I have two old Nalgene bottles made of polycarbonate. One of them is rectangular, handy for packing. Should I switch to the new BPA free bottles or do you condider the polycarbonate ones safe? I guess they are safe, especially if only used for water.

They are safe unless you plan on drinking a boiling solution of lye out of them. The BPA scare is a crock of BS.

-Blast

Do you weigh more 10kg, and plan on neither tossing it in a fire to boil water nor eating it, you're fine.

I am pretty sceptical about this. Plastic is not exatly the helathiest material out there. BS/scare? Maybe but maybe not. How do you know? I think noone here has really definite scientific proof that BPA bottles are OK. Companies´ statements don´t count. I would go for the new BPA free bottles.

I have seen BPA-free Nalgene under,A 40x- stereo-microscope & A Piece of an Older Nalgene bottle.The result's convinced me that,The older one's are actually Safer,Why?The pores are consistently even & Much smaller, than the BPA-free type,of which were jagged & un-even,thus able to more freely Harbor Parasytes & other little nasties.This was shown to me by friends of whom have similar backgrounds to Blast's.They also state the BPA scare is a Big Farce!I would trust the word of a Chemist before All else,Afterall,Who else could possibly Know better?

The Great Naglene Bottle Scare.

A deliberate out of context mis-report intended to scare people into not buying a product in the mistaken belief that the product is hazardous in normal use.

Should we have this as a acronym - GNBS - for this sort of thing?


You have nothing to worry about.

This is not about parasites hiding in the pores. It´s about some nasty chemicals leaching from the bottle. The word of chemist is not satisfactory proof for me. There are probably other chemsists and sciencists that would disagree with this word. It´s just an opinion. It may be valuable opinion but it´s not thorough research reviewed by other scientists.

Like I said when it comes to health plastic is no the best material in the world. New research in this field shows some interesting facts.

For example take a look at this analysis from Wagner and Oehlmann:



full article: http://www.physorg.com/news157285352.html

I am not saying here is a proof that old Nalgene bottles are dangerous. Maybe they are perfectly OK. I want to say that noone can be really 100% sure. I would be a little bit more sceptical than using strong words like crock of BS, scare, big farce etc.

From Wagner & Oehlmann's paper:

Hartmann et al. (1998) proposed that dairy products are
the main source for steroidal estrogens and calculated a
total daily intake of 80–100 ng estrogens per day for adults.
Based on our data, a theoretical daily consumption of 3 l
mineral water (drinking water required to maintain hydration,
Howard and Bartram 2003) would result in a mean
total intake of 54 ng EEQ per day. In a worst case scenario
(3 l of brand C-P), the total daily intake would increase to
226 ng EEQ per day, exceeding the intake of estrogens
naturally found in food (Hartmann et al. 1998) by more
than 100%. In a more recent study, Courant et al. (2007)
analytically determined concentrations of 23 ng/l 17ßestradiol
in milk. The concentration of natural estrogen in
milk is comparable to the mean hormonal potency we
measured in 20 brands of mineral water (18 ng/l EEQ) and
three times lower than the maximal EEQ detected in one brand
of water (75 ng/l EEQ). Therefore, consumption of mineral
water results in a human exposure to xenoestrogens with at
least the same hormonal potency as steroidal estrogens
naturally occurring in food.

You need to drink three liters of water that had been stored in plastic bottles to get close to the amount of xenoestorgens that you get from the daily recommended amount of milk/dairy.

I find it interesting in this study that the only effect this material had on the snails was an increased fertility. There was nothing about increased mortility or other harmful effects on the test subjects (snails which were specifically picked because they have a know susceptibility to estrogen).

Back when this all started I was on the team of chemists that was testing the estrogen-mimicing ability of these chemicals. Result? If we assign normal estrogen's activity at "1" then the BPS's activity was found to be 1/1000 the activity of regular estrogen.

The funny thing is there are chemicals in broccoli that have an estrogen-activity of over 10.

-Blast

So.....

Long story, short is I will not begin to need to shop in the ladies' department for undergarments, right?

Correct...unless you just like the way they feel.

-Blast

Flew thru Spring last night. Skipped the call since it was 2 am.

