A big swig of plastic: the issue with cheap water bottles

That stench. Rinsing out my children’s water bottles turns my stomach on a regular basis. And it’s not like the bottles have been left to fester in a sports bag for weeks. No sir. I collect them right after training, take a sip of the water, pour it down the drain and feel sick. How can water taste of plastic so much after just three hours? That can’t be healthy. Obviously, the easiest solution would be to switch to high-quality water bottles and take to heart the respective cleaning tips.

And it’s not like we don’t have a ton of alternatives sitting in our cupboard. But nothing breeds quite as quickly as plastic bottles. They’re handed out at nearly every tournament, vacation camp and other events as cheap giveaways adorned with the sponsor’s logo.

Unbreakable, unpalatable?

No question, they’re very handy. Breaking them is near impossible. You can take them everywhere. Even pros use them. One sip and into the air they go. Kids do the same – practising their bottle flip and forgetting them so often that lost and found boxes are overflowing. These are all rock-solid arguments why we should stick to plastic and leave the beautiful aluminium bottles in the cupboard. The last one of those I used suffered damage to its screw top after a crash. It’s since been leaky.

And so I scrub away at them with all my might and hope for the best – that the water isn’t as contaminated as it smells. At least concerning BPA, the danger has been recognised and eliminated. That means we’re safe, right? Or does it? While I can only hope, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have set out to find answers. Spoiler alert: the findings aren’t pretty.

For their study, they left tap water to sit at room temperature for 24 hours. The water was kept in new plastic bottles, in plastic bottles that had been in use for months and in glass bottles. This procedure was repeated after all bottles were put through one cycle in the dishwasher. They then used a mass spectrometer to detect chemical residues stemming from the bottles that shouldn’t be in drinking water. It’s the first time anything like this has been done.

Nothing conclusive

One problem that’s arisen is that the search for potential pollutants is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Plus, nobody knows what the needle looks like. Or how many needles there are. After all, so many different chemical substances are used in the production process of the bottles that detecting them can prove difficult.

Even the EU regulation on plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food seems to have given up a bit. At least when it comes to impurities that may be the result of manufacturing. The document only mentions a few of them and goes on to say: «However it is not possible to list and consider all impurities in the authorisation.» Only certain substances may be used intentionally. But anything that ends up in the bottle unintentionally or is released from the plastic during use likely remains undetected most of the time. The document further states that «any potential health risk in the final material or article arising from their use should be assessed by the manufacturer in accordance with internationally recognised scientific principles on risk assessment.» How helpful.

Softeners and other agents in the water

Taking a look at my own pile of cheaply produced plastic has my trust dwindling. Unlike my interest in the practical approach hailing from Denmark: take tap water – put in plastic bottles – inspect. Using non-target screening (link in German). The goal is to detect as many substances as possible contained in one sample. In other words, to shake out all the needles from the proverbial haystack – and find out what those needles are. As it turns out, there are many of them. A total of over 400 compounds were released from the bottles and ended up in the water.

They may emanate from the softening agents that keep the plastic flexible. Or from the lubricants used to get the bottles out of their moulds during production. Or from the dyes added to make the plastic colourful. Bleurgh. The water samples from the older bottles, above all, contained softeners, antioxidants (link in German), which are said to inhibit the ageing process of the plastic, and photoinitiators (link in German). The latter are considered particularly critical by the team of authors because they can alter your hormone system. At least there were no more traces of BPA to be found.

Avoid the dishwasher

Putting the water bottles in the dishwasher at 65 degrees only exacerbated the problem by adding soap residue to the list. Over 3,500 compounds were identified as residues after one cycle in the dishwasher. Even after the bottles were subsequently rinsed out several times by hand, 430 of the residues continued to end up in the «fresh» water. At least in the plastic bottles.

While repeated rinsing removed almost all residues from the glass bottles used in the test, some could not be shifted from the plastic bottles. In addition, the heat at work in the wash cycle probably transported other plastic compounds into the water.

Although this doesn’t automatically mean that these cheap sports accessories bring death and destruction, it does clearly prove that they have no place in dishwashers. It also shows that we still know far too little about this subject and that some solutions are mere eyewash. Bottles made of biodegradable plastic were also tested. Sounds good, green and puts your mind at rest. But, ultimately, it’s still made of plastic. And the researchers believe it may even more easily find its way into drinking water. This is just one of many reasons why other materials are a better choice. I’ll raise a glass to that.