As a fellow practicing curmudgeon, I've found that curmudgeonry, selectively practiced, can be quite liberating. The amount of pure, unadulterated bulls**t that you no longer have to pretend to tolerate is astonishing.
But it isn't good for the ol' career. OH, do I bite my tongue sometimes.
OK...so where will these bottles end up? In a landfill? Will the BPA leach into the groundwater and still get to us along with the hormones, drugs and who-knows-what?
OK...so where will these bottles end up? In a landfill? Will the BPA leach into the groundwater and still get to us along with the hormones, drugs and who-knows-what?
Probably. All the more reason to stop making the stuff.
I just read that it is also found in dental sealants. Also CD's, DVD's, eyeglasses, food can liners, and other household items. So, either way, we will be ingesting the chemical whether or not a Lexan bottle is used maybe a few times a year when all these goods are dumped into a landfill...unless the landfill has a liner...which_might_be_made_of_BPA. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
I just read that it is also found in dental sealants. Also CD's, DVD's, eyeglasses, food can liners, and other household items. So, either way, we will be ingesting the chemical whether or not a Lexan bottle is used maybe a few times a year when all these goods are dumped into a landfill...unless the landfill has a liner...which_might_be_made_of_BPA. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
Yeah, but there are really two issues that each person needs to deal with. One is to reduce their personal intake by not carrying and drinking boiling hot tea etc. directly out of the stuff. The second is to stop putting it into the environment by consuming it for any purpose, because the environment is where it ends up. But just because there will always be some stuff out there is certainly no argument not to stop using Lexan Nalgene bottles. If you like to hike while drinking hot tea as I do they are really one of the worst possible applications for BPA, other than baby bottles.
For years they kept implying Lexan was the only safe plastic for hot beverages. Now they say safe for their intended purpose, cold water only, more total BS. If you just want them for cold drinks, why not some safer plastic like PP ???
Bottom line. Lexan Nalgene Water Bottles are NOT a safe product. They never were.
The ban has been long overdue, and is still dragging its feet. I don't want anything to do with the company or anyone that sells them. It drives me nuts to see how many are stocked on shelves everywhere, along with all the other plastic consumer junk. We gotta stop buying so much plastic. As outdoor and hiking enthusiasts, we should be the LAST group to be dragging our feet on this.
So, what about the Platypus and MSR Dromlite and Cloudliner hydration systems. Does anyone know if they contain the dreaded BPA. I just looked at the lid on my new GSI Soloist cookpot and it is also made with BPA.
I police a University that has a professor that is one of the forerunners in this research. I use the white Nygene Bottles with the #2 on the bottom of it. The number 2 has a recycle symbol around it. Number 7 is the number that has the chemicals that those are concerned of.
I don't put hot water in my number 7 bottles, however there are studies that show that continuous washing can release the chemical.
But then again this comes from a hiker that is worried about getting cancer from a bottle yet I smoke...lol.
Tom
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"Let's not miss the beauty of the forest by the ugliness of some of its trees." Bill W.
Registered: 02/03/06
Posts: 6800
Loc: Gateway to Columbia Gorge
Here is a quick guide to the types of plastic, and which to avoid.
However, the problem not completely addressed on that site is that #7 is a mixed bag classification--items made of several different kinds of plastics or from a polycarbonate that is (allegedly) bisphenol-A free are still marked #7. So some #7's are fine and some are not!
I emailed Cascade Designs about their Platypus bottles (which I use) and got the following answer:
Quote:
Thank you for contacting Cascade Designs Inc. Platypus film is made from Ultra Linear Low Density Polyethylene (ULLDPE), and Bi-axially Oriented Nylon (BON). Both are recyclable thermoplastic materials, but because of the differences between the two, and the fact that they are laminated together, as a unit it's classified as type 7 recyclable. The ULLDPE inner (water contact) lining complies with FDA regulation 21 CFR 177.1520. The BON outer layer complies with FDA 21 CFR 177.1500, and the adhesive that bonds the two together complies with FDA regulation 21 CFR 175.105. They can handle temperatures from below freezing to boiling as well as hand or machine washing with off the shelf detergents without the plastics leaching any toxins. The bite valve is made from silicone and the shut-off valve is plastic. Platy does not use Bisphenol A (BPA's) in manufacture of our products.
While their citing FDA regs does not particularly reassure me (the FDA's fault, not Cascade Designs), I'll take their word for it on the bisphenol-A.
Note that the old-fashioned Nalgene bottles--the cloudy kind that "give" a little when pressed--are made of #2 plastic, HDPE. You can still get baby bottles of HDPE, too. I'd rather trust them than glass with older infants who tend to throw the bottle across the room when they've finished.
