I was under the impression that the bacteria came in the form of food being backwashed into the bottle, taking a drink with food in your mouth.
Pro Tip: Lay the bottles on their sides when freezing.
Here’s something else to consider.
If there are bacteria in a water bottle, where did they come from, and how did they get there?
Hint: They came from the same place where you might be worried about them going—a place that already contains many, many more just like them.
Prolonged exposure to solid dihydrogen monoxide causes severe tissue damage.
Dihydrogen monoxide is a major constituent of acid rain.
Hundreds of people a year die from accidentally inhaling dihydrogen monoxide.
Zero risk. I keep a half-gallon juice jug on my desk, which I refill with tapwater to drink from through the day. I never wash it, I just refill it, and it’s been going for two or three years. It I notice it getting a bit grungy around the lip where I swig from it, I wipe it down with a damp cloth. I also have about ten milk jugs full of water set aside, every once in a while when it rains, the tapwater has an unpleasant taste for a day or two, and I drink from those. Even after a couple of years, they’re fine.
In clean tapwater, any oral bacteria does not develop to any significant degree. But if you do that with a milk jug full of milk, it will go bad quickly. If you are careful to not let anything get into your milk, it will go sour (which is delicious), but will not spoil and go bad.
And various plastics can leach chemicals used in their production. A major sporting goods chain here in Norway sold a lot of colored bottles for kids where the color leached into the water for instance. But even when that’s an issue it’s not an issue with reusing bottles, it’s a problem with the bottles in the first place.
Like what, when? Feel free to give cites. Do you just have the one anecdote? Was the colour that leached harmful?
While I know that the plural of anecdote isn’t data, I have noticed that if I use a normal plastic water bottle for more than 2 weeks or so, I start getting a sore throat and a stuffy nose. At first I thought it was just seasonal allergies or a cold, but it happened regularly - I’d drink out of a bottle for a few weeks, get a sore throat, switch my bottle out, the sore throat/stuffy nose would go away, rinse, repeat. This happened for a few years (I’m a slow learner apparently) until I shelled out for one of the Camelbak Eddy bottles mentioned above.
As always, YMMV - all I know is that reusing bottles for weeks led to a measurable effect for me. I can’t really think of anything else that could cause an effect (seemingly) tied to water bottle usage, but it certainly looks like I’m in the minority in this case.
That chemical additives from plastic containers can leach into the content is hardly a contentious issue. So no, I don’t “just have the one anecdote”.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2008/11/06/testtubes-leaching.html
The extent and effect is more debatable of course. Personally I’m not worried, but I’m not an expert, and health effects or no health effects I’d throw away a bottle that turned my water pink.
I don’t know anything about the toxicity of the particular colour in the incidence I mentioned.
Quite right. An excess of dihydrogen monoxide can (and has) lead to death from hyponatria.
Around here, they are planning to ban the use of fireplaces because they release particulate matter into the air. They do of course, but I’d bet that over 90% of the particulate matter in the air comes from tires. And it is likely made substantially worse by all the stop sign forests they have erected. Swallow a camel and strain at a gnat.
This was what I thought of.
Sometimes, a refilled bottle can get a foul, wet-towel-never-dried-right smell around the neck.
I think this is from lip slough (ick) mildewing (ick) but that would be fungus, not bacteria.