Beware: Bottled water kills

I don’t smoke. I stay away from undercooked beef and poultry. Walking around campus, I… I don’t smoke. I stay away from undercooked beef and poultry. Walking around campus, I never, ever step on cracks in the sidewalks. I always walk around open ladders, and the only time I’ve ever seen a black cat, I killed it before it crossed my path. This careful lifestyle has kept me in relatively good health for most of my life. I’m no Richard Simmons, but I’m not doing too badly either.

As it turns out, I might not be doing enough. According to a Reuters report last week, a compound commonly found in disposable plastic water bottles – I’d tell you the chemical name, but it means as much to me as Hamlet would mean to an engineer – can cause a variety of ailments, including prostate cancer, declined testosterone and hyperactivity. Although the chemical only stays in the body for 24 hours, repeated exposure, like that of a bottled-water drinker, could lead to serious health problems.

Drinking water along with exercise and getting good amounts of sleep have always been staples of a healthy lifestyle. Plastic bottles full of spring, mineral, purified, flavored and vitamin-enriched water line shelves and personal refrigerators across the country. I used to think that water was good for you, an essential fixture of the body’s homeostasis, until now.

Saying bottled water is bad for you is like saying that James Bond doesn’t get the girl or that James Brown had no soul. It’s like saying that vegetables make you sick or that steroids shrink your testicles. I simply don’t believe it. But if it is true, if plastic water bottles really cause cancer, what other seemingly innocuous things could actually harm one’s health?

Anything and everything is a possible target – you can never be too careful. What if eating carrots leads to blindness? What if taking penicillin gives you athlete’s foot? Maybe hugs cause tendonitis and cute little puppies trigger anxiety attacks. Maybe charity causes world hunger and chivalry leads to domestic abuse. If drinking water isn’t safe anymore, can anything be?

The radiation from cell phones causes cancer. So does food warmed in the microwave, hair dyes and saccharin. Even seatbelts and airbags can injure car passengers and wholesome milk can carry mad cow disease. We live in a world where nothing is safe, where jogging is destroyed by air pollution and a depleted ozone layer turns sunshine into melanoma. If everything can kill us, then what should we do?

We could lock ourselves in our rooms, hide under our blankets and intravenously fill ourselves with vaccines and vitamins. We could wear doctor’s masks and latex gloves, along with hairnets, safety goggles, kneepads and protective jockstraps. I’d say that we could live in a clear bubble and play Trivial Pursuit, but it’s plastic that got us into trouble in the first place.

You could be extra safe, but that doesn’t sound like it would be too much fun. In an equally crazy answer to this problem, we could just go completely nuts.

Shooting over to the other side of the spectrum like a human cannonball at the circus, we could rationalize that if everything can kill you, why not live our lives to an unhealthy extreme?

If walking down the street can kill you, why not run? If flying in an airplane can be dangerous, why not skydive? If eating fish can give you food poisoning, why not swim with the sharks?

Maybe if everything is bad, then nothing really is. Coffee, while addictive and filled with caffeine, is also full of antioxidants and might ease cirrhosis symptoms. Red wine might reduce gum disease and the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Pure chocolate may help clear arteries and increase blood flow. Even taking small doses of LSD have been found to help cure alcoholism, though possible side effects include, well, having done LSD.

If danger is everywhere, there is no reason not to stare it right in the face. I’m not saying that we should go all go out and pierce our tongues with rusty nails. But if bottled water can really kill us, how much could that extra hot fudge sundae really hurt?

If you want chocolate cake, then go eat chocolate cake. If you like cigars better than celery stalks, let everybody know. If you’d rather watch the “Hogan Knows Best” marathon than go to the gym, so be it.

We’re all going to be gone some day, so we might as well be happy while we’re here. Isn’t that the point of living?

E-mail Sam at seg23@pitt.edu to find out whether or not sending e-mails causes carpal tunnel syndrome.