WARNING: NOT READING THIS POST COULD LEAD TO CHROMOSOMAL ABNORMALITIES AND DEATH!

Any good marketing textbook will tell you that consumers, for the most part, are irrational creatures. It goes a long way to explain the shopping habits of North Americans, who in a culture that fosters an acceptance of materialistic accumulation, seem to feel the desire to own increasingly more, despite needing less and less. Marketing isn’t exclusively to blame, at some point the onus is on the consumer rather than the producer to make responsible buying decisions; you can’t blame companies and their marketing departments for trying to make a buck. That being said, marketing by fear has become pervasive, and makes easy targets out of many sheep-like consumers. Recently, one of my competitors (Mountain Equipment Co-op) voluntarily accepted returns on polycarbonate water bottles for fear they were leaking plasticides into the water that it held.

The scare began when Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western Reserve University discovered a spike in the chromosomal abnormalities in lab mice she was researching. Her discovery correlated with a lab technician that had washed the polycarbonate cages in a “harsh detergent not ordinarily used for that purpose.” Since then, bottle manufacturers such as Sigg (who make aluminum water bottles) and Klean Kanteen (which, despite being made of stainless steel, have plastic drinking lids), have seized the opportunity to market their “safer, nontoxic” water bottles. Customers unwilling to question the veracity of the toxic claims, or those too lazy to read the original research study, have bought into this unsubstantiated allegation hook-line-and-sinker. The fact is that bisphenal A, the chemical that is blamed for the chromosomal abnormalities in Hunt’s study, is found not exclusively in polycarbonate bottles but in an array of products we use every day including: municipal and domestic water pipes, Brita water filters, and the epoxy lining of tin cans. Bisphenal A is so pervasive that to suggest the intermittent use of a water bottle will be directly related to birth defects and genetic abnormalities is fundamentally irresponsible. It’s akin to not watching television for fear of radiation poisoning, although we have no issue with microwaves, cell phones, and wireless telecommunications.

I’m not specifically advocating the use of polycarbonates as a drinking receptacle, rather, I’m highlighting my concerns about MEC’s take-back program and recent media attention about plastic water-bottle fears as nothing short of terrorism. Jean Baudrillard (French philosopher and all around bon vivant) once commented that terrorism and anti-terrorism are identical insofar as they both attempt to manage a population through fear. Marketing departments have seized on this notion of selling, not to consumers’ desires, but to their fears, in an attempt to scare someone into a purchase based on the irrational assumption that the competitor’s product will indeed kill you. Even Jorge Nanez, an employee at the Toronto MEC, in a National Post article dated December 7th is quoted about MEC’s water bottle take-back-program as saying "It's just a precaution situation. We decided just to go that way, but it's not like it's confirmed to be dangerous." So, until we hear back from Health Canada in May of next year, there is nothing to suggest that the plastic water bottles we use to keep hydrated are good, bad, or indifferent to our health.

That being said, we’re talking about plastics here; items that have been created out of chemicals for three main reasons: cost, durability and convenience. I have no doubt there exists safer materials to use, but plastics have created an entire culture based on the trifecta of those three virtues. Let’s be clear, I work in an outdoor retail store that shares the street both with a McDonalds as well as an organic health food store. I’m under no illusion which sells goods that are better for my body, and yet, I’d be willing to make a bet as to which enterprise makes more money in the course of a year selling food. I suspect McDonalds would be hard pressed to convince someone they offer a safer, healthier alternative to dried kelp, and yet, there is something succulent about a Big Mac that immediately trumps the benefits of a quinoa, adzuki beans and carob.

The greater irony for me is that when I started in the outdoor retail industry almost 11-years ago, there was a growing concern about the use of aluminum water bottles (yes, the Sigg bottles that have regained popularity in light of the recent polycarbonate water bottle concerns). These were associated with premature development of Alzheimer’s Disease simply because an unrelated study apparently found a correlation between “activated aluminum” and Alzheimer’s. A couple years later concerns started growing about the possible leaching of toxins from HDPE water bottles that had replaced the Sigg bottles as the then “safe” alternative. In turn, polycarbonates were billed as a no-risk, non-leaching alternative to HDPE, and now, with the concerns over bisphenal A, consumers are returning to bottles that were once considered “unsafe” as a healthier alternative to what is now considered a public health hazard. My aversion to this carousel of safe-versus-unsafe has more to do with tedium than it does science, given that no matter what the scientific outcome of water-bottle research holds, it is guaranteed, that smoking and car accidents will kill many more people during a year than any water bottle on the market (yet both cars and cigarettes are still legal). Environmental groups and companies that produce, for the time being, “safe” products are using this fear to further an honourable agenda through unscrupulous means. Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to decide whether their choices will be mandated by fear, or whether, with a little research, each and every one of us will be able to come to our own decision as to what we are willing to ingest in the interest of cost, convenience and safety.

I think people are missing the big picture. The biggest concern on the health horizon is not smoking, pollution related illness, car accidents, drug abuse or bisphenal A. The juggernaut of all chemical compounds that should be banned is none other than Dihydrogen Monoxide (DMHO). Negative effects of DMHO include:

-Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
-Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
-Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
-DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
-Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
-Contributes to soil erosion.
-Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
-Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
-Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
-Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
-Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
-Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
-Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

Furthermore, DMHO has been found in almost every water bottle ever produced! I implore you to seek out further information about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide (aka: Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid) at http://www.dhmo.org Write your local politician and encourage legislation that will ban this insidious product. It’s only in reacting to these types of products that we’ll be able to make our world a little safer, although none of us will get out of here alive.