I don't know if the earlier attempts at polycarbonate plastic contained bisphenol-A. I do know that when my kids were small, these items always cracked the first time they were dropped from a high chair or thrown across the room. Since my toddlers performed these consumer tests at every meal, their exposure to the stuff was quite minimal!
I'm a little more concerned about the use of BPA in dental sealants, although not enough to spend $15K replacing my current dental work....
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view--E. Abbey
Registered: 04/29/07
Posts: 205
Loc: Berkeley, California
I am usually a "whatever" person...and believe in bucking up and being flexible...not backing down. For years I was of the impression that I grew up consuming god knows what and that it must have made me super untouchable, strong in a martian manner, and able to resist all strains of everything. Remember playing with mercury? What was ever organic in the 70's? I am doubtful the past ten years has eradicated chemicals from my body... though I juice two times a year and eat WAY better than I ever did as a child! ...and I am NEVER sick. I am leaving my job with 2 months of sick time in the bank. If only I could convert them into vacation. sigh.
However...a new allergy study is coming out I hear, which is really giving me pause on my theory of our chemical induced super hero generation. Just why are there so many new, severe peanut/nut/egg etc allergies? A new study (not sure where I would find it, it was reported to me by a mother of a child with them) suggests that our particular generation (we are turning 40) were so exposed to so many chemicals in childhood, that they effected female and possibly male reproductive organs of this generation, and therefore pregnancies and the children who are born. Most of the surge is taking place at this time with current children in preschool. Just ten years ago it was not as bad...let alone when I first began teaching 20 years ago... wow...so dating myself. This does circumstantially add up from my experience working with kids...but of course that isn't science so who knows. I am not having children (though it was determined that it would be challenging for me ten years ago...and the use of fertility specialists have also spiked over the past decade...but that could be linked to so many other things I know), so it probably isn't a big deal for me. No breast cancer or the like in my family (instead, other fun genetic diseases ).
I still refuse to get carried away...I want to have water to drink...and coffee in the morning while I backpack...but if it is as easy as a number...what is the number bottle I want? 2? not 7s? I find numbers and chemical compounds... confounding. I need something clear and simple!
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (April 18, 2008) – In response to consumer demand, Nalgene® will phase out production of its Outdoor line of polycarbonate containers that include the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) over the next several months, it announced today. Nalgene’s existing product mix, including the recently launched Everyday line, already features a number of containers made from materials that do not contain BPA.
“We have always been focused on responding to the needs and concerns of our customers,” said Steven Silverman, general manager of the Nalgene business. “With 10 different product lines in several different materials, we have the largest bottle offering on the market today. By eliminating containers containing BPA from our consumer product mix, our customers can have confidence that their needs are being met.”
That's the bad news. The good news, at least if you're Marijn Dekkers, the CEO of Thermo Fisher, parent of Nalgene, is that although he received compensation of only $3.3 million in 2007 (after receiving $19.8 million in compensation in 2006,) he was able to exercise stock options in 2007 that brought in another $65,000,000.00 to add to his income last year. Dekkers was able to exercise his stock options for as low as $19.67 apiece and then sold shares the same day for prices as high as $57.14.
Nalgene outdoor and its sports water bottles are just a small division of Thermo Fisher Scientific. The stock has been hanging around $56 before and after the announcement, and the ending of production of Nalgene's bisphenol-A bottles didn't earn a mention in current news on the corporate parent's site.
Interesting that Nalgene/Thermo Fisher announced this prior to the Canadian ban. (Nine US states are considering a similar ban.) Wonder when all the knock-off makers of Nalgene-type bottles will follow suit? How long will bisphenol-A bottles be on our shelves? And, since I'm a little confused, please tell me again how we know we're drinking from a bisphenol-A bottle right now?
What I find the most disturbing is not what my water bottles have or don't have in them, is what was in the plastic of baby bottles of warm formula my son used to drink when he was a baby.
But then again when I was a baby we used to be able to eat food with peanuts and egg in them, sat in highchairs and car seats, laid in cribs, and playpens painted with lead paint that are now considered death traps. (I still am the proud owner of a old Jarts "giant death dart" set.)
Tom
_________________________
"Let's not miss the beauty of the forest by the ugliness of some of its trees." Bill W.
Being Cheap, I only bought the white Nalgene bottles made from what I believe is Polyethylene. They were half the price of the lexan ones and in my experience just as durable.
““In response to consumer demand, Nalgene® will phase out production …””
That about sums it up. No scientific reason. Just consumer reaction to Media scare. Bearpaw stated it well.
