Water does not expire. The reason they have an "expiration date" is because by law they have to have one. But it does not expire. In fact, I would say that it will last longer the way it is than refilling them and allowing bacteria to enter the bottles.

 

I think if you're replacing them because they've gone past their exp date, you're doing something wrong "Store what you eat, eat what your store" applies to water too. http://www.stilltasty.com/questions/index/26/page:1

That said yes you can refill with tap water, depending on your local source either add a drop of bleach and store in a cool dark place and refresh every 6months or so (thats how I do it). If you need to use the water with added bleach, unscrew the cap and leave to breathe for 30minutes or so.

I use plastic jugs that used to hold wine, I have drunk the water to try and suffered no ill effects but mostly I just empty, refill and re-store.

 

Mrs. "K" and I drink a lot of club soda. I re-purpose them for water storage by rinsing them out (caps too), I add five drops of household bleach, fill the bottles, cap tightly, then store. I have kept water like this for three years and it tastes fine.

 

Water doesn't expire, but I wonder how long the plastic will last. Seems to me that the water bottles are getting thinner and maybe subject to degrade faster.

 

The Plastic May Expire--Degrade, But Not The Water

Somewhere I read that the average water molecule is over 3 billion years old. The water itself does not break down or expire, it is all the stuff over time that gets mixed in with the water. As we know, natural very pure water is now kinda hard to find; it seems to always have something mixed in with it.

The plastic used in the bottle may have added extra molecules, (corn starch comes to mind) that is intended and designed to break down over time. How long? Dunno. Twenty five years ago, our 5 and 6 gallon white plastic storage buckets de composed to small fragments over about 10 years. Corn starch.

How long will the new very thin plastic drinking water bottles today last? Dunno that either. Possible quite a few years---if kept cool, dry, (on the outside) and away from sunlight or artificial lighting. The plastic is now thin enough that the water will also quickly take on a distinct taste from whatever close by. HB of CJ (old coot)

I for one would not exchange out the water. Better to leave it sealed in the bottle. Make sure you store it properly and do not be afraid to use it up. We use bottled spring water for that special strong real organic French Roast coffee early in the morning....it smells like victory or something like that. You can refill the empties.

 

I cannot find an actual source, but I understand at one point New Jersey required ALL foodstuffs to have expiration dates not more than two years from date of manufacture. Supposedly bottlers did not want to deal with states with different requirements so they comply with the most stringent. (Like CA cars...).

However, water is usually bottled in PETE which is of the more porous plastics making it less ideal for long-term storage. It is more prone to leaching chemicals than its more expensive cousins especially when reused (according to Connecticut Dept of public health). I am certainly not a plastics expert... but I do not reuse PETE bottles anymore.

Growing up we had hundreds of 2 and 3L soda bottles refilled for emergency use. They tasted a bit funny. I always blamed it on soda, but now I'm not so sure...

I find bottled water an expensive, although very convenient, source of water. I prefer large food grade (HDPE) water barrels and jugs for long term storage. All sizes of containers have their place. I can't lift a 400+ lb barrel of water into my vehicle, but I can certainly throw in some jugs and flats of bottled water...

YMMV

 

The average PETE plastic bottle begins leaching mild toxins between 15-24 months after bottling.

I understand that water bottle cases are convenient but you should just use them up and discard them after a year. Keep only enough for basic convenience. For long term water storage use a proper container. Something made from HDPE, LDPE, or Polypropylene. You won't find filled retail water bottles made from those plastics either. You can only buy them new and empty. The only exception would be the polypropylene gallon jugs of Arizona Tea.

As for water molecules being millions or billions of years old that only holds true for water that has never passed through a plant or animal because our metabolic processes break them down and reform them. Look into the Calvin Cycle that is part of photosynthesis for proof.

 

Water in almost any form is ahead of having no water at all.
Water can be treated just before use,nothing really should be assumed .
I have cisterns and water tanks and many different means going on for water storage having a garden and animals to feed not to mention washing and other needs besides drinking.
Post apocalyptic I hardly think any one is going to care if a little leaching is going on from plastic bottles ,really.
As important as having water ,having filters is right up there as well .
Been assembling the usual components for the 5 gallon bucket filter gravel sand and charcoal. Of course having the pool shock stores better than bleach .
Several methods of treatment are advised rather than leaning on one alone. As modern resources are consumed, more primitive methods are still viable .

 

I used to keep waterbottles around for everyday use but now I keep two 32oz nalgene water bottles in my truck. Other than that I don't have any storage I live in an apartment atm with three other people who do not prep.

 

We've asked friends that drink soda to save the one and 2 liter empties.

We wash, rinse and store the water in them. Easy to stack, easy to move and there are storage racks to hold the bottles.

