It's Really Dangerous To ReUse Plastic Bottles. Not.

Any of you who stay in the Klang Valley area can drop by a Living Quarters shop and see a large collection of drinking bottles for sale. They're like slightly overpriced drinking flasks, and above them (or below - I can't quite remember which) is the following statement:

Many are unaware of poisoning caused by re-using plastic bottles. Some of you may be in the habit of using and re-using your disposable mineral water bottles (eg. Evian, Aqua, Ice Mountain, Vita, etc), keeping them in your car or at work. Not a good idea. In a nutshell, the plastic (called polyethylene terephthalate or PET) used in these bottles contains a potentially carcinogenic element (something called diethylhydroxylamine or DEHA). The bottles are safe for one-time use only; if you must keep them longer, it should be or no more than a few days, a week max, and keep them away from heat as well. Repeated washing and rinsing can cause the plastic to break down and the carcinogens (cancer-causing chemical agents) can leach into the water that YOU are drinking. Better to invest in water bottles that are really meant for multiple uses. This is not something we should be scrimping on. Those of you with family - to please advise them, especially children.

Now, it doesn't take much of a skeptic to look at this and wonder if there is much truth to it. And lo and behold, it seems there isn't.

I reference the famous Snopes.com that has an entire article on it. Basically, it seems that these bottles don't even contain DEHA, which pretty much settles the whole argument.

The reason why I'm writing about all this is because it annoys me tremendously when somebody is just too lazy to check things up. Granted, it may be possible that the marketing person who decided to put this up in the shop just got this through the email and thought that it was a happy coincidence.

Well, in this day and age, ignorance should be less and less of an excuse. It doesn't take a minute to enter the pharase "plastic bottles PET DEHA" into Google and come up with the snopes.com website. Once you're there you can check the other references that they have. Not difficult at all.

Grr.