Thanks to Wagner and Oehlmann I now know not to keep my New Zealand mud snails in plastic bottles.
Now where did I put that saccharin?

Me and my treasured children still use our original Nalgene 32 oz. bottles. I've seen no reason to stop using them.

If the nearly impossible happens and they break - or the more likely happens and they get lost - then I'll probably replace them with the new stuff.

I am with Blast. I have seen enough contradictory evidence on the nets and in some science circles that I don't buy the BPA hype.

I think in part this was a created to market an old product as new, to reinvent the relevance of an industry. Plastics have been losing market share to Sigg, Kleen Kanteen, et al, and creating the hype that the 'evil' plastics being used are just as 'green' an industry.

Remember there is a clear anti-plastic bent out there. In San Francisco you cannot get plastic bags at grocery stores now, only paper bags. Competitors of Nalgene type bottles will give you study after study of how metals are superior in quality, taste and durability.

We all know that older Nalgene bottles will hold taste, but I can still buy them 4:1 on a Sigg.

When I heard that Nalgenes were being pulled, I went out and got a lifetime supply from a local sporting goods store. Enough for my kids too.

Love them Nalgenes!

ON the wife!!

No more than you do now!

You should have called!b And given BO a call too!

That whole trip was a late night, and as you know I needed to get home. The GSD's needed a teeth cleaning......

Yes they did, and maybe a few shot too. The had their mouths on some nasties.

I just ordered a batch of 10 bottles off eBay...works out to about $4 each with delivery. I should be just about set for life now with Nalgenes.

I've been using some old translucent Nalgene bottles for years (since about 1975 or so). They've got little brown spots in the bottom from the iodine stains (the water purfication standard of those day). I've poured boiling water into them to make a hot jello drink while backpacking.

I'm not dead yet. Never spent a night in the hospital either - except when I was born.

Here we go again:



full article: http://www.physorg.com/news162133540.html

Labeling this whole case as scare or BS is not counterargument at all. "I am not yet dead." or "I like Nalgenes, I will continue to use them!" type comments are not arguments either. I think some people defend polycarbonate bottles without evidence as if they are hard-core fans. What´s importatnt is that the research in this area continues. It´s good to keep of track of new studies.

All this study says is that some BPA in the plastic seems to get into the water. Which we might expect.

We still have no evidence if BPA is harmful to humans and if so, in what dosage. It should be noted that the concentration of BPA in their urine was already X ppm before they started and only went to 1.69X after drinking from the PC bottles. Also note that the article doesn't report what the actual concentrations where. For all we know, the normal level could be 3 molecules of BPA per thousand gallons and drinking from the bottles brought it up to 5 molecules.

We could just as well say:
New study shows that drinking water often results in increased levels of water in the urine. Exposure to water has been shown to cause drowning in certain animals, such as lab rats. Therefore we should stop drinking water.

This is the problem with most "science" reporting and a lot of the science itself.

No one is trying to present a counterargument (at least not me). I think most are just stating that we don't care about this "study", which seems a bit over the top to me, the way it's described. If you don't want to drink from Nalgene bottles ... then don't. I won't try to counterargue with you and convince you that you should.

Oh my! Blast needs to hang out with guys more... All those females at home are starting to get to him!

I think there is such evidence and it continues to accumulate.

Just a few examples:

Bisphenol A linked to metabolic syndrome in human tissue

Bisphenol A linked to chemotherapy resistance

Higher urinary levels of commonly used c...sease, diabetes

Our Exposure to Controversial Chemical May be Greater than Dose Considered Safe

If you search for BPA on physorg.com you will get this list: http://www.physorg.com/search/?search=BPA . I reccomend reading the articles.

Also this is quite interesting. Quoted from this article: Study: BPA research might have been bias



And from this article: Better science, please



This is also interesting article (note it is older then some articles I linked before): Hot liquids release potentially harmful chemicals in polycarbonate plastic bottles

From your link:
Prior to boiling water exposure, the rate of release from individual bottles ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 nanograms per hour. After exposure, rates increased to 8 to 32 nanograms per hour.

