Bottled Water: Friend or Foe?

The day we moved my son into his college dorm, it was miserably hot, so we bought him and his roommate a case of bottled water.  Later that weekend, my son texted us to say that the water was ruined -  his roommate had stuck it all in their freezer and it was now poisoned.   Yesterday, a friend sent me an e-mail warning me and some other undisclosed recipients not to drink bottled water that has been left in a hot car - that Sheryl Crow's oncologist told her the dioxin that leaches from such bottles caused her breast cancer!   

Well, as both a connoisseur of bottled water and a two-time breast cancer survivor, I felt it was time to do some research in an attempt to set the record straight.  You see, I can only drink bottled water with any regularity.  When I drink too often from those lovely taps that allow things like that supposedly harmless orangey-pink-tinted bacteria to get through, I get mouth sores the size of a dime.  To most people this bacteria is supposedly harmless, but it isn't to me.  When my system is really run down, I even have to rinse my mouth with bottled water after brushing my teeth.   And, yes, I always leave a bottle of water in my car.  I sometimes get thirsty when I drive.  Funny thing is that when I was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer 10 years ago, we were drinking only filtered tap water...Needless to say, I was a skeptic when it came to all this sudden hype about bottled water and was, frankly, angry at the audacity of some of the claims.

In January of 2008,  a representative from Johns Hopkins refuted the supposed claim that freezing water bottles leaches dioxin into the water.  He called it what it was - an Email Hoax.  And as for bottles of water getting hot in your automobile and then becoming poisonous?  Unless, the bottles are made of inflexible (hard), "unclear" plastic, there is no danger of anything happening to the water.  The chemical that can potentially leach from plastic into water is Bisphenol A (or BPA). And disposable bottles do not contain the chemical.  "Plastic bottles of the type used for commercially marketed water are regulated by the FDA as 'food contact substances' and are held to the same standards as food additives."  (About.com, April 2007)  Yes, I know that the FDA is not perfect and has let several unsavory items slip through the cracks, but poison in our water bottles is not one of them. 

This is a very touchy subject for me, since after 4 of my 5 immediate family members contracted some form of cancer in a 5-year period, a study was conducted in the area in which I grew up and an unusually high number of cancer outbreaks (with a cancer death in virtually every family on our block alone) demonstrated that I grew up in a cancer hot-bed.  The culprit was something I was alerted to way back in 1981, after beginning a campaign to rid our area of the smelly, oily, brown sludge that stained our sinks and bathtubs.  This was in my college apartment, 30 miles from where I grew up, but it opened a can of worms.  We found that the culprit's business practices covered an extremely wide area.  And it seemed that I had moved from the proverbial frying pan into the flame!  Where I grew up, we were upwind from a series of oil refineries that occasionally made our air unfit to breathe.  Schools were closed due to "bad air" that made it literally painful to inhale.  Moreover, for as long as I could remember we "had" to have bottled water delivered to our house because the stuff that came out of our pipes tasted so bad.  

Our tap water is something I wish more of us did care about.  Why should we put up with pinkish orange bacteria?  And how do we know it is really harmless?  The alternative is equally daunting.  Large quantities of free chlorine are sometimes run through our water supplies when they are found to contain dangerously high levels of the more dangerous bacterias.  Has it ever hurt your eyes when you let the hot water run for too long?  Like when you are doing a huge batch of pots and pans?  Or taking a long, hot shower on a cold, cold morning?  This is far scarier to me than leaving my water bottle in my car.

Dioxin, one of the most deadly chemicals known to man, was what Agent Orange was made of.  And we know what that was used for.  It was an exfolliant that stripped trees bare of all life so our soldiers in Viet Nam could navigate through dense terrain.  Sadly, it also stripped people it came in contact with of things like hair and skin, not to mention the long-term affects of having been doused with it.  Dioxin is formally called Polychlorinated Dibenzodioxin and can occur naturally when fire comes into contact with chlorine.  Hmmmm....I wonder why very hot, chlorinated water might make our eyes burn   Diseases linked to dioxin exposure include an unsightly skin condition called chloracne, problems with one's tooth enamel, nervous system disorders, thyroid conditions, diabetes, and damage to one's immune system (leading, I would imagine, to a susceptibility to various cancers).  It was manufactured to do such things as bleach paper white and came to the forefront during the Love Canal tragedy which made headlines in the late 70's. 

I am not saying that bottled water is pure and clean.  I'm not sure that completely pure water exists anywhere anymore.  But if you get an Email telling you that the water you've been drinking in your car can kill you, delete it and do not give it another thought.  And if you should accidentally (or intentionally) freeze your bottled water, there is no need to throw it out.  Remember, we are made of about 80% water and need to drink several glasses a day.  And be wise when you give your body anything it needs....Until next time, happy and healthy eating (and drinking!).