Fluoride, Chlorine and Plastic, Oh My!

Why is healthy living so complicated?!  We've been drinking filtered water that we get from the refill station at the grocery store, for years.  Trying to be "green" I faithfully take my plastic gallon jugs to refill and I use a non-disposable hard plastic bottle when I go out.  I even try to reuse the "one-time-use" bottles that I might get at a restaurant or friend's house.  Life was fairly simple until my husband told me about an NPR show he was listening to last week.

Apparently the "safe" plastics, even the kind my non-disposable bottle is made of, have been found to be unsafe.  I realized that the gallon jugs I'd been reusing were probably breaking down over time and leeching chemicals into our water!  That's why they're meant to be used only once.  So, I began a quest to find a better alternative that pretty much lead me full circle.

I bought a pitcher with a carbon filter at the grocery store, so that I could avoid refilling the plastic jugs.  It wasn't until after I got home that I realized it was plastic too so that defeated it's purpose!  Through internet research I also found that although the pitcher style filters have an impressive list of contaminants they filter out, most city water treatment facilities have already filtered those things out.  I would end up buying filters on a monthly basis and wasting a lot of money.  After hours of more research on filtering processes and the dangers of fluoride and chlorine (which I won't go into here) and hunting in vain for an affordable glass filter pitcher, we made the following changes:

• Got rid of all plastic food and drink containers
• Bought stainless steel personal water bottles
• Bought a chlorine shower head filter
• Bought 5 gallons of apple juice in glass bottles
• Decided to continue refilling at the grocery store filter station with the juice bottles
• Decided that when baby starts eating, she won't use plastic dishes, cups or utensils (glass, stainless steel and bamboo instead)
• If we knew we were going to be in this house long term, we would install a whole house water filter

Hope this info helps someone!