Bottle water: fact and fiction

I did a little research this morning because I ran out of bottled water and was going to run to the store. But the thought of carrying two 24-packs of water around Kroger was unsettling and made me think about the pain in my back today. I am not getting any younger.

So I surveyed the dozen or so empty water bottles on my counter awaiting recycling when I considered re-using them. I seemed to remember what I would call an urban legend about some danger associated in the reuse of plastic water bottles. In my mind, I formulated this idea that there was a soft plastic lining in each bottle that allowed for it to be used only once and then required recycling, that mild detergent would wash this away causing the bottles to be unusable. In my mind, I could see the major bottling companies hatching such a nefarious plot. But surely something this poisonous would be known to all and vastly public rather than something on the edge of public awareness. (And I have not even mentioned how ridiculously over-priced water is in relation to say, something like gasoline!)

So to google I did go and here is what I found.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fact+or+fiction+bottled+water

The above was my general search beginning.

But this one is what struck me as sounding the most legitimate. Why? It is riddled with footnotes and things that look scholarly and seem impressive. And of course, the language is high falutin to borrow some terminology from Eric M Smith.

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/digestive-health/nutritionarticles/LeisingArticle.pdf

Naturally, as someone who is very curious, I wondered who this panel of experts were, what their motivations for publishing such information were as well as who funded the research. As any qualified mildly intelligent paranoid knows, you have to follow the money.

But then my coffee kicked in and I had to leave the computer. So I leave that last part to all of you. Or I may do some investigative follow-up in another post.

Enjoy like me!

The Story of Thursday

The story of Thursday started with a bottle of water. I was leaving my job, putting stuff in my car, when I put my bottle of water on the roof of my car. In movies, they always put a baby on the roof of the car and drive off. This was just a bottle of water. I got in, rolled down the window (at the time, this would seem an insignificant detail but later if figures big in the story), started the car and began to speed out of the parking lot. It was dark. It was, after all, just past midnight. And as I accelerated out of the lot, I heard the familiar thud reminding me I left something on top of my car. So, I stopped the car, got out, picked up the bottle, closed the door hard and began to drive off.

As I approached the highway and increased my speed, I went to roll up the window. However, in slamming my door shut with the window down, I knocked the window off the track and could not roll the window more than halfway up. But this was not a huge disaster. The temperature was a lovely 60 degrees, unlike the first time this happened three years ago when the temperature was 15 degrees and I had to drive a half hour to get home on the freeway. This would be no big deal. But I would have to leave my car in that state over night. Vulnerable. It is not like I drive a Jaguar or a Ferrari. It is a basic Honda Civic hatchback. I love that car like I love life. But that is another story. This is about a bottle and everything that came after.

So I leave it out there, exposed, opened like a heart waiting to be broken and think confidently I can fix that in the morning before class, no problem.

The next morning comes, which for me is 10:30. I have coffee, read email, check news and then (after feeding and medicating the cats) realize I don’t have a lot of time to fix the door/window before class starts. But I work at it anyway. To do the actual repair requires me to leave the door open for quite a while as I need to completely dismantle it to get inside at the gizmos and doohickies. Leaving the door open leaves the dome light on. It never occurred to me this would be a problem because it was never a problem before. But my car is from 1997. Mi coche tiene diez años. And I realized later that my battery was also 10 years old. La pila de me coche tiene diez años también. A ten year old battery does not react well to a light being left on. So the battery died. Why did the battery die? Because of a bottle of water.

So I had to remove the old battery, take it down to the auto parts store, thankfully just down the street, and get a new one. But anyone who ever changed a battery can tell you they are heavy. They are heavy and they are filled with sulfuric acid. Thankfully, sulfuric acid doesn’t really enter this story other than anecdotally. It was a peaceful, uneventful exchange beyond the awed admiration of the sales clerk over the reality that my old battery lasted ten years. “Don’t have any false beliefs that this battery I am selling you is going to last ten years. Cause it’s not.” Ok. Thank you.

New battery is installed by me but by this point I am not just late for Spanish class. I have completely missed Spanish class. And I had missed class on Monday for reasons related to GI health. I told my teacher, with great confidence, I won’t miss another class. And here it was, four days later, and I am missing another class. Murphy is rather like gravity: harsh and unyielding.

As usual, this story doesn’t have enough bacon in it. So here is some bacon.