Avoid Bottled Water
The Dangers of Bottled Water
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are saturating our environment. They are found in the food we eat, and the packaging that our food comes in, and experts have been finding more and more evidence against drinking or eating anything that comes in contact with the plastic from bottled water.
So what’s the big deal?
Experts have isolated an element in the plastic that has been shown to bleed into the water or food that it contains, called Endocrine disrupting chemicals. Endocrine disrupting chemicals interfere with the normal function of human hormones. They disrupt the normal functioning of hormone creation and metabolism, which all results in conditions that lead to disease. Studies have linked endocrine disruptors to Breast cancer development, prostate cancer, obesity, breast cancer development, prostate cancer, thyroid dysfunction, metabolism dysfunction and other significant health problems.
One endocrine-disrupting chemical that has been confirmed to be a threat, but which continues to be largely ignored by the average person is the threat found in something so commonplace, that it may come as a shocker to you—plastic bottles.
That’s right: plastic water bottles.
The chemical that has everyone replacing their water bottles with safer alternatives is Bisphenol-A, or BPA. BPA is an endocrine disruptor said to leach from polycarbonate plastics, which is typically marked with the recycling code #7.
Luckily for our friends in Canada, the government of Canada is considering banning BPA in all products. Some states, including New Jersey, have already issued a ban on the sale of BPA-containing products.
In the meantime, there are a few ways you can protect yourself from BPA poisoning:
- Avoid canned foods such as soups and tomato-based pastas, which had the highest levels of BPA, and canned infant formula, which had over 200 times the recommended safety levels of BPA.
- Baby bottles and sippy cups had high levels of BPA as well, so avoiding these is also advised. Pliable, "cloudy" plastics such as the Medela brand baby bottles don't contain BPA.
- Some plastic wraps contain BPA, so check the labels for "BPA-free" wraps.
Replace your Nalgene bottles with BPA-free bottles, like Life Ionizer’s Life Energy Bottles.