SummitPost.org

MoapaPk wrote:
Do you know how most municipalities treat drinking water and waste water? Read Day Hiker's comments above.

Moapa, it was a reply directly to your question above - I just saw "drinking" before waste and went with it...

OK! Group hug!

I've used Milton, a steriliser used for cleaning out babies feeding bottles. Works very well.

I throw the nalgene in the dishwasher. If it can sterilize a baby bottle it can keep a nalgene clean enough for me too

But... it would be best not to throw the BABY out with the bathwater.

Carbo wrote:I throw the nalgene in the dishwasher. If it can sterilize a baby bottle it can keep a nalgene clean enough for me too

Careful about that(unless you already know), as the older bpa nalgenes were/are heat sensitive, so you don't want to stick them too close to the heater element in the dishwasher, or leaching in the plastic, may occur. Hence the fears that led to them doing away with bpa bottles. . .

dskoon wrote:

Carbo wrote:I throw the nalgene in the dishwasher. If it can sterilize a baby bottle it can keep a nalgene clean enough for me too

Careful about that(unless you already know), as the older bpa nalgenes were/are heat sensitive, so you don't want to stick them too close to the heater element in the dishwasher, or leaching in the plastic, may occur. Hence the fears that led to them doing away with bpa bottles. . .

The leaching occurs while the plastic is hot. Once it cools, the plastic is as safe as it was before heating. So the rule is don't use the container for any hot beverages, i.e., don't let the plastic get hot while your beverage is in it.

In the study, new and old bottles filled with room-temperature water released the same amount of BPA. When scientists exposed new and used bottles to boiling water, however, they released BPA up to 55 times more rapidly than before heating.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-01-29-plastic-chemical_N.htm

Day Hiker wrote:

dskoon wrote:

Carbo wrote:I throw the nalgene in the dishwasher. If it can sterilize a baby bottle it can keep a nalgene clean enough for me too

Careful about that(unless you already know), as the older bpa nalgenes were/are heat sensitive, so you don't want to stick them too close to the heater element in the dishwasher, or leaching in the plastic, may occur. Hence the fears that led to them doing away with bpa bottles. . .

The leaching occurs while the plastic is hot. Once it cools, the plastic is as safe as it was before heating. So the rule is don't use the container for any hot beverages, i.e., don't let the plastic get hot while your beverage is in it.

In the study, new and old bottles filled with room-temperature water released the same amount of BPA. When scientists exposed new and used bottles to boiling water, however, they released BPA up to 55 times more rapidly than before heating.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-01-29-plastic-chemical_N.htm

Good stuff there, Dayhiker.
So, essentially not safe to drink tea, etc.from your water bottle, but, ok to do as many have and use water bottle as a "hot bottle" in your bag, etc . to keep you warm? Edit: I'm not sure where you got that from the article, ie. all they said was that leaching occurred at a greater rate after the plastic had been heated, and then it might presumably continue to leach at a faster rate than a non-heated bottle.
The other thing I always heard was that the sun, uv rays, broke down the plastic in the bottle, making it unsafe to drink from over time. Again, maybe that is only when the sun has been heating the bottle while the bottle is full of liquid.
Either way, I think once the plastic becomes cloudy over time, it's time to chuck the bottles into the recycling bin.

Note this applies to the hard polycarbonate bottles.

There was a thread on this in 2008, and it included several links to more critical analyses (i.e. not reinterpreted by the mass media).

dskoon wrote:The other thing I always heard was that the sun, uv rays, broke down the plastic in the bottle, making it unsafe to drink from over time. Again, maybe that is only when the sun has been heating the bottle while the bottle is full of liquid.

(Re)using conventional PET bottles (the typical soft drinks bottles) is the simplest, safest, cheapest, lightest, most ecological and most convenient water bottles while in the mountains.

And no need to worry about the potential effect of plastic compounds/byproducts migrating into the water if you use PET bottles. See
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

Edit: PS. Ah, and no need to clean them either...

