Yeah, same here, climberslacker. I'd used the HDPE ones for years and years; the only drawback was the smell. Especially when a canteen stayed in a hot pack/car for a couple of days -- phew!

Polycarbonate seemed like a "cleaner" alternative so I switched. Now it seems like the smell is blowing the other direction.

The good news? The 12-year-old Nalgene HDPEs in my basement are still solid and good to go. And yes, they're just as smelly as the new ones! Apparently they don't improve much with age.

Well, that trend was more due to marketing than science. Around the same time, everything was being churned out with antibacterial properties, from moisturizers to cutting boards to socks to laundry detergents. Personally, I stuck with plain liquid hand soap through that craze.

You stuck to regular soap; I’m going to stick to my Nalgene bottles during this craze. I have a lot of them, enough to last a lifetime.

They're doing it purely to please the public...which isn't a bad business decision. They have at no point admitted there is a BPA issue with their bottles.

I've seen studies that show you'd have to drink like 40L a day from these bottles to get enough chemical into your system to be even remotely harmful.

^ And now they're saying that huge amount of "pure" water we're supposed to drink every day is pure nonsense, no scientific basis for it, it's just lore that repeated enough became "fact".

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't drink a reasonable amount of water obviously, depending on what you're doing etc. But now they're saying, as far as your body is concerned, water in coffee for instance is just as good as the water in water...it's the coffee that's debateable. Which leads into now they're saying a certain amount of coffee is "good" for you...they really haven't got an effen clue obviously, it goes on and on, depends who's paying the researchers.

You think that this is a big deal, my only daughter is going to have her first baby next month. Go shopping and try to find a baby bottle (plastic, we can not find glass anywhere) that is not made in China. We have become afraid of just about anything made in China that will come anywhere near your (or your grandkids) mouth...

Yea, me too.

I'm not worried much about BPAs, for as often as I drink from them while hiking its still only while hiking that I consume water from a Nalgene. If TEOTWAWKI happens and I start drinking water fulltime from a Nalgene, BPA will be among the least of my concerns.

I'm a tad more concerned about present day water quality, things like the oil additive MTBE that has leached into the groundwater and are present in the everyday water supply of most of the US. I get that whether I drink from a Nalgene or not.

I agree, my nalgenes will still get used. Won't be drinking coffee out of it or anything. But, as with most health warnings, I usually ask myself if its worse than the pollution I breathe in everyday. If not then I'm not gonna get too worked up about it.

What are your (plural) thoughts on these?

(BTW) I was thinking about them before all this came out.

sigg bottles