With all the negative publicity plastic water bottles have received, many people are switching to aluminum water bottles. But are they really safer? Although they haven't received the poor press plastic bottles have, you might be surprised to learn there is some concern about drinking from aluminum. Here's the scoop. Why Switch to Aluminum?
1. Not only do 30 million plastic bottles a year end up in American landfills and incinerators, but they are too expensive to recycle into new bottles. Reusing plastic bottles may lead to health problems due to bacterial growth, and some people believe a chemical called BPA (which is found in most plastic water bottles) poses serious health risks, from poor brain development in children and fetuses to certain types of cancer in adults. Is Your Aluminum Water Bottle BPA Free?
2. Not all aluminum water bottles are BPA, free, however. Since most have a hard plastic spout, only bottles marked "BPA free" don't contain the chemical. Some people are even wary of believing this claim, since recently baby bottles were tested in Canada and a well known brand that claimed to be BPA free contained the chemical. Is Aluminum a Health Risk?
3. We don't really know how dangerous, or how safe, aluminum is. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), oral exposure isn't usually harmful. "Some studies show that people exposed to high levels of aluminum may develop Alzheimer's disease, but other studies have not found this to be true. We do not know for certain that aluminum causes Alzheimer's disease," the agency's website says.
The Alzheimer's Society also admits that "the overwhelming medical and scientific opinion is that the findings outlined above do not convincingly demonstrate a causal relationship between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease, and that no useful medical or public health recommendations can be made ' at least at present."
Although they don't reveal what they are, ATSDR also notes that "some adverse effects" have been seen among those with long term oral exposure to aluminum. What About Lined Aluminum Bottles?
4. Some aluminum bottles contain liners, which the manufacturers claim prevent aluminum from leaching into the drink within. Sigg, one of the most popular aluminum bottle makers, includes a lining in their bottles that they stress is FDA approved and protects users from potentially harmful aluminum. The problem is, they won't reveal what the liner is made from -- and, of course, the FDA also approves the use of BPA. Other Alternatives
5. Old-fashioned steel water bottles are considered safe, since they do not leach chemicals; just be sure the plastic spout (if there is one) is BPA free. Other good alternatives are drinks in cardboard containers with BPA-free spouts. IceBox water is a good example; it's made from 100% recyclable cardboard (from sustainable forests) and has a BPA free spout (made from the same material as modern IV bags).
um, what are beer & pop cans made of? and these have actual acids & solvents this has a pretty wide impact.
but - personally - my fav thing to drink from is ceramic, then glass. when I drank pop - Pepsi from a glass bottle was golden. tho - from a can - Mtn Dew is best. always prefer beer from glass than from can.
but, glass & ceramic are way to breakable for mass production & consumption. and, are heavy - for shipping. and, of course, the lawyer fun with shards. our consumption based litigious society will not allow for good taste at least we can still get beer bottles
I usually just drink from the garden hose--which yeah, I know--it's just one step up from drinking from a dipper that sat in a bucket of water on the kitchen counter.
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11:46 AM
87antuzzi Member
Posts: 11151 From: Surrounded by corn. Registered: Feb 2009
I usually just drink from the garden hose--which yeah, I know--it's just one step up from drinking from a dipper that sat in a bucket of water on the kitchen counter.
but hose water taste soooooo friggen good.
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11:52 AM
hookdonspeed Member
Posts: 7980 From: baltimore, md Registered: May 2008
agreed, them lead pipes add a mighty fine taste if i do say so myself....
i drink tap / hose water all the time, i havent died yet...
funny story, my cousin buys that expencvie bottled water, even has a filter on the sink for when she washes dishes (yea shes weird like that), keeps it in a pantry closet, get a glass outa the cabnet, fills it with ice from her ice maker, and pours the water into the glass, ask her why she didnt just get tap water, she goes off on some rant about how bad it is for you, then i point out where the water for her now melted ice came from... was priceless...
