why is it not recommended to reuse plastic bottles on the grounds of “the plastic will leech into the water” when they are used to store sometimes very acidic drinks for months or even years?

Question

why is it not recommended to reuse plastic bottles on the grounds of “the plastic will leech into the water” when they are used to store sometimes very acidic drinks for months or even years?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

It is mostly random panic. It only matters if you fill it with something hot, or which is chemically unsuitable for the respective kind of bottle (think caustic soda). Anything cold you plausibly drink should not be an issue. Even if hot you are probably fine; it depends on the plastic, but even the worst case is far away from serious effects.

Some stuff always slowly leeches out, but within reason it isn’t worse than what happens to the original content over a similar timeframe.

Edit: I should probably add that a different factor, abrasion of microplastics, exists. It is not yet understood how much, if anything, it does. It happens if there is damage to the inside surface of the bottle, for example from crushing or hitting it. However, that again also applies as well with the original content.