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Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

> Remember when polycarbonate water bottles were a thing

They're... still a thing... https://www.google.com/search?q=polycarbonate+water+bottles

Yeah, they have "BPA Free" polycarbonate now, since that's what was regulated. I still wouldn't use it, there's many better cheaper alternatives, unless you're just importing it without testing? At least they're labeling it as PC?!?

Mostly, don't get your polycarbonate hot.

To be clear, if you're really worried about plastic, you can't use paper or aluminum containers either since they're coated. It's glass only, but no mason jars or screw caps since those have silicone seals. Seal it with wax/cork.

Silicone is likely one of the safest, though.

Aren't steel food cans usually lined as well?

Yes, most cans are lined with plastic, but some are lined with tin, which I consider safe enough. And cans of pineapple are often lined with zinc, which I consider safe enough. Unfortunately, the only way to tell which cans have these tin and zinc linings is to buy one, open it, empty it and look at the lining.

Also, Eden Foods uses cans linings free of phthalates:

https://www.edenfoods.com/about/values.php

There's been some interesting pushes to use glass linings here.

Ex Chico in the baby bottle space (glass lined plastic bottles) Purist in the adult bottle space (glass lined stainless steel).

You can also get plenty of unlined aluminum/stainless cups/bottles (amazon is full of them).

No idea how that idea is going to play out long term.

Purist has some cool plastic bottles with a glass liner: https://www.specialized.com/us/en/purist-watergate-water-bot...

They are lightweight and flexible and supposedly have minimal plastic contact with water.

> features an amorphous silicon dioxide coating that's infused into the inner-wall of the bottle. Essentially, this forms a glass-like finish that provides a totally natural, and completely inert, solution to the problem

"glass-like" != glass

Dollars to doughnuts that coating is spray lined. Which means some sort of solvent, at a minimum. And I'm unaware of any way to fuse silica at temperatures under which plastic would survive, so it's a coating with a binder (dissolved in the solvent) which can still be damaged, scratched, leach or flake off into the water.

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Glass, stainless steel (316 please), or ceramics for me.

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