Don’t Let Bottled Water Stay Warm
A new study from the University of Florida has found that if bottled water is stored in too warm a place (like your car), it can cause BPA and other chemicals to leech from the plastic into the water. The study was based on prolonged exposure to high temperature, not just an afternoon in the sun, and the amounts of BPA are not enough to make a couple of bottles of water a danger. But if you keep bottled water in a hot garage through the summer, you may want to think about rotating it every couple of weeks.
There’s a movement on college campuses away from bottled water. Students question the wisdom of bottling and shipping water, with all its environmental costs. versus having it delivered through the faucet. They also believe that tap water, regulated by the EPA, is less likely to be contaminated than bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA. So they are mounting campaigns to discourage bottled water use on campus.
Whatever the EPA may be doing, the water delivered by our water company does not taste great. I would not drink it without filtering.
We have a heavy duty carbon filter outside the house that treats all the water on its way in. Most everyone in the neighbourhood has the same. The filter is changed every week by a service company. Then, before it comes out of the faucet, we run it through a reverse osmosis filter under the sink.
Like the students advocate, I fill a canteen with tap water when I’m on the go – no plastic bottles involved. But unlike them, I’m not at all confident that unfiltered water from the tap is good enough to drink.
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