Hikers/Infants: Do Not Boil Your Water/Milk Bottle

We were reading the Daily Score's post about organics being less pesticide-y, and we ran into this interesting detail about polycarbonate bottles. We'd heard earlier that they leached some kinda whozit that, we imagined, eventually turned you into unisexual Stretch Armstrong, but the culprit seems to be simple cleanliness. We turned to ScienceDaily for the full story:

Scott Belcher, PhD, and his team found when the same new and used polycarbonate drinking bottles were exposed to boiling hot water, BPA, an environmental estrogen, was released 55 times more rapidly than before exposure to hot water. [...]

"There is a large body of scientific evidence demonstrating the harmful effects of very small amounts of BPA in laboratory and animal studies, but little clinical evidence related to humans," explains Belcher. "There is a very strong suspicion in the scientific community, however, that this chemical has harmful effects on humans."

Besides washing the bottles in boiling water, other no-nos would include hiking with hot liquids, like tea or coffee or sea water from near those high-temperature undersea vents. This is one of those stories that's guaranteed to freak moms out -- sort of a catch-22, let the baby bottle get all crusty or watch out for unexpected brain development. We can't spend all day fear-mongering, though, so go here for fully researched panic-paralysis.