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