>>>>>I agree. At home I don't drink bottle water. But when I go to the gym it is easier for me just to grab a bottle. Of course, one can say that you could wash and keep refilling the same bottle. But then, they won't be able to call me lazy :).
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>>>>Actually, that's not such a good idea. Apparently the plastic begins to break down into the water after about the 3rd reuse.
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>>>I don't think it waits that long... it's been exposed to air and water ever since it was blown, so whatever affects it on reuse was already affecting it from day one. Plastic is stupid, it doesn't know how many times you poured into it.
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>>>This looks like another scare tactic, with the extra twist that the plastic is allegedly harmless when fresh. Look up bisphenol phosphate.
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>>Aren't you assuming that it doesn't react with water any more than it does with air?
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>The air is on the outside all the time. And what happens with the change of water - the concentration of whatever it exudes suddenly drops to zero so it can start afresh? Then how much of that was in the water sold in it? That first water stayed in it for days or weeks.

I honestly don't know, but think about entropy. Mayvbe the chemical exchanges slow down or stop when the water inside the bottle reaches a certain saturation or entropy level with whatever it's getting from the plastic while it sits there. Now introduce new water that has a much lower or even non-existent entropy level of whatever it is. Eventually, the plastic breaks down through the loss of 'whatever' to the point where it starts losing other components that the 'whatever' may have been keeping the plastic from losing.