Plastic containers for water and food.

• Author: Pennybacker, Mindy
• Position: Green Guidance

Consumers tend to buy bottled water under the impression that it is healthier than tap water. However, studies by the Natural Resources Defense Council and University of Geneva have found that, in general, bottled water is not necessarily any safer; nor is bottled spring water necessarily better than bottled water from other sources. In 2003, tests by the Centre for Science and Environment in India found high pesticides levels in some bottled waters.

Before paying for water that you can get for free from a drinking fountain, or for vastly less cost from a faucet, consider that bottled water may also pose a threat from toxic chemicals that have leached into the water from the plastic. Because leaching can be increased by heat, exercisers who gulp from a water bottle on a hot day may notice a certain plastic taste. But it's infants and children, whose bodies are rapidly growing, who are most vulnerable to potential developmental harm from chemicals that have been found to leach from certain plastics, including polycarbonate, the most common plastic used in baby bottles. Similar harm may come from food packaged in certain plastics.

The good news is that one can easily avoid plastics leaching by nursing rather than bottle-feeding infants, by using--and reusing--containers made of glass, metal and lead-free ceramic, and by taking water from the tap. Such measures will help reduce demand--and therefore supply--of plastics, which are made from petroleum, a nonrenewable resource. And, because not all plastics are created equal, safer plastic containers for food and water can be used in a pinch. One way to tell the kind of plastic a container is made of is to check its international plastics coding number in the chasing-arrows triangle embossed in its surface.

Bad Plastics

7 Polycarbonate: Most baby bottles and some baby drinking cups are made from clear, rigid polycarbonate plastic, as are five-gallon and some one-gallon water jugs. The problem: Polycarbonate plastics contain bisphenol-A, an estrogenic chemical and known hormone disruptor in lab animals, meaning that it can interfere with the way that hormones guide fetal development. As reported in Current Biology on April 1, 2003, bisphenol-A exposure in pregnant mice resulted in errors in fetal cell division. In another study, male lab rats exposed in the womb to bisphenol-A at low levels showed reproductive abnormalities. Several studies have reported that bisphenol-A can leach from plastic...