Many people seem to think carrying a plastic water bottle around implies a healthy lifestyle. Take a gulp and hold it in your mouth. Taste the plastic? All but the most expensive brands have a plastic taste. What do you think that is? That plastic taste is residual solvent from bottle manufacturing. It's polluted water. Industry chemists might claim that polyethylene terephthalate (PET #1) is inert, so it cannot be harmful to your health. That might be true if the polymer of which the bottle is made was perfectly formed and very clean, but usually it is not. There is residual solvent trapped in the ideal PET matrix, and that solvent carries unreacted phthalate monomers, which are known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. It is truly outrageous how the PET industry has managed to inject a known carcinogen into nearly everyone's daily diet. Moreover, the industry has completely externalized disposal and ecological costs and taken no responsibility for the pollution it causes...quite the successful racket indeed.
Extensive evidence against phthalates is laid out in a recent article by Dr. Stephanie Engel and colleagues, particularly their correlation with neurological problems in children, and phthalate leaching into bottled water and soda has been documented in numerous studies nicely summarized over a decade ago here by best-selling author Dr. Leonard Sax. Believing the government will protect you is beyond naive, it's just lazy. As Dr. Engel points-out, all of the phthalates associated with adverse child neurodevelopment mentioned in her article are currently approved by the US FDA for food packaging.
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