Our very own Jason English is wondering why his Poland Spring has a “drink by” date on it when common sense dictates that water doesn’t go bad. To him I say, “It’s your own damn fault.”
Well, not personally his fault, but the fault of his home state of New Jersey. A 1987 NJ state law required all food products sold there to display an expiration date of two years or less from the date of manufacture. Labeling, separating and shipping batches of expiration-dated water to the Garden State seemed a little inefficient to bottled water producers, so most of them simply started giving every bottle a two-year expiration date, no matter where it was going.
Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never established or suggested a limitation on the shelf life of bottled water as long as it’s produced in accordance with regulations and the bottle remains properly sealed. Makes sense, because it’s, you know…water. Even Dirty Jerz caught on to this fact and amended the law a few years ago. But the expiration date has been an industry norm for so long that many producers have just kept it on there.
Better WIth Age?
While “expired” unopened bottled water isn’t going to do you any harm, it isn’t going to get better with age, either. The plastic that water is packaged in — usually polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for retail bottles and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for water cooler jugs –- is slightly porous, so the water can pick up smells and tastes from the outside world. Keep a case of bottled water in the basement for a year or so and it’s going to pick up some interesting flavors. There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than a 2007 Evian, with hints of dust and a crisp kitty litter finish!
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Additionally, Ozone is pumped into the water bottle in lieu of regular old oxygen because it’s an extremely efficient sanitizing agent. Ozone trapped inside the bottle hinders bacteria spores hidden in the water from contaminating the product inside it’s walls. Over time, the Ozone will lose it’s oxidative qualities. Thus giving bottled water a shelf life.
posted by Lisa on 6-28-2009 at 12:50 pm
Compounds from the plastic leach into the water, which is why you shouldn’t refill and reuse the bottles.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 6-28-2009 at 3:17 pm
My understanding is that it’s not the water that goes bad. It’s because of the type of plastic used for the bottle.
posted by Steven Buehler on 6-28-2009 at 4:13 pm
I knew it!
When I was a young sailor, I asked this question to my First Class Petty Officer. He said “Water DOES go bad.” and I thought he was full of beans all these years and I thank you now for confirming that he was a moron.
Makes me wish I had his email address.
posted by holly on 6-28-2009 at 7:26 pm
I found out about the taste and smell thing during Hurricane Ike. Last year, we had 5 year old ‘Sam’s Choice’ bottled water from our hurricane survival kit that had been in our garage.
It just wasn’t right. We heard the newscaster say on the radio that it would not do any damage to our system to drink old bottled water, it may just taste funny. Their advise was to drink it anyway. I guess we did not have much of a choice!
posted by Witty Nickname on 6-29-2009 at 9:18 am
Last year I saw an ad in the paper offering free pallets of water to organizations. I called on behalf of my fire department and it was a Coke distributer trying to get rid of expired water. I told the man that my firefighters (i’m the fire chief) were not above drinking form the fire hose after working on a hot call and water that had gone past it’s date would surely not be a problem. He was happy because he got to donate water away instead of sending it to a landfill, my guys were happy because they got water and when the firefighters are happy, then so is the chief – so I was happy too!
posted by Jeneva on 6-29-2009 at 11:50 am
After my mother died a few years back, my siblings and I were cleaning out her house, we found water that had expired in 2001. On a whim and arguing the idea that “water doesn’t go bad,” I tried it, and it did have quite the odd taste to it…something akin to leaving a glass of water on a nightstand for a night or two. Needless to say, the rest went promptly down the drain!
posted by Marty on 6-29-2009 at 3:54 pm
The bad news is that I’ve experienced the “hint of kitty litter.” The good news (for me) is that now I know it was just the smell leeching through the PET and not actual sand in the bottle. Thanks mental_floss!
posted by Colby on 6-29-2009 at 5:15 pm
Your story has recently been linked to Yahoo’s home page news stories. Contratulations. Maybe some new viewers will discover this fun site.
posted by Jim on 6-29-2009 at 9:25 pm
There is NO need to insult New Jersey!!!! “Dirty Jerz…”
posted by Bellton on 6-29-2009 at 9:27 pm
Does toilet water have an expiration date? ‘Cause mine tastes funny.
posted by Brady on 8-27-2009 at 9:47 pm
We all know disposable water bottles are wasteful and bad for the environment, yet their production is growing rapidly everywhere. Just 20 years ago the market for plastic water bottles was practically nonexistent, but today we produce billions of these completely unnecessary products. There can be only one sane response, plastic water bottles must be banned!