We get these alarms every day of our lives. There is strong scientific support for the safeness of polycarbonate (that uses BPA). Humans excrete BPA fast; lab rats do not. The media will not tell you this.
Use polycarbonate all you want; wash it, boil it, microwave it. You are not going to overdose with BPA. There have been too many studies about this.
I will now start the new scare. Folks you heard it here first. Coffee has more toxicity than BPA. And this has been proven with humans! And to make it worse, drink hot coffee from a clear Nalgene bottle--- guaranteed physiological disorders, I tell you!
““In response to consumer demand, Nalgene® will phase out production …””
That about sums it up. No scientific reason. Just consumer reaction to Media scare. Bearpaw stated it well.
We get these alarms every day of our lives. There is strong scientific support for the safeness of polycarbonate (that uses BPA). Humans excrete BPA fast; lab rats do not. The media will not tell you this.
Use polycarbonate all you want; wash it, boil it, microwave it. You are not going to overdose with BPA. There have been too many studies about this.
I will now start the new scare. Folks you heard it here first. Coffee has more toxicity than BPA. And this has been proven with humans! And to make it worse, drink hot coffee from a clear Nalgene bottle--- guaranteed physiological disorders, I tell you!
The insidious nature of chemicals is that they can mess you up over long periods of time without you knowing. The insidious nature of greed is that you end up weighing the cost of poisoning people vs the loss of revenues. I am not sure hiding behind the "all knowing" government (FDA) is the best defense.
Looks like concern with bisphenol A is heating up in the mainstream media. This video about stories in the Dallas Morning Newstomorrow - 5/20/08 - about how to ID what's got BPA in it. Thing to remember, though, is that some manufacturers of cans and plastic bottles -- Nalgene's Everyday line as an example -- have already got the BPA's out of them.
I'd think a big concern would be what is the impact of this BPA scare on recycling -- our trust of recycled plastics, the viability of plastics recycling in the face of this, since if used in food containers we could just be reexposing ourselves to BPA's over and over. Plastics!
Oh to live in a Country that has the time to concern its self with how many parts per billion of Biphenol A One might ingest on a two week walkabout.
Does anyone remember the Alar pesticide frenzy of the 80s, or how public concern trumped scientific fact and bankrupted Dow Corning concerning silicone in breast implants (which are available again) Lets not forget DDT, bad science and Rachel Carsons book got it band in the 70s. Sure we've got a lot more Eagles now, (not connected to the DDT ban), but countless millions have died from malaria infected insect bites.
My point is, the Media has become judge, jury,and executioner for many of these type of public concerns. It has no time to wait for the science to confirm or disprove the initial headline. "Man made" global warming is just the most recent example. We are an impatient people, this fact has cost us dearly in the past.
Oh to live in a Country that has the time to concern its self with how many parts per billion of Biphenol A One might ingest on a two week walkabout.
Does anyone remember the Alar pesticide frenzy of the 80s, or how "public concern trumped scientific fact and bankrupted Dow Corning concerning silicone in breast implants (which are available again) Lets not forget DDT, bad science and Rachel Carsons book got it band in the 70s. Sure we've got a lot more Eagles now, (not connected to the DDT ban), but countless millions have died from malaria infected insect bites.
My point is, the Media has become judge, jury,and executioner for many of these type of public concerns. It has no time to wait for the science to confirm or disprove the initial headline. "Man made" global warming is just the most recent example. We are an impatient people, this fact has cost us dearly in the past.
Lets just take a deep breath shall we?
Sorry to answer your post this way, but I must:
Oh, to live in a country that has time to concern itself with how many parts per billion of Bisphenol A one might ingest on a two-week walkabout – or to concern itself with how many parts per TRILLION of dioxin one might encounter on a day hike, since a few parts per trillion of dioxin will cause some seriously bad health effects that include death.
Does anyone remember the Fen-phen diet craze of the ‘90s, or how "public concern" didn’t help the stock price of American Home Products (later called WYETH) when “they” (NOT the “Media”) -- they being “public concern,” I guess – reported in Mayo Clinic studies of heart-valve disease in women who took the drug? Reluctantly, the FDA “requested” the withdrawal of the drug for obesity in September of 1997. BTW, there are an estimated $14 billion in liability claims in Fen-phen lawsuits – and before you point at the lawyers for getting rich, try to think of all those women with damaged aortic and mitral valves in their hearts who are plaintiffs in those suits.
Let’s not forget THALIDOMIDE (C13H10N2O4), where it was “good” science that got it banned in the early ‘60s before even more babies were born without arms or legs. Here was a drug that was prescribed to women with morning sickness that caused their babies to be born without arms or legs. ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. Aren’t you glad we ARE an impatient people?? Or how many more would have been born without limbs? (Imagine how many more could have been born WITH their limbs if we had been MORE impatient.)
