Watching all of the news coming out of the Gulf right now tears me apart.  I spent some time in Fort Walton Beach last year and have to say that they are some of the loveliest beaches ever.  It’s such a tragedy for the marine life and the people who live in and make their living in that part of the world.

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts that, naturally, discuss how we can cut our oil consumption.  I was particularly struck by the heartfelt blog post I read at Tiny Choices – one of my favorite blogs.  I’ve been thinking about it for some time.  They seemed to have the same reaction I did.  It’s really not about whether we should drill in Alaska – it’s really about being more mindful about how we choose to use what’s available to us.  Where am I going with this?  Simple.  According to the Pacific Institute:

Producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation…The Pacific Institute estimates that the total amount of energy embedded in our use of bottled water can be as high as the equivalent of filling a plastic bottle one quarter full with oil.

Choosing a reusable water bottle is an easy way to cut back on your personal oil consumption.  Got any other ideas?  We’d love to hear them!

We received a reply on our blog about what’s leaching into the disposable bottles.  In it, the blogger asked about nickel and chromium leaching into water from stainless bottles. Good question!  So, I spent some time searching for the answer. Well, try as I may, I really didn’t come up with anything to sway me from drinking from them.

There are many different grades of stainless steel.  The steels are classified according to their chromium and nickel content.  We sell mainly 18/8 (18% chromium/8% nickel) stainless steel, which is food grade and is used in dairies, in beer manufacturing, and all kinds of food prep.  Guyot bottles, available here, are made from surgical grade stainless steel which is made from 18/10 (18% chromium/8% nickel) stainless steel.

In the studies that I read, the testing was on pots, pans, and kitchen utensils.  These were subject to extreme heat and also different substances with different levels of acidity.  I felt it fair to use these studies based on the fact that I fill my stainless traveler everyday with coffee – a hot and highly acidic beverage.  I drink mostly water from my bottles other than that.  A summary from The International Chromium Development Association’s Report about leaching said this: “Small amounts of chromium will leach from stainless steel utensils into food during its processing, storage and during meal preparation…No toxicity is to be expected from the chromium leached from kitchenware, it may in fact be beneficial to health, since the amounts of chromium in present Western-type diets are generally small in comparison to amounts considered to be optimal.”

I then turned my thoughts to Nickel leaching, and found that, yes, it does occur.  Is it cause for concern?  Here’s what Klean Kanteen says about leaching on their site:  “Approximately 10-15% of the population is sensitive to nickel, but the health effects of nickel are highly dependent on the manner and degree of exposure.  The stainless steel used to make Klean Kanteens® has a low nickel content and is the preferred material used by breweries and dairies.”  Again, the only tests that I could find in relation to linking nickel leaching to stainless steel involved cooking utensils and different acidity levels of food.  There are other, more surprising, nickel exposure sources such as shellfish, chocolate milk, beans, and even costume jewelry that concern me more.

In short, I’m far more comfortable drinking from a stainless bottle than wondering what’s leaching from a disposable!  Feel differently?  I’d love to know why!

A November article in EHP discusses what may be leaching from PET water bottles.  Phthalates and Antimony is the answer and it’s reason enough to ditch the disposables.

Phthalates, as defined by the EWG, are a group of chemicals used to make plastics.  What’s so bad about them?  Mostly, they’ve been found to disrupt the endocrine system.  Also known as gender-bending chemicals, they have “caused reduced sperm counts, testicular atrophy, and structual abnormalities in the reprodutive systems of male test animals.”  They mimic estrogen.  That’s not good.

Antimony is an element that’s found in nature.  It’s also “widely used as a catalyst in the polycondesation of PET” and the longer a bottle sits on the shelf or in storage, the more contaminated it is with antimony – even at room temperature!  Why don’t you want antimony in your water?  Because it’s toxic and it’s also considered to have “high estrogenicity.”

In some disposable bottles that were tested for antimony, after just 12 days at 70 degrees, the concentration of antimony reached 6 ppb in 12 days.  At 80 degrees, it only took 2.3 days!  In this study,  they considered that water being shipped in a truck in Arizona (high temp state) could create antimony levels at 6 ppb during shipping.  6 ppb is the maximum contaminant level established by the EPA and Health Canada. (The German Federal Ministry of Environment set theirs at 5 ppb and the Japanese and less than 2 ppb!)

So – before you purchase a few cases of water for the baseball team this weekend, take this information into consideration.  Last weekend our team planned an impromptu barbeque and I ran out and bought two.  They sat on the bleachers in the 83 degree, sunny day for a few hours and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.  It was the first bottled water purchase I’ve made in about 18 months.  My solution?  I’m going to purchase a huge water thermos for the kids and supply reusable bottles from H2Ox2.com.

If you’d like to do the same, please contact me directly.  I’d be happy to work out a group discount for your team, or you can use it as a fundraiser.  Let’s stop serving our kids “estrogen cocktails” and help the environment, too!

Welcome Back!

We’re back and much improved!   Our web gurus have  streamlined the product navigation and made check out so much easier.  We hope you’ll like it and, if not, please tell us why!  We like improving!  We’re still tweaking product photos here and there so if you’re not seeing what you’re looking for, please feel free to contact us!

I’d like to start by offering you a visual gift:  Have you seen The Story of Stuff?  Well, now there’s The Story of Bottled Water and it represents every reason why I started this company!  It’s a simple, funny – smack yourself in the head kinda’ funny – look at how and why we are/were bottled water addicts.  We all give it two thumbs up!

Please  join our Email Exclusives to get first crack at special offers, sales, exclusive promotions, and hints about Where In The World is H2Ox2? (It’s back and we’re ready to play!)   In case you’re not familiar, we post a photo of a bottle in a different spot around the globe each month and draw a name, at random, from all the people who’ve correctly identified it’s location.  That person gets to select any free bottle of their choice on the site!

We lost our blog in the transition, but there’s so much more information available regarding eliminating disposable water bottles and water that we’re sure we’ll quickly be providing you with all the relevant information you could possibly want!  This week, we’re going to focus on updating our readers on where we stand, as a country, with BPA.  It was one of H2Ox2’s  big reasons for focusing on metal bottles early on and we’re still banging the drum!

We hope you’ll visit often!  We promise to keep you informed – and entertained!

Cheers!

Julia