[P-man]

Hello... We were talking about this in Geo class actually, but that's beside the point. Apparently when you put water in plastic bottles the plastic "contaminates" the water somehow. I asked my Science teacher and she would not specify. So... what's the deal? What's going on between the plastic and the water? As well, when you scrunch the bottle more stuff goes into the water. I would just like to know what's going on...

[Dan]

I have heard (but this may not be reliable) that trace heavy metals in the plastic leach into the water over time, and that is why bottled water has a use-by date. Might be worth looking into.

[P]

Never heard of the heavy metal problem -    -   but for polystyrene cups you get the problem with unreacted (trace amounts) styrene monomer leaching out into the drink.  Especially with hot drinks.  A young post graduate, studying mass spec, wondered why his tea always tasted funny/different when drunk from a polystyrene cup. He ran some mass spec's on tea and then the tea after being left for 5 Min's in th polystyrene cup  -  he found trace molecules of styrene monomer in the tea!   I presume this why we don't really see so many styrene cups around these days.   I aways assumed that the same could happen with any plastic container - residual, unreacted monomer and or solvents in the plastic leaches out into the water.