Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Dangers of Bottled Water


Your body is made up of 80 percent water and you can only live a few days without this precious, life-giving substance. Most of us are dehydrated and not even aware of the body's many cries for water. But the quality, and hence the source of our water is vitally important for maintaining optimal health.

Recently, alot of dirt has been dug up about the bottled water industry, that in some cases it's been shown to be really only tap water, how environmentally unfriendly it is, and how bad water stored in plastic can be for our health. So lets look a little closer at the dangers of bottled water.

Environmental Impacts

Australians spend more than half a billion dollars a year on bottled water, producing and delivering just one litre of this water can emit hundreds of times more greenhouse gases than a litre of tap water. In many cases, a litre of bottled water is more expensive than a litre of petrol.

Australia recycles only 36% of PET plastic drink bottles. Assuming the 582.9 million litres of bottled water produced in 2009-10 is in litre bottles, according to these figures, 373 million of those bottles will end up as waste, add to that the 15,253.79 tonnes of PET that was used in the packaging of this bottled water in 2009-10, and you'll soon realise that this is an environmental nightmare!

Approximately 52.5 million litres of oil was used in 2009-10 to produce the PET used to package bottled water in Australia, excluding the energy used in transportation and refrigeration. Plus
more energy is used to fill the bottles, move them by truck, train, ship, or air, refrigerate them and recover, recycle or discard the empty bottles. The Pacific Institute estimates that the total amount of energy embedded in the use of bottled water can be as high as the equivalent of filling a plastic bottle one quarter full with oil. Therefore, more than 145.7 million litres of oil was used in the production, transportation, refrigeration and recycling/disposing of bottled water in Australia in 2009-10.

Shocking isnt it!


The Impact on your Health
(info sourced from Dr Mercola’s blog here )

"Drinking water from a plastic water bottle poses serious health risks to you and your family. Let's take a look at some of these dangers to give you a better idea of why bottled water is not the healthy choice you've been led to believe it is.

Plastic would obviously be an issue for most bottled waters but it also comes into play for home or commercially filtered waters, or even raw spring water in that you need a container to store your water before you consume it. Obviously the best container is glass because when you choose plastic you are potentially exposed to the following chemicals.

· Learning and behavioral problems
· Altered immune system function
· Early puberty in girls and fertility problems
· Decreased sperm count
· Prostate and breast cancer
· Diabetes and obesity

If you are pregnant or nursing, your child is also at risk. If you are feeding your baby or toddler from a plastic bottle, switch to glass to avoid BPA contamination.
Phthalates are widely used to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) more flexible. Phthalates are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been linked to a wide range of developmental and reproductive effects, including:
· Reduced sperm counts
· Testicular atrophy or structural abnormality
· Liver cancer

Further, in experiments on rats, phthalates have demonstrably blocked the action of fetal androgens, which affects
gender development in male offspring, leading to undescended testes at birth and testicular tumors later in life.

Studies have also found that boys whose mothers had high phthalate exposures while pregnant were much more likely to have certain
demasculinized traits and produce less testosterone.
Yet another study found that pregnant women who are exposed to phthalates
gave birth more than one week earlier than women who were not exposed to them.

Pharmacy in a Bottle -- As mentioned above, about 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. This means you are not only exposed to dangerous BPA from the bottle, you may also be exposed to a variety of water contaminants such as
fluoride, chlorine, arsenic, aluminum, disinfection byproducts and prescription drugs.

Though drinking bottled water directly from a store shelf poses serious health risks, leaving this bottled water in your car or strapped to your bike and exposed to the hot sun will cause even more serious chemical exposure. Ultraviolet rays from the sun or high temperatures will accelerate leaching of the plastic chemicals mentioned above into the water.
Adding to this health threat is a toxic substance called dioxin, which is also released into bottled water when it is left in the sun. Dioxin has been
strongly linked to the development of breast cancer.
What Are the Alternatives??

I know what you have just read is quite alarming, terrifying, depressing...etc! But there are alternatives to plastic water bottles, and the 'drinking water industry' so no need to stress!

Poly-Carb Drink Bottles

Are polycarb drinking bottles really safe? The short answer is definitely yes.
Contrary to the myths, misinformation and scare stories about the safety of polycarbonate water bottles, independent government and scientific bodies worldwide have declared they are safe to use and reuse. Poly-Carb bottles are very light weight, and can be recycled once you're done with them. We stock poly-carb bottles in 600ml, 1L and 2.2L sizes.

SIGG and Cheeki Bottles

SIGG has been manufacturing reusable water bottles since 1908 in Switzerland. SIGG can say with even more confidence all The ingredients used in SIGG products are in conformance with both European and U.S. regulatory requirements, they are also certified and free of harmful chemicals, free of any volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), Phthalates, BADGE, BFDGE, and NOGE and BPA’s. Furthermore, SIGG bottles are recyclable at the end of their working life!

Cheeki is a new Australian-owned brand, they manufacture safe/healthy (BPA free) stainless steel reusable water bottles, and are working hard to encourage a significantly reduced consumption of disposable plastic water bottles, and educate people on the risks of plastic bottles.
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