We swap out the water yearly, using it on our potted plants.

I leave a few 1L bottles in the car and they freeze solid, no problems with leaks as yet.

 

Do you run a lab test on the water once you refill them?

Do you know what DEHA, acetaldehyde, and antimony taste like? The bottle itself degrades long before you can visually see something wrong with it. Dumping the water is smart. Replacing the water just lets the bottle contaminate the new water. The soda companies don't care. They tell you on the bottle to use contents by a certain date and recycle the bottle. Their hands are washed clean of the matter.

Do you think because you don't drop dead immediately that you are not hurting yourself? It's a toxin not a disease. Ever seen someone die from smoking a few cigarettes? No. But to then say that is evidence that cigarettes are safe is the same thing as drinking water from old PETE bottles. Moreover, toxins don't work alone. It's a cumulative effect. Rancid cooking oils, smog, smoking, industrial/consumer chemical exposure, and drinking from out-of-date toxic PETE bottles all pile on together to poison your system.

Tell your neighbor to just recycle his bottles and go get yourself some proper water storage containers.

 

DEHA isn't commonly found in PET bottles. I'd use the word "never", but why start an argument? DEHA is also approved for food storage and food prep use. It's not toxic in anywhere near the levels you will run into in real life.

Acetaldehyde is commonly found in all fermented foods and drinks, all ripe fruits, fruit juices, coffee etc etc etc in amounts hundreds and thousands of times higher than bottled water. It has a half life in the body of about 90 seconds.

Antimony....not even going to bother.

Look up PET bottles on snopes.com.

PET bottles are safe, used by the billions worldwide, the federal gov has debunked the "PET is hazardous" crap more than once. It's safe. Use it all you want. Just don't store your bottles in an area that routinely gets to 130F degrees or higher.

 

No, just the FDA has "debunked it" and the FDA is likely the most corrupt part of the US government.

You've made the mistake of assuming your internet reading is going to trump my factual knowledge of the process, because I make the equipment that makes the feedstock and see the actual tests in the refinery labs.

But of course you want proof, right? No problem. Trust me, I've done this dozens of times here.

So tell me, who do you trust more? The FDA or National Institutes of Health, in conjunction with the National Center for Biotechnology Information and National Library of Medicine?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854718/

The government study's conclusion? The evidence suggests that PET bottles may yield endocrine disruptors under conditions of common use, particularly with prolonged storage and elevated temperature. The Euros tested it too.

From the abstract of an article in Journal of Environmental Monitoring:
pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/EM/C2EM10917D#!divAbstract

Concentration of antimony in some bottled contents exceeded the EU limit after only 11 months of storage at room temperature

Acetaldehyde?

In October 2009 the International Agency for Research on Cancer updated the classification of acetaldehyde stating that acetaldehyde is a Group I human carcinogen. In addition, acetaldehyde is damaging to DNA and causes abnormal muscle development as it binds to proteins.

That rapid conversion process you talk about? Where it gets converted to acetic acid? It's an aggravating factor in in the onset of Alzheimer's Disease

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1293.004/abstract

Yes, acetaldehyde is common in the environment. So is smog. Neither are healthy for you. Just because something is common doesn't make it good for you. Just ask the EPA.

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/acetalde.html

DEHA?

Why, it is made right down the road from the refineries where I work, which incidentally is where a very large portion of all the plastic feedstock in the world is made.

Yeah, good luck with your scientific hunting online with this chemical. Fact is it hasn't been studied very well by the environmental and medical communities. It's just a very handy free radical scavenger in plastics making to resist runaway polymerization. The people who make it are not even sure of the danger. Try reading the MSDS on it.

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9923750

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: N,N-Diethylhydroxylamine LD50: Not available. LC50: Not available.

Potential Acute Health Effects: Hazardous in case of skin contact (irritant), of eye contact (irritant), of ingestion, of inhalation. Slightly hazardous in case of skin contact (permeator).
Potential Chronic Health Effects: CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available. MUTAGENIC EFFECTS: Not available. TERATOGENIC EFFECTS: Not available.
DEVELOPMENTAL TOXICITY: Classified Reproductive system/toxin/female, Reproductive system/toxin/male [SUSPECTED].
The substance may be toxic to the reproductive system. Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target
organs damage.

If you read into both DEHA and antimony you start to get the hint that your "junk" is likely to suffer from exposure. Are you still feeling all safe and comfortable about using old bottles now?

Really, feel free to step up and have this argument with me. It's my profession and have been through the debate dozens of times here. Play google wizard all you want, but I'll be ahead of you because I'll just go look at the data in the refinery labs where I do this for a living.

The fact is you are trying to make a debate about a discard item. You are trying to make the argument we should use what is really just trash to save a few dollars on an Aquatainer.

