Check Your Plastic Bottles... Some Could Be Harmful To Your Health
This morning on NBC's Today Show, they were talking about all of the controversy surrounding the numbers on the bottom of plastic bottles. There is a new government report regarding the safety of plastic bottles.
Supposedly, if there's a 3, 6, or 7 inside that little triangle on the bottom of the bottle, then it's not the best kind of plastic that you'd want to be eating or drinking from.
For example, some plastic bottles contain Bisphenol A (or BPA) -- a chemical that has been linked to reproductive and fertility problems. Turns out, this may just be the tip of the iceberg...
The fact of the matter is... plastics with those numbers might "leach" too many harmful chemicals into your foods -- especially when those plastic bottles are exposed to heat (from microwaving or the dishwasher) or excessive wear (where the plastic stains, chips, or peels).
Here is NBC's first report on plastic bottle warnings:
Here is NBC's follow-up report the very next day:
For More Information...
They said that best website for more information is: http://www.iatp.org/. They recommended the IATP site for details about:
- a description of the numbers found on the bottom of plastic bottles (1 through 7)
- what each of those numbers means
- and which chemicals, specifically, are found in bottles with each of those numbers
NOTE: NBC's heavy traffic appears to have crashed the IATP site -- at least temporarily. Here it is 1 hour after the show aired, and I'm still getting blank screens and error messages from the IATP site.
Well, one thing's for sure... I plan to do what Dr. Nancy Sniderman did today. I'd like to see which numbers appear on the bottom of all the plastic bottles in our house. We don't have a lot of them though -- especially since we recently switched from plastic food storage bowls to glass food storage bowls.
And, for what it's worth, I predict that the "word of the year" at the end of 2008 will be: LEACH.
More About Plastic Bottles
Wow. I had no idea.