This Everyday "Healthy" Beverage Poisons Your Body One Swallow at a Time

Posted By Dr. Mercola | January 15 2011 | 195,600 views

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/15/dangers-of-drinking-water-from-a-plastic-bottle.aspx

By Dr. Mercola

You've probably heard a lot about bottled water. That it's healthier for you than tap water, that it can replace your vitamins, that it's really only tap water and how environmentally unfriendly it is.

With this type of conflicting information about water, it's easy to get confused. Let's see if we can help you cut through the clutter and lead you down the path to healthier water consumption.

Environmental Impact

There's no sense in sugar-coating it. Bottled water is destructive to the environment. It is a fact that 67 million water bottles are thrown away each day.

That's a staggering amount of waste considering only 10 percent of these water bottles are ever recycled. Despite the good reputation recycling has, this practice is not always best for the ecosystem as it is labor-intensive, costly and burns natural resources. Also, just because you are throwing your used water bottles into the recycling bin, it does not necessarily mean they are able to be recycled.

Another problem with bottled water is the incredible amount of fuel needed to transport these heavy loads of plastic (and sometimes glass) bottles to your local supermarket, home or office.

Where Your Bottled Water REALLY Comes From

About 40 percent of bottled water is nothing more than bottled tap water! So not only might you still be drinking all the chemicals you were trying to avoid in the first place, you may be exposing yourself to even MORE chemicals by drinking from plastic bottles….

The Dangers of Plastic

Drinking water from a plastic water bottle poses serious health risks to you and your family. Let's take a look at some of these dangers to give you a better idea of why bottled water is not the healthy choice you've been led to believe it is.

Plastic would obviously be an issue for most bottled waters but it also comes into play for home or commercially filtered waters, or even raw spring water in that you need a container to store your water before you consume it. Obviously the best container is glass because when you choose plastic you are potentially exposed to the following chemicals.

BPA – Bisphenol A or BPA is an estrogen-mimicking chemical that has been linked to a host of serious health problems including:

Learning and behavioral problems

Altered immune system function

Early puberty in girls and fertility problems

Decreased sperm count

Prostate and breast cancer

Diabetes and obesity

If you are pregnant or nursing, your child is also at risk. If you are feeding your baby or toddler from a plastic bottle, switch to glass to avoid BPA contamination.

Phthalates -- Phthalates are widely used in the United States to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) more flexible.

Phthalates are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been linked to a wide range of developmental and reproductive effects, including:

Reduced sperm counts

Testicular atrophy or structural abnormality

Liver cancer

Further, in experiments on rats, phthalates have demonstrably blocked the action of fetal androgens, which affects gender development in male offspring, leading to undescended testes at birth and testicular tumors later in life.

Studies have also found that boys whose mothers had high phthalate exposures while pregnant were much more likely to have certain demasculinized traits and produce less testosterone.

Yet another study found that pregnant women who are exposed to phthalates gave birth more than one week earlier than women who were not exposed to them.

Pharmacy in a Bottle -- As mentioned above, about 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. This means you are not only exposed to dangerous BPA from the bottle, you may also be exposed to a variety of water contaminants such as fluoride, chlorine, arsenic, aluminum, disinfection byproducts and prescription drugs.

Although you may have been told that disposing your unused prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in the garbage instead of down the toilet means this eliminates the threat of your water supply being contaminated, this is simply not true. Water that drains through landfills, known as leach rate, eventually ends up in rivers. Although not all states source drinking water from rivers, many do.

According to studies, human cells do not grow normally when exposed to even minute amounts of prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

Some drugs that were never meant to be combined are mixed together in the drinking water you consume every day. Millions of people have drug allergies. Are you one of them? If so, how do you know the unusual symptoms you've been exhibiting are not due to ingesting small doses of the drugs you're allergic to from your bottled water?

Ticking Time Bomb

Though drinking bottled water directly from a store shelf poses serious health risks, leaving this bottled water in your car or strapped to your bike and exposed to the hot sun will cause even more serious chemical exposure. Ultraviolet rays from the sun or high temperatures will accelerate leaching of the plastic chemicals mentioned above into the water.

Adding to this health threat is a toxic substance called dioxin, which is also released into bottled water when it is left in the sun. Dioxin has been strongly linked to the development of breast cancer.

Health-conscious people like to transport filtered water from home to ensure a safe supply on the go. If you're one of these individuals, using a glass or steel bottle instead will bypass the risks associated with carrying filtered water in plastic.