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11:57 AM
Pyrthian Member
Posts: 29569 From: Detroit, MI Registered: Jul 2002
Originally posted by hookdonspeed: agreed, them lead pipes add a mighty fine taste if i do say so myself....
i drink tap / hose water all the time, i havent died yet...
funny story, my cousin buys that expencvie bottled water, even has a filter on the sink for when she washes dishes (yea shes weird like that), keeps it in a pantry closet, get a glass outa the cabnet, fills it with ice from her ice maker, and pours the water into the glass, ask her why she didnt just get tap water, she goes off on some rant about how bad it is for you, then i point out where the water for her now melted ice came from... was priceless...
yup
but - the freezing does destroy most of the biological stuff anyways - I do use a Brita pitcher, which I keep in the fridge. but, I also drink alot of water. and - yes - I do fill the ice tray with Brita water.
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12:06 PM
dn69141 Member
Posts: 448 From: Sidney Nebraska Registered: Feb 2010
... then i point out where the water for her now melted ice came from ...
Around our house we do it the other way. We only drink tap water, but the ice maker gets super-clean (and aluminum free!) deionized water from our reverse osmosis system. We also use RO water to make coffee. Both ice maker and coffee maker are still lime free after all these years.
IMHO, the whole Aluminum thing is much ado about nothing, promoted by those who have some commercial interest in exploiting the "controversy" and/or by those who have no understanding of the chemistry involved.
Fact: To date, there is no evidence whatsoever that dietary aluminum is related to development of the amyloid plaques asscoiated with Alzheimer's Disease.
Fact: Aluminum is one of the most abundant elements in the Earth's crust ... about 8%, second only to Silicon and Oxygen ... so we are exposed to natural sources all the time. But since Aluminum has a very high affinity for Oxygen, virtually all the Aluminum in the world is tightly bound into stable and non-reactive Aluminum oxides or hydroxides ... most commonly Alumina (Al2O3) or Bauxite (Al(OH)x). It was only in the middle 1800s that metallurgists were finally able to produce metallic Aluminum, and back then it was much more expensive than Gold.
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 08-31-2010).]
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01:44 PM
Mickey_Moose Member
Posts: 7582 From: Edmonton, AB, Canada Registered: May 2001
but - the freezing does destroy most of the biological stuff
...no - the only way to kill organics in water is exposure to UV light, you stil have to run the water through a reverse osmosis process to filter them out. To completely clean the water you will also have to ad is some sort of ozone treatment.
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01:49 PM
PFF
System Bot
2.5 Member
Posts: 43235 From: Southern MN Registered: May 2007
um, what are beer & pop cans made of? and these have actual acids & solvents this has a pretty wide impact.
but - personally - my fav thing to drink from is ceramic, then glass. when I drank pop - Pepsi from a glass bottle was golden. tho - from a can - Mtn Dew is best. always prefer beer from glass than from can.
but, glass & ceramic are way to breakable for mass production & consumption. and, are heavy - for shipping. and, of course, the lawyer fun with shards. our consumption based litigious society will not allow for good taste at least we can still get beer bottles
Kind of why I took notice a bit, so dew taste better out of a can than a glass bottle, so you are tasting aluminum? But on the other hand cans were steel and bottles were glass and the folks with alzheimers today only drank from aluminum cans since what,, was it the 80's when aluminum cans took off? I was just reminded of this recently and though I wonder if anyone on PFF knows..
Not sure if this has been addressed, but HEAT plays a factor with some materials leaching harmful chemicals (a cold drink is 'safe', but pour hot liquids in, and the crap leaches out...
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02:02 PM
Marvin McInnis Member
Posts: 11599 From: ~ Kansas City, USA Registered: Apr 2002
... the folks with alzheimers today only drank from aluminum cans since what,, was it the 80's when aluminum cans took off?
Alzheimer's Disease had been around for a long time before physician Alois Alzheimer first described it in 1906. Prior to that time it had just been called "senile dementia" and considered the same as other age-related dementias.
