Time in a Bottle: Will Water in a Plastic Bottle Become Unsafe to Drink over Time?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal of my project is to test the safety of bottled water when exposed to extreme temperature over time. My objectives are: 1. To examine the media reports concerning the harmful effects of phthalates 2. To evaluate the public's drinking and water storage habits. Methods/Materials Method 525.2 providing procedures for determining organic compounds in drinking water was used. Materials used included water samples, chemicals, safety equipment, glass vials, high performance extraction disks, equipment apparatus and miscellaneous items essential for the process. Results At the Reportable Detection Limit, no phthalates were detected in any of the five samples of bottled water. Conclusions/Discussion My study showed that bottled water when exposed to extreme temperatures is generally free from phthalates and therefore, is safe to drink for up to a period of at least fifteen weeks. Phthalates have frequently been the subject of misinformation and misleading media reports. That is why science is such a powerful tool. It gives us a chance to objectively test ideas and information we hear in the news against the evidence we observe. It allows us to base our decisions about what is safe to eat or drink on facts instead of media hype and mass hysteria. My experiment had some limitations including small sample size that affected the design of my experiment, limiting exposure times, length of study and one brand of bottled water.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Chemistry · Entry J0509

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Chemistry projects
• CSEF Chemistry projects
• Every CSEF 2009 project