The plastic monster that plagues Vancouver

One of my favorite stores, Mountain Equipment Co-op, has taken a stand on the water bottles that have been sold in their stores for years.

 For a while now, when patients ask about plastics and whether or not they pose any risk, I have mentioned that the leeching of estrogen mimics by plastics was generally limited to polycarbonate bottles (the popular hard plastic water bottles sold at outdoor stores) and to a lesser extent PET bottles (pop bottles). I suggested that people use glass instead while at home, or use the cloudy Nalgene soft-plastic bottles instead (high or low density polyethylene). It was definitely counter-intuitive to many people as they believed that a hard plastic was less likely to leech chemicals than a soft plastic. They associated harder plastics with an inert quality similar to glass.

It turns out its not true. The HDPE (high density polythylene, or #2 will be written on the plastic) is my plastic of choice, and a close second goes to PP (polypropylene, #5). Both have a long history of safety and have not been shown to leech the same harmful chemicals as the harder polycarbonate (PC, or #7).

Look for this:

 and try to avoid PC or #7.

As it turns out, the dose seems to be important as well, but it is much more complicated than simply more is worse. A very small group of patients who are chemically sensitive may be susceptible to the hormetic effect where even a small dose can be harmful, if not more harmful, than a medium dose.

For someone who is not chemically sensitive, such as myself, I have no problem drinking out of Nalgene containers (the PC plastic container) on an occasional basis, such as when skiing or hiking.

But I will not heat up foods in PC based plastic containers, use hot fluids in the containers, nor drink out of them as part of a daily routine.

And back to the original point, Reuters news service put out a story today that MEC stores have stopped selling their PC plastic based outdoor water bottles. It was only a few weeks ago in the store when I was reading about how they believed PC bottles were safe and they would continue to sell them, but they seem to have changed their mind.