I LIKE TO USE 1 PART BLEACH 5 PARTS USED MOTOR OIL AND THE CARCASS OF A DEAD CALIFORNIA CONDOR TO REALLY SCRAP THE CRUDE OFF THE SIDES. THEN JUST DUMP THE FLUIDS IN THE LOCAL STORM DRAIN. CLOSER TO THE OCEAN THE BETTER!

Bruno_Tibet wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

Edit: PS. Ah, and no need to clean them either...

Looks good, but there is a little caveat:
"In theory, the method could be used in disaster relief or refugee camps. However, supplying bottles may be more difficult than providing equivalent disinfecting tablets containing chlorine, bromine, or iodine. Additionally, in some circumstances, it may be difficult to guarantee that the water will be left in the sun for the necessary time."

There are times when I could use this method -- especially if I'm leaving a high camp for the day. I could just leave one of my PETE (US recycle #1) out in the sun till I return (and find it chewed up by a marmot!).

MoapaPk wrote:

Bruno_Tibet wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

Edit: PS. Ah, and no need to clean them either...

Looks good, but there is a little caveat:
"In theory, the method could be used in disaster relief or refugee camps. However, supplying bottles may be more difficult than providing equivalent disinfecting tablets containing chlorine, bromine, or iodine. Additionally, in some circumstances, it may be difficult to guarantee that the water will be left in the sun for the necessary time."

There are times when I could use this method -- especially if I'm leaving a high camp for the day. I could just leave one of my PETE (US recycle #1) out in the sun till I return (and find it chewed up by a marmot!).

Hi MoapaPK,
Nice to see someone showing some interest in SODIS (Solar Water Disinfection) technology, even though it was not my intention to promote it amongst SPers. In my post I just wanted to make two points:

1) PET plastic bottles are the best water containers available for mountaineering/hiking: free, light, convenient, ecological, etc, etc. I just don't understand the whole fashion around very expensive and pseudo-technical water bottles, while PET bottles are widely available. Once again, it just shows the power of marketing in creating demand for unnecessary goods.

2) For Dskoon who expressed some concerns about potentially toxic plastic byproducts, I gave this link to the SODIS webpage, where this issue has been widely investigate over the past 10-12 years, in order to show that PET bottles are very safe to this regard.

But back to SODIS, I don't think that there is a big potential for hikers/climbers (besides saving fuel at Base Camps), neither for disasters/refugees/IDPs during a first emergency phase. SODIS has actually been developed as a household-based disinfection method for rural & peri-urban areas in developing countries, where people have no access to safe drinking water. In such contexts SODIS has for the users huge advantages compared to the traditional water boiling promoted with limited success only over the past decades (saving fuel costs, better taste, safe container for water storage after treatment, convenient and simple).
Cheers,
Bruno

But are those thin plastic bottles durable? Last thing I want is one to split or crack during a trip...and traveling puts them to abuse. And to hold back the jerks, by durable I mean a season, say 4 months. Not years. pitney

pitney wrote:But are those thin plastic bottles durable? Last thing I want is one to split or crack during a trip...and traveling puts them to abuse. And to hold back the jerks, by durable I mean a season, say 4 months. Not years.
pitney

I've got some from 2003, still in use; that's an exception (those mainly go in my pack).

Get the thicker bottles for Powerade or similar. Mine take all sorts of abuse from scraping on rocks, as I normally keep them on the outside of my pack. I've dropped them over cliffs many times; what is prone to breakage, if you drop them from high enough, is the cap. I've had the cap crack two times, when the bottle popped out of the side pockets, and fell about 100', bouncing off the cap several times. I've never had one leak while on my pack. The tops have a synthetic rubber gasket seal that is incredibly effective. I choose my packs (partly) on whether I can fit the liter bottles in the mesh pockets. (I urethane-coat the mesh pockets early on, so the scraping in chimneys and such won't rip the pockets along the bottle edges.)

Warning: not for very hot liquids. They won't melt easily, but boiling water will cause the bottles to deform.