Nalgene Bottles

Marketing being what it is, the makers of stainless steel drinking bottles, bolstered by some science behind it, have made known that Nalgene bottles contain (or used to contain) BPA, or Bisphenol-A, and that we should avoid exposure to BPA. i.e., we should avoid buying nalgene drinking bottles, and buy their products instead.

Fair enough. Marketing's doing what it's supposed to do. Those stainless steel Klean Kanteens are selling like hotKakes. And maybe that's a good thing.

Problem is, those Klean Kanteens are manufactured in China, where they're not all that able to boast of their environmental stewardship. That might also explain the spelling problem.

I won't try to tell you that one product is safe over another. That's your own call. I'm not a scientist, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I can suggest that you use your head to figure these things out. As a good friend (and brother) mentioned in his blog, not everything on the internet is true and accurate.

This, for example, is from www.bisphenol-a.org

You decide:

"Researchers from government agencies, academia, and industry worldwide have studied the potential for bisphenol A (BPA) to migrate from polycarbonate products into foods and beverages. These studies consistently show that the potential migration of BPA into food is extremely low, generally less than 5 parts per billion under conditions typical for uses of polycarbonate products. At this level, a consumer would have to ingest more than 1,300 pounds of food and beverages in contact with polycarbonate every day for an entire lifetime to exceed the safe level of BPA set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Consequently, human exposure to BPA from polycarbonate plastics is minimal and poses no known health risk."

Yeah, I don't really know what that means, either. Call me a cynic, but the simple fact that this research came from "government agencies, academia, and industry worldwide" raises my level of skepticism.

So, here's an option...a BPA-free Nalgene bottle that's made in the USA! It's called the Nalgene Triton.

Toast!