Introduction

In listening to one of Lewis Black’s delightful rants on ‘bottled water’ at one of his HBO specials, I’m reminded of a quote: “People seem to get nostalgic about a lot of things they weren’t so crazy about the first time around.”

Although his monologue was merely for comic effect, it gets you to think about how pointless it is to reminisce about the past (that you weren’t too thrilled, to begin with, in the first place) and how annoying people who carry a bottle of water around are, as if they’re in the middle of the freekin’ Mojave desert.

And if that’s not enough, the controversy with using Polycarbonate Bottles to bottle this precious resource called ‘water’ doesn’t make this topic particularly popular at the dinner table, the water cooler, or anywhere else.

Bottled Water (er… BPA Water!!!) if you will

Polycarbonate bottles are everywhere and in regular use by folks who would like to avoid disposable plastic bottles (in their race to save the planet, perhaps) used to store water.

Watercoolers, baby bottles, sippy cups, sports bottles, tumblers, and rocks glasses are just a few on a long list of products made with polycarbonate plastic. Even though their biggest advantages lie in being reusable for a long time, unbreakable, and very portable due to their lightness of weight, the real issue is with Bisphenol A (BPA), which is the organic compound used to make these plastic products that have been known to be hazardous to human health from times as early as the 1930s.

BPA and its effects on human health

Linked to causing diseases such as cardiovascular illnesses,  diabetes, breast and prostate cancer, and neuroblastoma while also causing obesity and neurological imbalances, the compound BPA is known to be an endocrine disruptor.

An eye-raising discovery made in a study by the Department of Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill in December 2009 was the link between prenatal BPA and the cases of externalizing behavior in two-year-old female children associated with hyperactivity, aggression, and delinquency.

If that wasn’t enough, another study conducted by the Department of Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in September 2009 which tried to substantiate the association between the use of polycarbonate beverage containers and urinary BPA concentrations in humans, found that the concentration levels of BPA in urine samples had increased by almost two-thirds regardless of exposure to other BPA sources.

Alternatives to BPA Bottles

With more and more people (especially parents) concerned about this issue, several alternatives are available both online as well as in retail stores  that have been manufactured by the companies listed below such as:

1. EvenFlo

2. Green to Grow

3. Mambaby

4. Klean Kanteen

5. Medela

6. Thermos

In Closing

Even though several scientists and environmental organizations have requested (and, in some cases, demanded) the ban on this compound to be made, some countries continue to ignore the research that has gone into validating the unsafe use of BPA in consumer products.

All this controversy has caused some manufacturers to stop using BPA to produce Bpa Bottles, and no matter what you think about who’s crazy, the truth is that only time will tell whether folks are being paranoid.

So much for the craziness around bottled water… huh, Lewis?

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