Bottled Water for Health-Nut Dummies

Different brands of bottled water bottles

If there's anything that rubs our in-house scientists the wrong way, it has to be bloggers who spread health-related rumors on the 'net in hopes of lining their pockets. You know the ones: today they're touting diet X₂₃, but their posts from six months ago were all about how diet Y₉ has helped them lose six thousand pounds in twenty minutes. Unfortunately, Demand Media gave some of them a forum for spreading their misinformation in return for small chunks of cash; that's where eHowian Megan Clancy tried to tell people "What Is the Healthiest Bottled Water?" (now¹ found at AzCentral.com).

Clancy's "sources" for her misinformation are hard to confirm. All she did was name a couple of people, presumably pretending that she'd interviewed them. If so, we certainly hope she misquoted her sources. We hope so because no MD and no official of the FDA should be saying things like,

"While it is true that plastics can melt into water in hot environments, the FDA considers it safe for people to drink bottled water left in hot cars."

We certainly hope none of the scientists at the FDA are so poorly educated they think plastic water bottles "can melt into water" at the temperatures encountered in a car, even one left sitting in the sun! The worry, of course, is that some of the lining of a water bottle might leach in hot water – highly unlikely if the water's been commercially bottled. Oh, yeah, and she also thinks that dioxin is "a form of plastic." Idiot.

Megan, apparently confused about the different plastics during the BPA scare of a decade ago – remember that? – continues misinforming her readers about the "dangers" of bottled water if it's in the "wrong bottle." With that confusion percolating through her journalist's brain, Clancy suggests that,

"Consumers can make sure that their plastic bottles were not made with Bisphenol A (BPA) by contacting the plastic bottle manufacturer..."

That's, quite frankly, a ridiculous suggestion; for two reasons. First, commercially bottled water is shipped in polyethylene, which doesn't contain phthalates such as BPA. Second, a consumer could die of old age before determining what manufacturer made the bottles used.by Fiji, Poland Spring, Perrier, Dasani, and the many others. She does, for some unknown reason, include the information that "The label 'PC' next to the recycle sign means the plastic bottle is made of polycarbonate," but that offhand statement is Megan's sole mention of polycarbonate.

When you come right down to it, Clancy prattled on for more than 200 words of misinformation without ever answering the question of which brand is "healthiest." In fact, all she talked about was plastic safety, leaving out any discussion of dissolved solids, electrolytes, organic contaminants, lead, selenium, of any other of the thousands of chemicals and elements that might be found in bottled water. Small wonder we voted Megan the Dumbass of the Day!

¹ The original has been deleted by AZCentral.com, which prohibited archiving by the Wayback machine at archive.org. Oh, well, no loss...   

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