How long is water in a water bottle "good" when opened??

[marshallandcartersmo]

Big discussion at my house recently. We were talking about all the 1/2 drank water bottles laying around our house.
One person (who shall remain nameless) says "it's just water, it doesn't go bad". Another nameless person thinks after a bottle of water has been opened, and drank some water out of the bottle, bacteria/germs get into the bottle and things start growing. This person seems to remember a high school biology class where if you put a glass of water on the windowsill and leave it, things start growing in it.

Opinions?

ETA--we're talking about plain old Dasani-type water here. Not the refillable metal bottles.

 

[wardfamily1]

If it's been sitting out more than a day I don't drink it, but I do just rinse the bottle, refill it and put it back in the fridge. (We have good city water here, we just use the bottles for convenience.

 

[Barbossa]

It depends. I always do a sniff test, if there's any smell whatsoever then I toss it. My kids are notorious backwashers, so their water gets tossed fairly regularly.

 

[Micca]

But a glass of water sitting out is open to all kinds of impurities getting into it.
If the bottle of water is closed, I wouldn't think that would be a problem.

OTOH, there's the matter of the backwash of the person drinking from the bottle. Suppose bacteria from a person gets into the bottled water, then gets stored in the fridge, who knows what we might be drinking?

BTW, I do put my partly empty water bottles back in the fridge to finish later.

 

[SplshMtn99]

Not sure but 1/2 bottles appear at our house too.

I do know that those bottles themselves do get a disgusting smell around the opening even after washing and reusing them just a few times. I'm looking for a good water bottle with no taste to it that I can refill, wash & reuse. I don't like all the bottles ending up in landfill.

 

[themarquis]

Big discussion at my house recently. We were talking about all the 1/2 drank water bottles laying around our house.
One person (who shall remain nameless) says "it's just water, it doesn't go bad". Another nameless person thinks after a bottle of water has been opened, and drank some water out of the bottle, bacteria/germs get into the bottle and things start growing. This person seems to remember a high school biology class where if you put a glass of water on the windowsill and leave it, things start growing in it.

Opinions?

ETA--we're talking about plain old Dasani-type water here. Not the refillable metal bottles.

Your coworkers are probably both right. Yes, any contact with something with bacteria on/in it (like your mouth, saliva, or even the air in the room!) will let bacteria in the water and it could potentially grow and thrive.

But the odds that you could actually get sick or have a problem due to drinking the bacteria-laden water? Pretty much negligible. I'm thinking that water couldn't carry a huge bacteria load (no "food" for the bacteria, which is absolutely necessary if they are to actually grow a big enough bacteria colony to make you sick), and also most of the bacteria that could actually make you sick are much more adapted to hanging out in the human body and growing and thriving there then in plain filtered water.

I feel like there have been these big things in the "news" lately that have fear-mongered people into thinking they can't refill their bottles or drink out of a bottle that has been sitting around for a while ... of course nobody has actual cases of people really getting sick or dying from such a thing ... it's all conjecture, fed by fear-mongering yellow journalism.

I wouldn't worry about it. There are much much more dangerous things in the world that we should be concerned about than whether our "water has gone bad".

 

[lg3]

One of our local news stations did a story on this subject a few months ago - From what I recall I was shocked at how long the water stays good. The focus was about refilling the plastic water bottles after drinking them originally, and how long you could continue to do that. They had a test with water bottles sitting out and the bottom line was that you could reuse them and refill them quite a few times with no significant bacteria growth. I still only reuse mine about three times, and no one else drinking from the same bottle.

 

[Sleepy]

If it is a bottle I have been drinking from, I will let it go a few days, but no more. If it is a bottle of water that I use for cooking, I let it sit (with cap on)until it is empty, which can be up to a week. We don't have tap water fit for consumption, so we use bottled water for everything.

 

[marshallandcartersmo]

fun reading all the responses..........I'm glad it seems like we're not the only ones who's discussed this!

 

[froglady]

Just an aside, but have you figured out the cost of tossing half opened bottles vs buying the smaller bottles? It may be cheaper in the long run to pay more/ounce short term.

I purchased some adequate reusable water bottles from Walgreens for 2/$1.00, and refill them from gallons of bottled water that I keep cold. I write names on them, and toss them after a few months.

Of course, I'm the only one who collects, washes, and refills them.