http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWO_5lKVBAA

-Livan

http://ecobags.com/Our_Products/SIGG-Water-Bottles

I have heard mostly positive things about the fact that they don’t leach too much (anything?) into it’s contents….any thoughts?

1. Mountain Equipment Co-op did not perform any research or come up with new research. MEC did not come to the conclusion that, “these toxins could permeate everything that is contained in these bottles.” Every article out there states that MEC is waiting for Health Canada to make such a determination.

2. The article states that BPA is dispersed into Nalgene bottle’s contents and then implies that that the level of BPA dispersed by the Nalgene bottles is high enough to be connected with some serious health concerns. This implication is false and if I were Nalgene, I’d be looking to sue. The truth is that studies have shown you’d need to eat 600kg of food before you’d reach unsafe levels (source: http://www.bisphenol-a.org/human/polyplastics.html )

Your last paragraph states two unrelated facts. Yes, Canadians have BPA in their systems and yes, the bottles have been removed from shelves at MEC but not because Canadians have BPA in their systems. The bottles were removed because MEC’s customers (members) decided to have a “wait & see” attitude on this issue.

Lastly, for those of you that give up Nalgene bottles because of articles like the one above, I hope you also give up eating any vegetables or food that is stored in cans as many cans are lined with BPA as well and leech far more BPA into your food than Nalgene bottles ever will.

If the author has time to write and post this article, she certainly has time to check her facts. If not for her own credibility then she should for the sake of the site.

To clarify, I am not concerned with one single factual error. There are multiple errors that contributed to a general lack of accuracy in the piece as a whole. Obviously the Lexan brand name error came from Gadling (they changed it after I mouthed off to them), but I’ve read many of the articles and blog entries surrounding this issue and Shabana introduces new information that I have yet to see anywhere else. I understand what it’s like to try to take a played out story and make it your own, but sometimes this careless rewording leads you so far astray that you’re distorting the facts.

I am willing to concede that mindless was a poor choice of word, but I would retract it only to replace it with careless. I do not condemn Shabana as a writer, but I do believe that a very poor choice was made to rush a post on a buzz topic, and if my being an ass and unloading my (unfair?) general frustration on her teaches her to take a bit more care in the future then perhaps it was all worthwhile.

Publishing on the internet opens you up to criticism from every nutjob with a keyboard, don’t it?

Mark: I’ve updated the original post to correct for the factual error regarding Lexan. Thanks for setting us straight on that point.

It’s funny you mention the “game of telephone” in regards to how stories and news are often passed around the blogging world. I couldn’t help but think of the same thing yesterday after I replied to your comment.

Please understand that we never simply report our news or sideline features willy nilly from any source on the web. We rely on hand-picked, oft reliable sources for same. Gadling is one such source. In this case, they reported a factual error which we relied on. (On a side note: they’ve since corrected their original post as well.)

In a perfect world, blogs and other web sources should be held to the same high standard as the Boston Globe, CNN, et. al. However you must realize that this blog, like many others, is a labor of love and not a true commercial endeavor. As such, we simply don’t have the resources of a full time fact-checking staff to verify each and every single fact we find online with the same level of thoroughness and scrutiny as the mainstream media.

I’m happy that you have the time available to do so on stories such as this which are of particular interest to you. Because of your enthusiasm, you were able to set us straight and the error has been noted and corrected.

That said, I take issue with your use of the word “mindless” in describing Shabana’s work. It is possible to be mindful and still make a factual error, which is exactly what happened here.

Even the mainstream media allows for corrections and retractions. And I certainly appreciate our readers pointing out our faults or errors in reporting whenever necessary.

Nalgene has links to many of the government studies: Nalgene Link

Stainless steel bottles are nice, but even Guyot Designs are being made outside of the USA, and the quality control is not held up to the same standards. I do like Guyot products a lot, and the stainless steel widemouths are nice, but they won’t replace my nalgene. I like to be able to see what I drink and be able to fully clean the bottle.

All nalgene products are made in the USA, and held up to the most rigorous standards in the world when it comes to safety.

The whole BPA thing is a result of emotionally charged media reacting to the vocal opinions of a tiny minority with an agenda.

There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace right now. The bottom
line is that any aluminum bottle is lined with epoxy which is a
plastic resin.
To the best of my knowledge there
is only one wide mouth stainless steel bottle on the market which has
the same threads as a Nalgene. Please check them out at
http://www.guyotdesigns.com. They are really sturdy and you can boil water in ‘em.

I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, and have seen many stories about polycarbonates and bisphenol A flow through in the last few days. While most of them seem to contain the same information, this piece stood out as being on the wrong end of a telephone game where mindless rewording of other people’s labour has been warped into something that no one should be reading. It’s the mentality that this is acceptable behavior that I’m railing against.

I normally have a policy of letting my opinions sit for 24 hours before posting them online, and despite my better judgment I ignored that this morning. My comment could have been about half the length that it was, but my opinion still stands.

For anyone interested in the story, I did a quick search and found the press release from Mountain Equipment Co-op:

“VANCOUVER, Dec. 7 /CNW/ – Inconclusive science and regulatory uncertainty presently surrounds bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that is a ‘building block’ of polycarbonate plastic. For these reasons, Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) has stopped selling polycarbonate water bottles and food containers until guidance is provided by the Government of Canada on the potential health risks posed by BPA. MEC’s deliberations on this matter will
be guided by the risk assessment of BPA that is currently underway through the federal government’s Chemicals Management Plan.
MEC has followed the BPA issue closely for at least three years. The move to stop selling polycarbonate water bottles and food containers was an internal decision that is consistent with our commitment to being a responsible retailer. To that end, our product offering presently includes functional alternatives to many of the polycarbonate products that we have now stopped selling.”

Thanks for your rebuttal, Mike. I think it’s important for people to have their opinions challenged on a regular basis.

So here’s my message…stop drinking from any bottle that makes you nervous…but don’t pick bottled water before you know the facts or the bottled water companies who “coincidentally” will benefit from this old news suddenly being new news win. I sell polycarbonate bottles. I knew of these issues before ever starting. We closely examined the science and we came to the conclusion that they are safe. If it ever turns out that there is conclusive science that they are not, we’ll move along. But please make sure you know the FACTS and don’t go back to drinking bottled tap water. That’s what is important here.