
I never said it was beneficial to the human body. Just that we have obviously been in contact with it long enough to adapt to it to an extent.

And your comments regarding Shotyk's research?

This is what he meant by promised.

The research by "world expert" Dr William Shotyk - who has vowed never to drink bottled water again - will be published in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal next month.

Bold,italic, and quotation added by me.

[edit on 22-3-2006 by sardion2000]

Contamination of Canadian and European bottled waters with antimony from PET containers

Using clean lab methods and protocols developed for measuring Sb in polar snow and ice, we report the abundance of Sb in fifteen brands of bottled water from Canada and forty-eight from Europe. Comparison with the natural abundance of Sb in pristine groundwaters, water bottled commercially in polypropylene, analyses of source waters prior to bottling, and addition of uncontaminated groundwater to PET bottles, provides unambiguous evidence of Sb leaching from the containers. In contrast to the pristine groundwater in Ontario, Canada containing 2.2 ± 1.2 ng l–1 Sb, 12 brands of bottled natural waters from Canada contained 156 ± 86 ng l–1 and 3 brands of deionized water contained 162 ± 30 ng l–1; all of these were bottled in PET containers. Natural water from Ontario bottled in polypropylene contained only 8.2 ± 0.9 ng l–1. Comparison of three German brands of water available in both glass bottles and PET containers showed that waters bottled in PET contained up to 30 times more Sb. To confirm that the elevated Sb concentrations are due to leaching from the PET containers, water was collected in acid-cleaned LDPE bottles from a commercial source in Germany, prior to bottling; this water was found to contain 3.8 ± 0.9 ng l–1 Sb (n = 5), compared with the same brand of water purchased locally in PET bottles containing 359 ± 54 ng l–1 (n = 6). This same brand of water in PET bottles, after an additional three months of storage at room temperature, yielded 626 ± 15 ng l–1 Sb (n = 3). Other German brands of water in PET bottles contained 253–546 ng l–1 Sb (n = 5). The median concentration of Sb in thirty-five brands of water bottled in PET from eleven other European countries was 343 ng l–1 (n = 35). As an independent check of the hypothesis that Sb is leaching from PET, the pristine groundwater from Canada (containing 2.2 ± 1.2 ng l–1 Sb) was collected from the source using PET bottles from Germany: this water contained 50 ± 17 ng l–1 Sb (n = 2) after only 37 days, even though it was stored in the refrigerator, and 566 ng l–1 after six months storage at room temperature.

I find this very interesting. While looking into the recommended maximum dosage of antimony, I came across this web site that had a few eye opening statements regarding the FDA's regulation of bottled water.

While there is regulation, it appears that many bottled waters do not fall under the FDA's standards for safe levels of antimony.

GAPING HOLES IN GOVERNMENT BOTTLED WATER REGULATION

If the product is declared on the bottle ingredient label simply as "water," or as "carbonated water," "disinfected water," "filtered water," "seltzer water," "soda water," "sparkling water," or "tonic water," it is not considered "bottled water" by FDA. [121] FDA says it exempted these waters because they are "not understood by the public to be bottled water." [122] What is covered by FDA's rules? FDA says it regulates products labeled as "spring water," "mineral water," "drinking water," "bottled water," "purified water," "distilled water," and a few other specific categories of bottled water...

EDIT: Correct hyperlink tag


[edit on 3/28/2006 by DCFusion]

I'm not affiliated with the company in anyway but, there is a company in colorado called BIOTA that packages their spring water in corn based bio-degradable plastic bottles.

Evidently the bottles can be burned and release no toxic fumes and can in fact be added to your composte heap where they break down within ninety days.

If this whole toxic leaching thing turns out to be true it could be a boost to biodegradable plastics.

Here's a link:

www.biotaspringwater.com...

Spiderj

GREAT stuff DCfusion, spiderj - and loam of course.

Thank you. ...Amazing that bottled water is not considered bottled water, legally. And great news about biodegradeable plastic.

what about boiling the tap water? also i heard that you should never put hot things into plastics. thats when the toxins are released...is this true?