The whole BPA thing is blown out of proportion and stainless steel water bottle companies are praying on your fears.
Now, I'm not saying let's not get reusable options or go green. But some people will mindlessly through 25 bucks at a reusable water container that costs X times the energy to create 100 plastic bottles. I just reuse my plastic bottles from Gatorade and whatnot until they're falling apart or I lose them. As long as you don't microwave your plastic water bottle, you're fine. BPAs used in plastics that contain food and water are FDA approved and shouldn't do harm to you unless you decide to just eat the bottle.
You are wrong on a number of different levels.
The metal water bottle companies have nothing to do with it.
The metal waterbottles almost all have plastic lining. Prior to the various negative studies of BPA hitting the mainstream media, the majority of the plastic linings of metal water bottles had BPA. And there are still concerns with other chemicals in the lining they use.
As to using water bottles until they fall apart that isn't something you'd want to do either. At the point the water bottle is falling apart, tiny particles of plastic would likely make their way into the water you'd be drinking. You can continue to do that for yourself, but don't go telling people that its perfectly fine.
As to the FDA and their approval of BPA, they entirely base their approval off the data the manufacturers that profit off of BPA provided them. It is standard policy for the FDA to rely on industry studies. For years the regulatory agency actually ignored a number of studies showing these health effects, from impairing neurological development, to chromosomal damage in overies, to increased cancer rates.
simply watch the first 2 minutes of this congressional hearing video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6451441880371093421#
[00:01:09] Dr Alderson (clearly flustered): "All of our products that we [the FDA] approve are based on data that are prepared and conducted in studies by that particular manufacturer."
John Kerry: "But doesn't that bother you?"
Dr Alderson does not give a respond.
(Dr Norris Alderson is Associate Commissioner for Science for the FDA)
Unfortunately FDA has very much become a revolving door of employment for top-level agency bureaucrats between itself and the industries it oversees. This indusrty bias is thanks to the industries, lobbies and various administrations placing those with their interest at heart in key power positions in the FDA.
This is much like the mining and oil industry with its cosy close connection , which Obama has divided into 2 separate agencies to reduce corruption and industry bias. If it were not for lax policies towards the oil industry, there might have been stricter enforcement of safety/precautionary practices which would have prevented the spill. It has been all over the media that executives at BP repeatedly ignored carrying out the precautionary measures which would have prevented the spill.
The xenoestrongenic effect of BPA was known to the industry for +50 years. Prior to its use in plastics, it was used in the 1930's as a synthetic estrogen.
Dr. Fredrick Vom Saal, one of the scientists who's studies were repeatedly ignored by the FDA, begins speaking about the startling results of studying BPA [begins at 35 seconds into the clip]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW1B_ZT4Uwc&feature=related
Timeline of BPA:
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bpatimeline
Excerpt said:
March 1997: Studies show BPA to be toxic at levels that are in people. Just four years after EPA reaffirms its BPA safety standard, Fred vom Saal at the University of Missouri-Columbia finds that low level exposure to bisphenol A harms the prostate. This is the first of many studies from academic labs that will find harmful effects of BPA at levels of exposure far below the government's BPA safety standards, in the range of what is found in people. Over the next 11 years the body of literature on low-dose BPA toxicity will grow to include more than 100 publications linking BPA to breast and prostate damage, early puberty, behavioral problems, and other effects at levels up to 25 times lower than EPA's "safe" dose. [vom Saal's landmark 1997 prostate study]