Belcher stresses that it is still unclear what level of BPA is harmful to humans. He urges consumers to think about how cumulative environmental exposures might harm their health.

To put things in perspective 1 nanogram = 0.0000000000022 pounds or 0.000000000001 kg for our non-American readers. That's eleven zeros to the right of the decimal point.

Let's say I fill my 1 liter Nalgene bottle with boiling water to keep my feet warm overnight. If the water in my bottle remained boiling all night long (say eight hours) and then I slammed the whole liter of water, worst case is I would imbibe 256 nanograms of BPA which is 0.00000000056 pounds of BPA.

Now if we look at O'Connor's & Chapin's often-quoted paper on the xenoestrogen effects of BPA we see he had to give dose of 1.5mg of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day for the entire gestation period to get any measurable effects.

Hmm, 256 nanograms equals 0.000256mg, so someone would need to drink 5859.4 liters of BPA-contaiminated water per kilogram of their weight daily for nine months to suffer these effects.

-Blast, Ph.D.

Bisphenol A linked to metabolic syndrome in human tissue

Doesn't say how much the hormone was supressed. Water can cause drowning.

Bisphenol A linked to chemotherapy resistance
Again, how much resistance?

Higher urinary levels of commonly used c...sease, diabetes

See, there is still no evidence.

Our Exposure to Controversial Chemical May be Greater than Dose Considered Safe
How, exactly, was the "safe" dose determined to begin with? We still don't know how much is harmful.

Hot liquids release potentially harmful chemicals in polycarbonate plastic bottles
So? How liquids release more BPA than cold but we we still don't know how much is bad. According to the previous article, 1 microgram per kg of body mass is considered "normal exposure" (doesn't say over what time period) and this article says hot water causes a up to 32 nanograms per hour of release. Let's say you boil some water and leave it in the bottle for three hours and then drink it, that's about 100 nanograms of BPA added to your exposure. Uh, that's an increase in exposure of 0.1% Wow.

What Blast fails to mention is that for some of us, drinking water that had been anywhere NEAR our feet all night (especially after a long hike) could be potentially fatal. I think my wife really loved me right up until I took my shoes off after that first long hike...

thseng:
Well there is evidence that BPA is harmful but you are right that we still don´t know how much of BPA is harmful. And if scientists doing these studies are not sure and need more data how come you all already know that it´s just a scare?

At the end of the day you just said what I am trying to say: we don´t know enough yet. So we can´t label it as a "scare".

Blast:
You are right, it doesn´t look too dangerous indeed.

What if it´s confirmed that BPA accumulates in the body for a long period of time?:

(http://www.physorg.com/news152343537.html)

My opinion is that there is still a lot to discover before we can say whether BPA is dangerous in those rations or not. And why unnecessarily increase the intake of BPA when you can use non-BPA products?

--

While some scientists say it´s nothing to worry about a lot of them rather tend to warn people because they don´t know enough yet. Or they say that they are not sure. And I don´t really think they are just trying to scare people.


(http://www.physorg.com/news163851615.html)


(http://www.physorg.com/news120894078.html)

etc.

Please keep in mind that in a perfect world science would be devoid of politics. However, in the real world science and politics are intimately related. Studies supported by industry are often touted as being tainted due to the self-interest of the industry. Public perception is that studies performed by government, academic or institute scientists are devoid of politics and can be trusted more than those sponsored by industry. Nothing can be further from the truth; government, academic and institute scientists must compete for funding and/or grants. The lifeblood of science is funding and “creating” controversy is a guaranteed way to ensue your funding will continue.

Partisan politics also plays a significant role in influencing scientific inquiry. A scientist, whose scientific interests or views are consistent with the particular partisan entity in power, will receive greater funding than one who does not. A scientist who does not publish is doomed, if the study does not reveal some “potential” for public health concern, they have little to publish and funding will dry up quickly.

While, at this point in time, one can not totally dismiss the potential for BPA to have some negative (might also have some positive) effects on the body, the quantities that an individual is exposed to, through the use of polycarbonate bottles is so minuscule when compared to other naturally occurring BPA-like chemicals, that the “risk” from water bottles is totally overblown.

Pete