Great Instructions to Take with a Pinch of Salt Hunt

Enterprise_1701C

I love that one - I work in a shop where Evian is horrifically expensive, and I rather enjoy watching the customers leaving the store, happy with their purchase, and wondering if they have ever thought of that!

gunsandbanjos

twocoats wrote: »

Drink bottled water? Have you ever spelled Evian backwards?

Yeah, i realised that when i was about 5 i think:p However i buy a bottle of water about once a month and just refill until i lose it usually:rolleyes:

Mariss

Just a safety note about refilling your plastic water bottles:

Are water bottles safe to be reused?





Experts tell us that to stay healthy we need to drink lots of water each day. In order to do this, it helps to have a water bottle on the go all day — but is it okay to keep refilling it?

Kristal Burston found out the hard way about the health risks of refilling water bottles.
"I actually got sick from water bottle filling. I remember when I was 16 I had two water bottles that I worked on rotation," she says.
After a couple of months, Kristal started having stomach upsets and fever though neither she nor her doctor could work out why ... until he found out she was refilling her water bottles.
"He said 'well just stop doing that, just throw them all out'. So I did, thinking 'this is bizarre' and I got better within the next couple of weeks. He gave me antibiotics. I stopped refilling water bottles and just drank fresh water and within two to three weeks my symptoms were all clear."
Is Krystal an exception or is this problem more common than we think?
The test
Our guest reporter Jessica Rowe is going to help us find out if there is a real risk from reusing plastic bottles. She starts by collecting some samples (including her own bottle she's been using for two days) and taking them to the lab. The sample we're all keen to know about is from a bottle that someone has been reusing for six months — yes, six months! It's full of horrible green gunk which surely can't be healthy?
Just to make things interesting, Jessica is picking up a few more water bottles:

• A two-day-old bottle from a car.
• A bottle that has spent a whole week being refilled.
• One that's been topped up for two weeks.
• A shared water bottle is also added to the mix.

Now it's time to get them analysed at the University of New South Wales. Microbiologist, Leanne Pearson puts the samples under the microscope to see what's lurking in those bottles.
Results
Our water samples are back from the lab and Leanne is sorting through the results.
Jessica: This is the one I've been drinking out of. Has it been safe?
Leanne: I would say it's safe.
Leanne hesitates a bit because, even after just two days' use, the bacteria are already beginning to build up.
Jessica: Could they harm me?
Leanne: I'd say in low doses it isn't going to cause any problems, especially after two days
Jessica: So I won't keel over from drinking it?
Leanne: I don't imagine so, no.
What about the other samples? The more they were refilled, the worse the bacterial build-up became. But what about the sample from the six-month-old water bottle — what's giving it that green colour?
Leanne: This actually contains algae, so how that got in there I don't know. Maybe somebody filled their bottle up from a bird bath.
Under a microscope it's swarming with bacteria, so is it dangerous?
"This is a highly unusual finding, but luckily not a toxic algae," says Leanne.
This time we were fortunate because there are some pretty serious water-borne toxins around. So how do they get into water bottles?
"Probably from cells in the mouth which dislodge quite easily, saliva. Also if you've been eating and some of the food gets back into the bottle the bugs can feed on that," says Jessica. Is that a very polite way of saying backwash?
"Indeed yes, backwash exactly," confirms Leanne.
Don't believe it? To prove it, we roped in three of Leanne's colleagues. All three fill their mouth with a coloured dye to find out how much will wash back into the bottle when they take a drink.
The ladies drink normally, bottle touching the mouth, while our guy pours his water in without touching his lips.
The different colours reveal the unsavoury truth — both of the bottles the girls drank from contained the colours of the dyes from their mouth.
"The results of mouthwash test show us that any contact with lips on bottle causes some form of backwash to go back in," says Leanne.
Want to avoid backwash? Don't let the bottle touch your lips as you drink!
So much for what comes from your own mouth — what do you get when you share bottles with other people?
If we look at what Leanne found from the results from the sample we took from a shared water bottle:
Leanne: This, we think, is staphylococcus, which is just a common food poisoning bacteria.
Jessica: A common food poisoning? That sounds terrible!
Leanne: In large doses it could be very nasty.
Jessica: So there's the potential, from somebody using the shared bottle, to pick up something nasty like staph?
Leanne: Oh yeah, definitely. If there were enough bugs in the water you could be sick from it.
Conclusion
Now, you'd think from all we've learned that refilling your water bottle is an absolute no-no, but it isn't. The key thing is to make sure you wash it regularly, preferably with hot water and detergent and if possible, store it in the fridge. Bugs grow much faster if you leave it on the bench where it's warmer. And remember, sharing your water bottle means you're sharing germs.
Fast facts

• How much of the human body is water? Water makes up about 72 percent of our bodies and to stay hydrated, we need to drink between 1.5 and 2.5 litres per day to replace what we lose through sweating and going to the loo.

source: http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=254094

PixiePie

But using a water bottle and just refilling it without washing it in very hot soapy water between each time is just like eating from an unwashed dinner plate or using the same saucepan each night without washing it, so just using common sense says it will be full of nasties and bugs if you don't wash it between uses

zenseeker

PixiePie wrote: »

so just using common sense says it will be full of nasties and bugs if you don't wash it between uses

You'd think, but then a lot of people assume that because it's only ever contained water it must be clean by default.

hayley11

I do wash my hair twice because it feels horrid if I don't.

I only put a small amount of washing powder in, don't use tablets anymore because I find powder works just as well and is a lot cheaper. I use a small amount of fabric softner.

I only use a small amount of toothpaste and I don't use as much mouthwash as they say, only a small amount really.

I used to fill up a water bottle everyday with flavoured water, I rinsed it out with cold water before but I feel really icky now after reading that :eek:

I can't think of anything else but if I do I will come back

p.s. I bet I start reading the instructions on things now to see whether I follow them or not :rotfl:

8ofspades

Homeopathic remedies are notorious for saying take 2 every half hour, when in actual fact you only need 1 three times a day in most acute cases. It does no harm taking more, it's just unnecessary.

Most beauty products always say 'best used in combination with *brand* toner, moisturiser & all other *brand* products'.

I can't think of anything else which hasn't already been mentioned..

beccam

not really an instruction but I do love that jars of peanut butter come with a warning saying "may contain nuts"!!!

~Clothes that say dry clean only when they can easily be washed on a gentle cycle.
~Nail polish that says use an undercoat, 2 layers of polish and then a topcoat...you're only putting it on to go out for the night!
~Car windscreen wash fluid always gives instructions for diluting that can easily be halved for normal use.
~Diluting juice...1 part juice to 4 parts water is waaaayyyy to strong!! YUK!

voguemonkey

On homeopathy (which I should probably say I don't actually believe in, and therefore can't claim to be an expert) the theory is that diluting the substance makes it more effective. If that's right then you only ever need to buy one lot of pills and just keep crushing and ever diluting what you're left with. Bargaintastic!

Chr155yc

I dilute Fairy washing up liquid. I always have a spare empty bottle which I half fill with Fairy then top up with water. It stops you using too much and lasts twice if not three times longer.