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/10/water-bottle-manifesto.html
posted by Canada Guy on 10-29-2009 at 11:42 am
my bottled water comes in glass bottles. i bet it stays good for a very long time. thanks mountain valley. on the TED website there is a guy that developed an amazing water purifier that works instantly. the video shows him mix a batch of the filthiest water from ponds and rivers – put into the filter – hand pumps it a few times. out squirts clear water into a glass – which he drinks straight down.
posted by dirk alan on 11-26-2009 at 6:04 pm
We all know that Twinkies have and infinite shelf life – so I checked to see if they had an expiration date: Nope, just a “best if used by” date.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 2-26-2010 at 5:35 pm
Weird. Water is amazing. It tastes like nothing when purified, and we drink the same water George Washington could have bathed in. It’s just all hard to accept.
posted by Kelsey on 5-7-2010 at 5:53 pm
Water Does go bad.
No matter how much filtration and purification water goes through, there still remains the fact that there will remain even a tiny bit of microscopic bacteria in it, and over time, that bacteria will multiply and regenerate, until it reaches a certain point when it will no longer be safe to drink.
posted by Zera on 6-9-2010 at 9:32 pm
All states have some industrialized areas, as does New Jersey- but Jersey is mostly GORGEOUS. My husband was raised in the countryside of North Florida, and he went to NJ with me in 2006 and said- “NJ has it all! The mountains, beaches and farmlands are gorgeous! I’d move here in a heartbeat”!!
posted by Patty Sponholtz on 6-9-2010 at 11:04 pm
Hard hats have an expiration date. (The hard plastic ones.)
posted by Boo Radley on 7-17-2010 at 7:50 am
Re: Kelsey, we all know George Washington and the other colonials didn’t take baths. Silly.
posted by aberline on 7-26-2010 at 12:42 pm
@holly,
See Zera’s response. Your petty officer was correct. That’s why he was a NCO and you were a common semen… er, seaman.
posted by Pile of Pooh on 9-23-2010 at 1:29 pm
Not all bottled water is the same – some is simply big-city tap water, with chlorinated dead microorganisms, miscellaneous pollutants and such in it. They have a shelf life of sorts.
posted by Chainsaw on 9-27-2010 at 6:59 pm
Wouldn’t it have a shelf life for the same reason every food has a shelf life, namely, that eventually, no matter how pure it starts out, microorganisms will multiply in it until it’s no longer safe? I mean, unless you freeze it, it’s not going to stay uncontaminated by the outside world indefinitely.
posted by Stutz on 11-14-2010 at 4:45 am
I have no problems reusing bottles where I’ve purchased bottled water from, but after a bit of reflection I’ve come to realize that I don’t usually keep those bottles around longer than two years, and typically I’ll replace them after a year or a year and a half. My favorite type of bottle is the kind you get at Wild Oats-owned health food stores — the 32-ounce store-brand bottles they sell. Not only does the spring water taste great, but the bottles are the perfect size for me. I’ll get two of them and reuse them for about a year and a half, then replace them and recycle the old bottles. And I like the taste of our tap water too, particularly since I live in a neighborhood with a good water supply. The last one I lived in, it was so overdeveloped that the water was cloudy from the silt and sediment the overworked pumps were dredging up along with the water, so I didn’t drink much tap water.
posted by Diane on 1-20-2011 at 11:33 pm
Not to mention that the acidity in the water eats away at the bottles. Check out my site and it will explain more on water consumption and hopefully explain the process a little more clearly. http://www.alkalinewaterconnection.com We don’t really realize how important water is to us. What comes out of the tap and even what we purchase can sometimes be misleading.
posted by Joe on 4-15-2011 at 12:53 pm
I once saw an unopened water bottle with large balls of mold in it…
posted by Adriane on 7-30-2011 at 4:40 pm
“Dirty Jerz” is soo funny. It’s even funnier how some people are offended by it.. they clearly have never been to New Jersey.
posted by Mike on 11-18-2011 at 4:45 pm