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.