Otsuka Beverage Co. Ltd, a Japanese company, has recalled eight million bottles of Crystal Geyser mineral water after receiving 75 complaints about its bad smell.

Consumers were complaining it smelled like insecticide and medicine.  Apparently, the water was tested and there were no problems with it, but they believe the plastic bottles may have absorbed smells that they were exposed to.

This is just on the heels of Kirin Beverage recalling over half a million bottles of Volvic after finding that some of the bottles smelled like paint.

I may be simplifying things, but it seems logical to me that if the plastic in these disposables is “porous” enough to absorb smells, it would potentially leach chemicals into the water.

Why take chances?  Drink from a reuseable metal bottle that won’t leach anything - no matter what you store it next to!

Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada have identified two chemicals leaching from the commonly used polypropylene as the cause for ruining an experiment that they were conducting.  The chemicals are quaternary ammonium biocides and oleamide.

According to The Toronto Globe & Mail, the researchers were “conducting experiments on a human enzyme that is the target for drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease.”  In the course of their experiments, they encountered a “mystery substance” that was interfering with their tests.  After more investigation, they found it to be oleamide that was leaching from the polypropylene plastic tubes. It’s used to “improve the fluidity of molten plastic” and is fairly commonly found in many food containers such as yogurt cups and cream cheese containers. These containers are marked with the recycling code 5.

For more information on this topic, I’d recommend In Search of Safe Plastics by Olga Naidenko, Ph.D on Enviroblog, as well as the article in The Globe and Mail.

For us, it really isn’t an issue about whether what’s leaching is safe or not.  It’s about the safety of any leaching.  Why not make a simple choice to avoid it with a metal water bottle?