Plastic

Plastic bottles can be seen everywhere. Almost everyone if not all the people in the world have held this plastic bottles, drank from them and or at least seen them. This bottles are usually filled with water,juices or sodas. Reuse, reduce and recycle is something many people follow when it comes to plastic bottles. They are reused more than one time after the original contents are finished.

Plastic bottles are generally made from plastic #1 polyethylene terephthalate( PET or PETE) or polycarbonate plastic. Polycarbonate plastic is a polymer made of bisphenol A (BPA). There are disputes on whether BPA is harmful to the body. BPA is said to interfere with the body's natural hormonal messaging system. Studies show that repeated usage of these bottles increases the chance of chemicals leaking out from the bottle into whatever beverages are in it. Besides that, hot substances in these things made from plastic can also cause leakage of chemicals. BPA is used to make linings of food and drink cans besides CD cases, plastic knives and forks and dental sealants. There's concern expressed about physiological changes that occur in people when they ingest BPA thats has leached from plastics into their food

or drinks.

Some studies on animals have suggested that it is safe but others bring to rise serious concerns.

BPA mimics the female sex hormone, oestrogen. It has been linked in animals to breast cancer, liver damage, obesity, diabetes, fertility problems in males and developmental disorders in the young. Professor David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School, Exeter,who led the research said, " Our study has revealed for the first time an association between raised BPA loads and two common diseases in adults." He said that for the time being, it isn't confirmed that BPA is the direct cause of the extra cases of heart disease and diabetes but if it is, these serious conditions could be prevented by reducing BPA exposure.

The federal National Toxicology Program said Tuesday that experiments on rats found precancerous tumours, urinary tract problems and early puberty when they were fed or injected with low doses of the plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

After all this, you may think that you cannot reuse bottles anymore. But that is not true. Bottles are made of different kind of plastics. Do NOT reuse bottles made from :

1. Plastic # 1(PET)

2. Plastic # 3 (Polyvinyl chloride) as it can leach hormones disrupting chemicals into the liquids they are storing and will release synthetic carcinogens into the environment when incinerated.

3. Plastic # 6 (polystyrene) as it has been shown to leach styrene, a probable human carcinogen into food and drinks as well.

Bottles made from the following are safe to use:

1. HDPE ( plastic # 2)

2. Low density polyethene ( LDPE, plastic # 4)

3. Polypropylene (PP, plastic # 5)

Aluminium bottles and stainless steel water bottles however are the safest choice when it comes to reusing

bottles.