You can buy an Aquatainer for $10 if you know when to buy it. That's 70 cents per 2 liters of water storage. You cannot even buy soda that cheap anymore.

You can buy the Arizona Tea jug for $2.50 a gallon on sale at Walgreens at least once a month, which is the typical price per 2 liters of name brand soda.

So you can store water cheaper AND safer than using the discards of a soda habit. At this point about all you can say is you just like soda pop too much and you you would rather divert your money to that than to a safer form a water storage.

 

As others have said, they don't expire but the plastic is made thinner now. The trick is to rotate your cases. I refill the empty bottles with water out of my Berkey and drink those. After a few refills, I put the bottles in the recycle bin.

I wouldn't reuse a bottle for LT storage unless it's filtered/treated water in a clean bottle, and that can be more of a hassle then just buying a new case and recycling the old ones while we can.

 

As others have said, they don't expire but the plastic is made thinner now.

You might want to read above. Thin wall soda and water bottles indeed go bad. Sooner than you might think if you live in a warm climate.

 

I was agreeing with them, Zeke I think you read my post wrong. Not sure how!

 

But that particular plastic does expire (start to break down), Jenna. You said it didn't.

 

Oh my goodness... Is it your goal to follow me around and contradict me? I agreed that the water didn't expire, but the plastic is thin and to not use it for recycled bottles in LTS. Go ahead and read the rest of my post.

 

I buy screw top gallons of water for drinking and when there empty I refill them with tap and store them as preps, if shtf and your worried about the expiration date.. your not ready for the collapse of society.

 

Honestly I'm confused as to why folks would want a more toxic plastic to store water in when there is already are better plastics out there. Just because PET is clear and 'inviting' to see clear water shouldn't be a reason. That or you've got a bunch of them and are looking to repurpose them for something they weren't designed for.

Granted HDPE and the other less toxic plastics aren't 'clear' but that shouldn't be a reason to not use it if it's a safer plastic.

 

I watched a show a few months ago called "Tapped" I think, it was all about bottled water. The point of the story was that The 3 big bottled water producers in this country don't have to run test on the water they put in bottles like the city you live in does. When they ran test on name brand bottled waters they found toxins in it. Bottom line, tap water was cleaner. Just a thought.

 

Spring water is the best, IMO. The Earth already filtered it.

 

But of course you want proof, right? No problem. Trust me, I've done this dozens of times here.

Yeah, I want proof. That's something you're always sadly lacking, however. You cite magazine commentaries by almost laughed at pseudo-scientists as "NIH studies". You cite web sites that are laughed at. You cite "studies" that have been debunked many times. You blather and bloviate about how "you know because you do something or other that has something remotely to do with something or other". To be honest, I'm not sure wtf you actually do or what you really know. You never cite "PROOF" of even the least type. Your "proof" is on a par with the colloidal silver types....smirking at least, laughing out loud at best.

Yeah, you post a lot of crap about how plastic water bottles will kill us all. 'Cept you haven't posted ONE CASE of where it *has*.

In this last one of yours, you claim pickles cause Alzheimer's. That's the acetic acid, btw. Yeah, we've all seen the millions of folks running around with mutated DNA from eating pickles. How many thousands of bottles of water do you reckon you would have to drink to equal that ONE dill pickle you ate tonight at dinner? So who knows better? The thousands of doctors who espouse the health benefits of acetic acid or YOU who might or might not work in something or other? Btw, "fried foods cause Alzheimer's". "Cholesterol causes Alzheimer's". "Aluminum pots cause Alzheimer's". "Cinnamon causes Alzheimer's". "Buttered popcorn causes Alzheimer's". "Beer causes Alzheimer's". Should I go on? Now you say pickles do.

Yeah, you post on this topic a lot. I've argued your points and disproven them one by one what, three times??? And every time I do, the mods delete my posts. Why is that? Should I expect all my posts in this thread to suddenly disappear, too?

 

Magazine studies? Did you not have formal science training?

It's called peer journal studies, which anyone who had formal science, math, physics, medical, or engineering education at an accredited university knows is how science is advanced. Your scientific theories are considered junk until you submit to a "magazine" as you call them. But you would know this if you ever tried turning in a scientific term paper in college.

NIH? The National Institutes of Health are not some private enterprise. They are a sub-department of Health and Human Services, which is a US cabinet position. The department that administers how medicine is administered in the US.

You want to compare the veracity of the NIH versus the FDA? Fine, let's start with ConAgra, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, and all of the big Pharma corporations. Remember that it is the FDA that lobbies for farm subsidies for all the "poor farmers" when in reality Monsanto takes the biggest cut. The FDA has very little credibility anymore. The NIH has only exposure to doctor and hospital influence.

