Image Credit:Shutterstock/iamshutter Plastic water bottles are not only a blight on the environment, it turns out they’re bad for your health too.
Critics suggest this can make it harder to conceive and that its presences in children’s’ products – including feeding bottles – causes adverse effects in children.
Despite plastics undergoing rigorous testing to ensure they abide by legislation, the use of BPA has been banned in many countries, especially where used in children’s products, with many manufacturers replacing it with chemicals such as fluroene-9-bisphenol (BHBP).
Such studies do not accurately reflect human exposure, and as a result many bodies, including Cancer Research UK, state that there is no good scientific evidence that using plastic bottles or containers cause cancer, or other diseases.
However, the levels of BPA and other chemicals entering food and drink from containers are much lower than those considered safe.
Following a full scientific review into BPA in 2015, the EFSA concluded there was no health risk to people of any age including unborn children at current BPA exposure levels.
Early in 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a health review after microplastics in the form of plastic fibres were found in 93% of popular bottled water brands.
Research from the State University of New York in Fredonia analysed 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries and 11 different brands and found, in some instances, the levels of plastic fibres in bottled water were double those found in tap water in a previous study.
Analysis of the bottled water revealed an average of 10.4 microplastic particles larger than 100um per liter of water which was confirmed by FTIR spectroscopic analysis, and an average of 325 smaller particles sized 6.5-100um per liter.
A second, unrelated study analysed 19 bottles of water and found the presence plastic microfibres were widespread.