Aluminum kitchenware and cooking pans have been in use for a long time. (I have an aluminum skillet that was a wedding gift to my grandparents, circa 1915.) Aluminum was used for mess plates, cups, and utensils, as well as canteens, during WW-I. It was also widely used after WW-I for camp cookware. Aluminum drinking glasses (usually color anodized) were a big fad after WW-II, from the late 1940s through the 1950s. Aluminum beer and soda cans came into wide use in the 1960s, replacing tinned steel, but the protective internal epoxy coatings came later.
The cruel fact is that the incidence of Alzheimer's Disease has been increasing steadily for at least 50 years, but that increase is almost solely due to the fact that susceptible individuals are living so much longer that they aren't dying of something else first.
What about mental disabilities in children? Does anyone believe that the increase in these cases could be caused by their parents imbibing liquids from Aluminum cans? Not sure if cases like Autism are on the rise or whatever, but you sure hear a lot more about it nowadays. Any data in support or against?
who the F cares *takes a drink* i think we woulda heard about it before now.... give me back the glass bottle...
This is my stand point on this... People have been drinkin about of cans for years and a study saying that it causes brain damage is complete and utter BS. This is a prime example someone finding somthing to b*tch about. And if they really cand make a decision about it than tell them to stop being a bunch of cheap a$$'es and use glass bottels. They can be recycled they can be sterlized and can be reused.
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02:35 PM
hookdonspeed Member
Posts: 7980 From: baltimore, md Registered: May 2008
This is my stand point on this... People have been drinkin about of cans for years and a study saying that it causes brain damage is complete and utter BS. This is a prime example someone finding somthing to b*tch about. And if they really cand make a decision about it than tell them to stop being a bunch of cheap a$$'es and use glass bottels. They can be recycled they can be sterlized and can be reused.
then they will find something wrong with glass.... didnt you know that?
The more sanitized our society gets, the more susceptible we become to very minor biological creepy crawlers that we would just crap out a hundred years before.
So I eat food off the floor, drink water out of the hose (ohh noooo!), and I never get sick.
I could say that I do it on purpose to keep myself strong. But in reality it's more that I just don't care. Everything causes cancer. By the time one of those things finally gets me I'll probably be ready to go anyways.
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02:38 PM
Doug85GT Member
Posts: 9956 From: Sacramento CA USA Registered: May 2003
Not sure if this has been addressed, but HEAT plays a factor with some materials leaching harmful chemicals (a cold drink is 'safe', but pour hot liquids in, and the crap leaches out...
Makes you wonder about the heat these "cold" drinks are exposed to during processing and shipping though.
BPA is a chemical that mimics estrogen, Health Canada banned it in baby bottles but I watched a program recently that showed how many things it's in, pretty much anything you can imagine.
Statistics Canada data released in August 2010 found about 91 per cent of Canadians have detectable levels of BPA in their bodies, with those between ages 12 and 19 most likely to have the chemical in them. The findings are consistent with results from international studies — BPA has been detected in 93 per cent of Americans aged six or older, and 99 per cent of Germans aged three to 14
Makes you wonder about the heat these "cold" drinks are exposed to during processing and shipping though.
BPA is a chemical that mimics estrogen, Health Canada banned it in baby bottles but I watched a program recently that showed how many things it's in, pretty much anything you can imagine.
Statistics Canada data released in August 2010 found about 91 per cent of Canadians have detectable levels of BPA in their bodies, with those between ages 12 and 19 most likely to have the chemical in them. The findings are consistent with results from international studies — BPA has been detected in 93 per cent of Americans aged six or older, and 99 per cent of Germans aged three to 14
Makes you wonder about the heat these "cold" drinks are exposed to during processing and shipping though.
From experience I can tell you that soda, and bottled water typically goes through an un-cooled warehouse, where temperatures can easily get above 110* F in the summer. Higher if the warehouse is in the southwest. After setting there for what can amount to months, they are placed in an even hotter delivery truck, then to a store where they go from shelves to coolers, and back again if we are lucky.
yup
