While bottled water is often depicted as being higher quality than tap water, the fact is that in many instances bottled water is glorified tap water. While some manufacturers put their water through additional filtering before bottling it, many do not and simply charge for the packaging. Thusly, even though it is likely the same water as what comes out of the tap at home, you may be paying thousands of times more for the same product when you buy bottled water.
In fact, some studies have even suggested that bottled water is less safe than tap water in some places. This is due to the fact that the municipal water supply that comes to our homes is highly regulated.
The EPA regulates public tap water supplies and sets legal limits for hundreds of contaminants that could show up in water, and they regularly test for these contaminants.
Alternatively, bottled water undergoes very little regulation, and recent studies have found traces of phthalates, mold, microbes, arsenic, and thousands of other contaminants in bottled water. Considering bottled water may not be as pure, or as safe, as many people think, you would likely get the purest drinking water by filtering your tap water at home. The primary risk associated with drinking bottled water is the fact that you can be exposed to harmful toxins from the plastic.
Even though water is not acidic unlike soda , whenever you drink out of a plastic bottle, you risk ingesting the chemicals used to make the bottles as these toxins can leach into the water over time. BPA and other plastic toxins can then make their way into your bloodstream, which can cause a host of problems including various cancers as well as liver and kidney damage. Unfortunately, at this time scientists do not fully understand all of the potential long-term effects of ingesting toxins through the consumption of bottled water; however, these toxins can accumulate in your system over the years leaving you prone to a variety of health problems.
While more manufacturers are choosing to sell BPA-free plastic water bottles, it is still a common component found in water bottles made from Type 7 plastic. One of the many problems with BPA is that it acts as a faux-estrogen, and when consumed in water through leaching plastic it can cause a variety of chromosomal abnormalities that have been tied to birth defects and developmental disabilities in children.
Exposure to the estrogen in BPA can also cause decreased fertility in both men and women, and when children are exposed to BPA while in the womb this can lead to complications later in life such as hyperactivity disorders, early-onset puberty, and an increased risk for certain cancers. It is then often recommended that women do not drink bottled water particularly water from Type 7 plastic bottles when pregnant. Exposure to the toxins in plastic water bottles has also been linked to higher rates of disease as adults.
It has been found that people who drink a lot of bottled water, and in particular those who had high concentrations of BPA in their urine, were three times more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, and were 2. It is no secret that obesity in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. However, if you have been trying to lose weight and nothing seems to work, you may be surprised to learn that your bottled water consumption could be to blame.
In particular, it is the effect both of these compounds have on the estrogen levels in both men and women that has been tied to weight management problems. Exposure to the compounds in plastic water bottles can ultimately influence the rate that fat is stored in your body and where fat is stored, which can cause weight gain and difficulty losing weight. Perhaps the most concerning thing about bottled water that has come to light in recent years is that drinking bottled water can put people at risk of consuming microplastics.
Microplastics are small pieces of plastic— usually less than 5mm long— that can be found in a variety of products including, perhaps most controversially, a lot of cosmetic products where they are added to act as exfoliating scrubbers in hand cleaners and facial scrubs. Not only does bottled water absorb some of the chemical compounds in the plastic bottle, but recent studies suggest that that plastic itself can be present in the water consumers drink.
In an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, some people have started reusing disposable plastic water bottles by refilling them multiple times. While this may seem like a good idea in concept, it can actually be dangerous to reuse a single-use water bottle.
When you reuse these bottles you risk additional chemicals and microplastics from the bottle entering your drinking water. Additionally, the shape of these bottles makes it nearly impossible to clean them, and the soft plastic they are made out of creates a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, which can make it hazardous to your health to reuse these bottles.
Legislation has already begun in many parts of the world to ban single-use plastic water bottles. San Francisco Airport has now banned plastic water bottles for sale in their terminals.
With plastic production ever increasing as plastic and oil companies ramp up, polluted waterways might be its most conspicuous and ubiquitous symbol.
This environmental scourge clogs the smallest streams, clings to vegetation in overlooked wetlands and disintegrates into tiny bits as it flows to grand rivers and high seas. A study found that in — only a single year — 8 million MT of plastic waste was swept off the land into the ocean due to poor waste management practices and another million MT was moving through marine ecosystems.
Accounting for all the water involved in production underscores how plastic — especially the single-use plastic created for beverage bottles and the rest of the food packaging industry — encourages consumers to pour good water down the drain. Each step in the life cycle of plastic, from the extraction of oil or natural gas at the well pad, through the many steps that result in the resins that become various types of plastic, consumes water.
The water footprint accounts for the total volume of freshwater consumed in the entire production process. Because PET is a petroleum product , its water footprint includes the water consumed in the processes of extracting, refining and manufacturing of oil and natural gas, which produces the raw material that becomes PET resin pellets. The final step includes molding these pellets into plastic packaging. In a study, researchers affiliated with the Water Footprint Network estimated the blue and grey water footprints of PET by analyzing the steps by which raw material becomes PET plastic resin.
Adding the grey water footprint caused the water footprint to jump to 28 gallons per pound liters per kilogram. Based on these numbers, it takes about 1. According to the plastic waste study referenced above, from to approximately 3. The blue and grey water footprint for all that PET works out to about Water footprints account for water use along entire supply or production chains, which can be messy just to map, let alone assess.
The PET resin is reportedly made in China , the leading resin-producing nation , where it is then shipped to Fiji, molded into the signature square bottles, filled with Fiji artesian water and exported around the world.
There are several cooling methods, both direct and indirect, that can effectively cool the mold and the plastic. Water can be coursed through pipes surrounding the mold, which indirectly cools the mold and plastic. Direct methods include using pressurized air or carbon dioxide directly on the mold and plastic. Once the bottle or, in continuous manufacturing, bottles has cooled and set, it is ready to be removed from the mold.
If a continuous molding process has been used, the bottles will need to be separated by trimming the plastic in between them.
If a non-continuous process has been used, sometimes excess plastic can seep through the mold during manufacturing and will require trimming. After removing the bottle from the mold and removing excess plastic, the plastic bottles are ready for transportation or filling. Other bottle manufacturing processes combine the formation of the parisons and the blow molding in a single continuous process.
One such machine is a continuous extrusion machine wherein an extruder is continuously producing a parison. In the extrusion blow molding process, the parison forms vertically and its wall thickness is varied by changing the size of the orifice through which the parison extrudes.
Mold halves close over the suspended parison and transfer it to the blow molding station where the bottle is formed as in the second step of the RBM process described above. Varying the wall thickness solves the problem of non-uniformity of the hanging parison as the weight of the formed portion would otherwise stretch the hot and still-forming section above it. Wall thickness is thus increased as the parison forms to create a uniform thickness throughout the formation.
Another manufacturing process is the reciprocating blow molding machine. These machines move the screw linearly within the injector barrel to accumulate a shot.
Then the screw pushes the shot over the mandrel to create the parison after which it is formed in the usual manner. Water bottle manufacturing depends on the material used to make the bottle, as these bottles are often made of plastic, metal, or other materials. But what are plastic water bottles made of? From there the plastic goes through the RBM process outlined above. Reusable water bottles need their plastic melted at degrees F C before they are extrusion blow molded.
From there they can be reheated a second time to shape them further, and then they are cooled. For more information, you can also check out our article on the top water bottle manufacturers. The table below contains information on some of the top suppliers of plastic bottles wholesale in the USA on Thomasnet. Loews Corporation. Plastipak Holdings Inc. Graham Packaging Company. Berlin Packaging. Clack Corporation.
Comar LLC. Illing Company.
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