This fact – our impatience – has SAVED COUNTLESS LIVES, and saved countless others from being victims of “bad science” sold to us with insufficient safeguards that end in the lawsuits that some of us apparently feel are wrong. You market a bad product, get rich off the IPO and your stock splitting, and then can’t face the fallout when you get sued? I have NO pity for you. Sure, we’ve got all those pregnant women still having to deal with morning sickness that can't take Nibrol (thalidomide), but then countless millions of babies have been born with two arms and two legs.
I’m CERTAINLY not sure how this collective ogre labeled the “MEDIA” is responsible for any of the bans or even the questioning of dangerous products in the recent past. The “Media” you describe is now but a few corporations who try to earn a profit by wrapping an innocuous few words or seconds in the guise of an article or TV show around what really matters – ads and commercials. The last thing they EVER WANT TO DO is p-ss off or anger the other corporations who provide them with their income and profits. Basically, almost all news or “news-type-shows” are simply reading the press releases or doing voice-overs for the clips provided by the corporations who produce products that we, as consumers, hoped they would spend the time and money to investigate. Face it, the 4th estate is virtually dead in America. (B4U think I'm corporaphobic, I realize they are what they are -- not just Exxon and Wyeth, but these entities that we created to insulate the investors behind them from being personally sued.)
Give me a break. The only reason you EVER heard about Bisphenol A is because the consumer watchdogs that some of us support did the research that questioned what kind of crap we were putting our crystal-clear (and expensive) water in. It WAS NOT the “Media” – they simply ran the watchdog’s press release (like they do all others) because it was, well, it was CHEAP and certainly more interesting than that endless drivel that they run that’s provided by those few corporations huckstering their questionably dangerous products. (Who do you think shoots all those plastic surgery bits you see on every local news show in their “Medical Segment”? The Media? ‘Fraid not. It is hand-delivered to them by the ones making $$ off those frivolous and often questionable surgical procedures.)
Next time you feel sorry for Wyeth or another pharmaceutical taking some heat, then click here to see the 56 pages of products banned by the FDA, which day-by-day, as more and more money flows from the corporations who are supposed to be regulated by it (now to the tune of $200 million a year), might be less and less willing to even “request” that a dangerous product be pulled from the consumer (that’s you-'n-me) market. Meridia (sibutramine), ephedra, Serzone, statins -- a few of the drugs that are being scrutinized, yet still are hidden under a veil of FDA legitimacy.
I’m taking a deep breath here, and I promise that I’ll spend all my remaining breaths to support and fight for those dwindling few who question that admittedly small percentage of questionable products that continues to be foisted on us to make a quick buck.
Ever since I read about that first defective wooden spoke on the early automobile, I’ve always felt we should ere on the side of the consumer. Isn’t that the safer route for us, who they've defined simply as consumers? Isn't the BIGGER problem our impatience in making a buck by rushing unsafe products to market? Or to reluctantly shut off the money flow from what is determined to be an unsafe product.? Don't be poo-pooing the concerns over bisphenol-A just yet . . .
(Wild isn't it that I'm no lawyer, have no vested interest in those questioning Bisphenol A, and only just wonder what it is I'm drinking and maybe why so many are jumpin' on those who wonder too.)
I didn't know malaria was in the USA. Thank you for clearing up that misconception of mine. Unless, of course, you are referring to malaria found in the Third World countries that we alone should find a way to iradicate it. As if we alone have the ability to do this. As if we alone in this world should take full responsibilty to cure the ills of the world. Give me abreak as well. Do you know for a fact that some university or research center in this country isn't working on iradicating malaria? Are other countries?
wow. you have enlightened me so much. Oh to live in this country...yes, thank you very much.
Kevon, (topic drift) I greatly admire the way you write. In fact there are few people on this board that write as well (me being at the bottom of the list). There are 3 people on this board, that if they write for Backpacking Magazine, I would read it more (you being one). Anyway…
I like to listen to consumer watchdogs. When they bring up an issue, then I also want all the science that has been done on it. Since this is the BPA topic, I will use that as an example. I see all this data on lab rats. But I want to know “what does it do on humans?”. But our American media (and I mean collectively) won’t report any of the extensive findings that were actually done on humans (at least I haven’t seen a report). I don’t appreciate watchdogs giving a scare on rat results, w/o more tests done on humans. And they are in. There has been extensive human research. And I’m shocked that Europe will publish this since they tend to the liberal side. And this has been out a while.
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