What we have here is merely a debate on which government agency is more trustworthy. It's no contest to me. I trust the NIH far more than the FDA. You talk about it being laughed at and yet you show me nothing of the sort.

You also wonder why your responses get deleted? Ad hominem. You cannot hold a proper debate without resorting to personal attacks. Which pretty much shows you realize you cannot debate facts and are forced to rely on trying to make me look bad with insults.

Your last post is basically filled with a collection of Tu Quoque, which is essentially what the kids call No You!, which is nothing more than saying I'm wrong because you say I'm wrong. It is also a well known classic form of logical fallacy. You presented a FDA link and a Snopes link. I presented 4 government links to peer review journals, which is the accepted convention throughout the accredited scientific community for making your point. Try putting a Snopes link on your term paper for any scientific discipline and you will be handed your paper back as unsupported in big red marks. Snopes gets things wrong and Snopes does not submit their findings for peer review. They are not an accredited source.

Finally let's tackle some comprehension skills. Your diatribe on acetic acid is flawed. If you would have read the EPA article then you would know it was not about the safety of acetic acid. It was about the conversion of acetaldehyde into acetic acid in the body. The acetic acid is not the problem here. It is the metabolic conversion process into acetic acid that is where the danger lies. Acetaldehyde is a toxin. You do not make pickles or popcorn with acetaldehyde. You make them with acetic acid, which is not acetaldehyde.

What else you got?

 

On second thought, I'm going to bow out of this one right now. I'm going in circles arguing your points only to have you claim that that wasn't what you meant.

 

I have about 48 gallons of water stored in 1 gallon refilled distilled water bottles. We use 3-5 a month at work and I just grab them when there is an empty carton. I fill them and stick them in an out of the way place in cartons they came in. When we go camping we pull the oldest carton and take it with us. I've been doing this for years and have had a few failures, but since I'm cycling through them yearly it's not an issue I'm concerned about. They have been very, very handy when the water got shut down or were on a boil ban.

This is just part of our water storage/treatment program. I'm a firm believer in as many ways to deal with something as possible. Since I have access to these, I'm not going to waste my time with soda bottles.

 

Well I dont know about all of the "chemical components of plastic leaching into water being bad for your health" or whatever, but if the SHTF... I guarantee you the last thing I am going to be worried about is the chemical composition of what type of plastic my emergency source of water is stored in. Respectfully, you people need some real world experience IMHO... I have had to drink out of water holes that would make a billy goat puke, but dying from dehydration was not a viable option. A healthy dose of perspective would go a long way... again... IMHO.

YMMV.
:

 

A few years back I was at a party and noticed someone turning a water bottle around to see the date. I sidled up and said "Water doesn't expire. That water was probably created about five seconds after the Big Bang.*"

She exploded, "The BIG BANG?? YOU BELIEVE IN THAT??"

End of party...

[ * Yes, I know it would need more than five seconds. To create higher atoms like oxygen would require star collapse, which would first require star formation; so maybe a few hundred million years... ]

 

No, water does not expire. Nor does the FDA require an expiration date on any bottled water.

From the FDA website...
"What is the shelf life for bottled water?
Bottled water is considered to have an indefinite safety shelf life if it is produced in accordance with CGMP and quality standard regulations and is stored in an unopened, properly sealed container. Therefore, FDA does not require an expiration date for bottled water. However, long-term storage of bottled water may result in aesthetic defects, such as off-odor and taste. Bottlers may voluntarily put expiration dates on their labels."

Source:http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneillnessContaminants/BuyStoreServeSafeFood/ucm077079.htm

As the link notes, State (and local) governments regulate bottled water too and they can, amongst other things, require an expiration date to be printed on the water bottle.

As IamZeke noted, all plastics will degrade over time, potentially releasing toxins into the water. How much and how soon? It depends on many variables, with one the main ones being heat. One of the European studies he referenced noted that, in some circumstances, toxins were already being released into the beverage (not water) within weeks of it being bottled.

Another concern of long-term water storage in plastic bottles is all plastics are permeable. This means that toxins can also migrate into the bottle even though the bottle itself appears to be fine. This is especially problematic if the water is stored in a garage or similar location where it is exposed to high levels of VOCs - vehicle exhaust, pesticides, etc. Unfortunately though, I can not locate the article in which I read this.

For the record, I still do and will continue to store water in plastic soda bottles. However, they are meant to be used as a last resort only - after all my other reserves (bottled water and water drums) run dry because even toxic water is better than no water at all.

However, after reading IamZeke's various statements and researching the topic, I'm now just dumping the water and disposing (curbside recycling) the bottles after ~1 year - rather than refilling them.