you made me look
I put 6 gatoraid bottles in the freezer a couple of days ago. They are frozen solid. The plastic bottles are fine. I put water bottles in the freezer all the time without reducing the volume of any of these prior to freezing. I've had no problems with expansion causing the plastic to split or break open.
Because!
It was a LONG time ago…
Freezing water expands approx 10%
by volume. You figure it out.
:^)
Mick
glacial ice
fill 'em to the top. you want the pressure. it makes the ice freeze under pressure and actually will be colder. (I was told by a scientist guy)
I have been doing it for years. nalgene, pop bottles, whatever. cool to see a 2L pop expanded, under pressure.
steve
unscrew partially before freezing.
Insulated biking bottles
Saturday night I mixed an electrolyte drink inside an insulated bicycling water bottle (Polar something-or-other), put it in the freezer overnight, and inspected it Sunday morning before taking it paddling.
The bottle was not expanded at all. Best of all, the contents stayed cold a long time. I transported it inside a cooler to our paddling location (50 minutes drive). Then inside my hot cockpit on a 97-degree day. It had barely begun to thaw by the time I first tried to drink from it about 30 minutes later. I had good, cold, iced beverage through 14 miles of paddling.
Mmmmm…slushy gatorade
Slushy gatorade…good stuff!
yup
easy enough of a solution…this is what I do, b/c even freezing a nalgene, the pressure will distort and weaken the cap.
stopped freezing bottles
Freezing water, in my opinion was…the greatest! I have frozen aquafina water bottles, no name water bottles, and also my nalgenes, and other polycarbonite bottles and some strange things have occured. The water in various bottles tastes so awful we cannot drink it - various bottles at various times and used good filtered water in the reusables and the others had store bought water in them. Ironically my sister showed me an article on pc bottles #7 and better choices because of Bisphenol-A (BPA) leaching into the water. I am not one to get too alarmed over all the health scares but I believe this one is a real concern as I have tasted the water in these bottles (same type of bottle/same water but at different times one was awful and the other ok) frozen - a couple of times it was so bad that my daughter spit it out and with different ones so now unfortunately, i am replacing with the not so nice high density polyethylene bottles and using ice and a cold pack. Just something to think about in case this has happened to your frozen water bottles.
None are deemed totally safe but i will make a “hopefully” better choice for my family.
Yeah, the milkman would come early
in the morning, every other day. We lived in Newark, New Jersey. The Fruit Man would come, the Junk Man Would come and coal used to be delivered to bins in the basement. The doctor made house calls and TVs had were fixed in your house by the TV Man.
Only the Ice Cream Man still comes around.
Recycle hospital waste!
Well, not exactly. But if you have connections with folks who work in an inpatient hospital pharmacy or a company that makes IV solutions for medical applications, ask them about getting your hands on a bunch of those irrigation solution bottles that are manufactured by Abbott Laboratories. The bottles come in 250 ml, 500 ml, 1000 ml, and 1500 ml sizes and are ideal water containers for paddlers. Their rectangular shape conserves space; they are tough as nails; they do not impart any taste to contents; they don’t leak; and they and can be frozen repeatedly. The only ones I’ve ever damaged were those that I accidentally dropped straight from my freezer onto a concrete floor. (Oh, just be sure that you’re getting the bottles that used in the IV preparation area, not from those that were used where patients are treated. But you already knew that, didn’t you?)
George
carcinogens?
Hi folks
Seems like I’ve read somewhere more than once that freezing plastic bottles causes a chemical reaction which in turn releases carcinogens into the water.
Just food for thought.
Cancer
I just got an email from work that appeared legit. It was from John Hopkins hospital and the subject was cancer. I knew about not using saran wrap in the microwave but I did not know about not freezing water bottles.
yikes…
thanks for posting this. I’m going to try and find more info
urban myth
google it
steve
Also depends on the kind of water . . .
Freezing has no ill-effect. But even the report from JH stated that some chemicals can be released. And what it didn’t cover is that it depends on the quality of the water and the bottle.
Water with a high mineral content will not have the same ability to dissolve chemicals as one with low mineral content. In other words, reverse osmosis water (Aquafina, Dasani and others) is much more capable of dissolving things from plastic bottles than mineral water.
The other thing the guy didn’t cover is that it depends on the plastic quality. Recycled plastic is much more likely to dissolve into the water than higher quality, clear plastic bottles.
Don’t believe me? Get one of those really cheap, white plastic sports bottles with the lid and the straw coming out, put some Aquafina brand water in it and taste it the next morning. Nasty. Do the same thing in a Nalgene bottle. Nothing. No taste but the water itself. Try it again with mineral water. Less affected by the cheap bottle, but the taste will still be there.
JH can say there’s no dioxins coming out of plastic, but there ARE chemicals he’s not talking about doing so. That taste isn’t from nothing.
And he’s fairly ignorant about bottled water too. Since the majority of water on the market CAME from a municipal source, the water was already regulated. However, the FDA regulates it too. Here’s a link to the IBWA:
http://www.bottledwater.org/public/BWFactsHome_main.htm
Ignorant?
Not sure, I thinked I was dissed. Guns or knives?
In the mean time, I usually check out my emails but it looks like this should clear things up…
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/articles/halden_dioxins.html
I can’t imagine milk service in Houston
Most of the year if you left a bottle of milk by the back door you’d have rancid yogurt in a couple of hours.
Here is a grain of salt
It can certainly seem scary when you are confronted with chain emails and rumors from friends about BPA in polycarbonate and phthalates in polyethylene. Pretty soon, you start thinking you can taste these substances in the water you drink, especially after you do something different to it, like freezing it.
But think about it from a physicochemical standpoint, why would FREEZING cause leaching? It won’t. Time and increased temperature cause leaching, not quick freezing.
The bad taste of the water is easy to explain - you froze it, and then it thawed. Recently boiled water, left to cool, and frozen water left to thaw release the dissolved gases in them, tasting flat. When coke releases its dissolved gas, and goes flat, it doesn’t taste good, right? Or flat beer? It’s the same with water. We like a nice, gurgling water fountain because is aerates the water, getting gas into it, which tastes better.
So you froze your water, it thawed, and the gas left it, so it tastes flat, bad, and the other “flavors” that might be in it, chloramines, minerals from your pipes, become more prominent.
A grain of salt
It can certainly seem scary when you are confronted with chain emails and rumors from friends about BPA in polycarbonate and phthalates in polyethylene. Pretty soon, you start thinking you can taste these substances in the water you drink, especially after you do something different to it, like freezing it.
But think about it from a physicochemical standpoint, why would FREEZING cause leaching? It won’t. Time and increased temperature cause leaching, not quick freezing.
The bad taste of the water is easy to explain - you froze it, and then it thawed. Recently boiled water, left to cool, and frozen water left to thaw release the dissolved gases in them, tasting flat. When coke releases its dissolved gas, and goes flat, it doesn’t taste good, right? Or flat beer? It’s the same with water. We like a nice, gurgling water fountain because is aerates the water, getting gas into it, which tastes better.
So you froze your water, it thawed, and the gas left it, so it tastes flat, bad, and the other “flavors” that might be in it, chloramines, minerals from your pipes, become more prominent.