An interesting little tidbit here... it actually WAS skewed lab studies that led to the discovery that bisphenol-A leached from nalgene.

Bisphenol-A is an estrogen-like compound, and as such is related to diseases related to estrogen (i.e. breast cancer). Many years ago now (I want to say mid-90's) a researcher was doing breast cancer research, and kept finding that her control samples were 'contaminated' because they kept growing breast cancer cells. After extensive and exhaustive investigation they discovered that the containers they were using for the studies were the culprit, as the containers were leaching bisphenol-A under the conditions they were exposing their cells. I don't recall the details, but that was what lead to the discovery. It took probably close to a decade before it became "common" knowledge as the implications of the discovery for consumers was not made clear initially.

My take on it has always been that if you have a predisposition for a sensitivity to a certain type of disease mediated by a chemical (like a family history of breast or hormone related cancers), then it might behoove you to avoid plastic containers that might leach bisphenol-A. There are a couple of other situations where it might be prudent to avoid (if you're wanting to have children (men and women), are planning pregnancy (men and women), or are pregnant (if you find a pregnant man, let me know)), but otherwise... it really isn't any bigger of an issue than any other chemical exposure you might have (tobacco smoke comes to mind, or air pollution, or ozone from an unmaintained copier or printer, or pesticides, or...).

MNS