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Ever since 2007 there have been a few alerts show up on my Facebook page warning about cancer from plastic water bottles left in cars. Got another one today. I'm skeptical about everything these days so I check with Urban Legends and Snopes before passing anything on. This is what I found.
There are plenty of good reasons to avoid plastic bottles but I don't think breast cancer from bottles left in cars is one of them. I have no doubt all that plastic in our lives is unhealthy, however.
I avoid plastic as much as I can mostly because of pollution and expense.
We do keep small water bottles in the garage fridge for easy access to water when gardening, playing or hot days in the car and I try to never leave them in the car just cause they can build up. Also we never use plastic wrap in the microwave. We do use a hard plastic vented cover for microwave cooking. Kids use plastic containers for school lunches and they wash them out every afternoon. I use plastic containers for food storage in both fridge and freezer but I don't think I ever freeze anything in a plastic water bottle.
I wouldn't leave plastic bottles in the car, because then they won't be with me, which is why I took them out of the house in the first place. If they're empty, they come with me back home where I can either rinse and refill them, or toss them in the recycling bin.
I use plastic wrap all the time in the microwave. We've been doing that ever since the late 1980's. We were told to use plastic wrap instead of tin foil, and experiments we did at home showed the pretty sparks that would fly around if we tosses a tiny piece of foil on top of the dinner plate
We then learned that it's perfectly fine to use tin foil, you just have to use it appropriately.
There was a big scare that the radio waves in the TV set would turn you brain-damaged if you sat too close to it. That turned out to be bunk too.
Honestly - there are more interesting things to be paranoid about. Also, don't forget to take the bottle out of the car. Warm water doesn't taste good and frozen water isn't sippable.
I began to think that the water bottle industry had us believing that reusing water bottles is harmful to our health, in reality, I think it's a scare tactic to get us to stop reusing them and grab another, hence, increasing profits. But that's just me.
I have (especially) avoided 'heated' plastic, when I can, with hot substances (like your post mentioned in microwave and disposable coffee containers, coated paper plates - I use a stainless steel mug inside and out, Starbucks mug for coffee, un-coated paper plates) because of 1) I can taste 'it' in coffee, and 2) because of my concern about xenoestrogens.
If I microwave a TV dinner, I put it into a glass plate first - and use a glass lid cover, or paper towel. I use the stainless steel mug (inside). But I do drink (cold) bottled water - but we also re-use our bottles - as I'm thinking the xenoestrogens are limited so with re-use they 'disappear' - but I may be wrong.
I suggest looking up xenoestrogens.... if you are interested. Xenoestrogen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Xenoestrogens have been implicated in a variety of medical problems, and during the last 10 years many scientific studies have found hard evidence of adverse effects on human and animal health."
"BPA (Bisphenol A) is the monomer used to manufacture polycarbonateplastic and epoxy resins used as a lining in most food and beverage cans."
The paper towels in the microwave...I would never have though about this one being a potential problem. Thanks for the heads up.
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