Bottled Water

When plastic bottles are manufactured, the molds used to form them are coated with a solvent and a powder that functions as a lubricant to prevent the plastic from sticking to the machinery. This coating process is continuous during production, meaning the interior of each bottle is exposed to these compounds during its formation. The result is that residues of the manufacturing solvent, the lubricating powder, and plastic compounds are present on the inside surface of every bottle before any liquid is added.

When water is then placed in that bottle, the water acts as a solvent and extracts these residues. The consumer receives not only water but the manufacturing byproducts, plastic compounds, phthalates, PCBs, and other toxins that have migrated from the container walls into the liquid. Aajonus stated that if companies were to thoroughly clean the bottles before filling them, the contamination problem would be substantially reduced, but no such cleaning was taking place. The contamination therefore occurs with every new bottle, not only with bottles that have been reused or exposed to heat.

Aajonus had been recommending naturally sparkling mineral waters, particularly Gerolsteiner, as the preferred option for people who were going to drink water at all. His reasoning was that naturally carbonated waters provide more nitrogen in the digestive tract and more oxygen in the blood compared to still water. He noted that naturally carbonated waters were also almost exclusively available in glass, which made them acceptable on two grounds simultaneously: the carbonation benefit and the absence of plastic contamination.

When Gerolsteiner switched to plastic bottles for the US market while continuing to export in glass to other countries, Aajonus stopped purchasing it. He noted that he had not consumed any bottled water for three weeks following that decision, and in the preceding week had consumed only half a cup of Apollinaris, another naturally sparkling mineral water. He commented that Gerolsteiner apparently continued exporting in glass to other countries but not to the United States.

Multiple subscribers contacted Gerolsteiner to pressure the company to return to glass bottles. Aajonus's response was that many people had made contact and the company did not appear to be moved by the feedback. He did not change his position based on this outcome; he simply identified which naturally sparkling waters remained available in glass and directed people toward those.

After Gerolsteiner switched to plastic for the US market, Aajonus identified Apollinaris as his current choice when he needed to consume any water at all. He also listed San Faustino, San Pellegrino, and Perrier as options, with the qualification about Perrier addressed separately. He had previously stopped purchasing Perrier because it had begun artificially carbonating its water rather than relying on natural carbonation, adding chemically derived carbon dioxide rather than the carbon dioxide that naturally exists in the mineral spring. When Perrier later resumed sourcing natural carbon dioxide from another mineral spring company whose wells produced excess gas, Aajonus considered it acceptable again. He confirmed this change had occurred approximately two years prior to one subscriber's inquiry, stating that Perrier began buying natural carbon dioxide from a company with wells producing excessive gases.

The general principle was that naturally sparkling mineral water in glass is the safest option for anyone who is going to drink water. His newsletter stated this directly: "if drinking water, the safest (chemical-free) water is naturally sparkling mineral water in glass."

Aajonus explained the chemistry of plastic contamination in considerable detail across multiple workshops. Plastic is produced by hydrogenating vegetable oils, a process that converts liquid oil into a solid substance. Because plastic originates from organic material, it is inherently susceptible to mold and fungal growth. Early plastics, from the 1950s through the mid-1960s, could not be commercially deployed in cars, toys, or household goods because mold would colonize and break down the plastic within three to twelve months, sometimes as quickly as six months. The plastic industry could not solve this problem through heat treatment alone; even heating plastic to temperatures near its disintegration point did not permanently stop mold formation.

The solution was the introduction of extremely toxic antifungal compounds, including PCBs and dioxins, into the plastic formulation itself. These compounds were designed to make the plastic permanently inhospitable to any biological organism. They succeeded in preventing mold but introduced carcinogenic toxins throughout every plastic product. Aajonus described this as a deliberate industrial trade-off: the industry accepted the creation of massive environmental and bodily toxicity in order to produce a commercially viable product. He stated that one-third of the total land mass of the earth is already contaminated with these substances from plastic manufacturing and plastic waste, not including oceanic contamination.

The specific toxins of concern in plastic include phthalates, PCBs, dioxins, BPA (Bisphenol A), bisphenol phosphates, and the gases released by certain hard plastic compounds. These compounds are not static within the plastic; they migrate outward continuously, a process called outgassing. When water, which is a solvent, is placed in direct contact with a plastic container, this migration accelerates because the solvent actively draws the compounds out of the container walls.

Aajonus distinguished between different conditions that affect the rate at which plastic compounds leach into contents. He noted that freezing is as problematic as heating. When anything is frozen in plastic, BPAs are released into the frozen contents. When anything is heated in plastic, the same occurs. Even the Mayo Clinic, he noted, had posted on its website a recommendation not to heat or freeze anything in plastic because BPAs will be released.

The threshold he mentioned in the context of coconut oil in plastic was 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Below that temperature, rinsed plastic containers do not leach into coconut oil. However, this was a specific context involving rinsed containers holding oil, not water, and he treated the water-in-plastic situation as categorically problematic regardless of temperature.

For people making ice cubes, he recommended using Pyrex glass containers rather than plastic ice cube trays to avoid BPA contamination of the ice. The technique was to fill Pyrex glass containers with water, freeze, then apply lukewarm water at the base to release the ice.

Aajonus returned repeatedly to the point that water is uniquely problematic as a solvent when combined with plastic, compared to other foods stored in plastic. He explained that plastic is porous, meaning it allows gases and compounds to pass through its walls. Because water is the strongest available solvent, its contact with plastic surfaces extracts compounds more readily and completely than would occur with less solvent-active substances.

In the context of cheese accidentally heated in plastic wrapping, he offered a relative comparison: if the cheese had been frozen in plastic, he advised throwing it away entirely because the acidity generated by freezing would dissolve some of the plastic into the cheese. If it had not been frozen, cutting off one millimeter from the outer surface would be sufficient. This case illustrates his working model that cold and acidic conditions each independently accelerate plastic migration into food, while neither condition is required for contamination to occur, only for its rate to change.

For milk stored in plastic, he acknowledged that the mineral content of raw milk, specifically potassium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, binds with plastic compounds, reducing the systemic harm compared to plastic-contaminated water. However, this binding comes at the cost of depleting those minerals from the milk itself. He described this as a loss of nutritional value rather than a neutralization of harm, and stated it was better to avoid plastic regardless.

Aajonus connected the modern habit of drinking large quantities of water to the commercial interests of bottled water companies rather than to any biological requirement. He described the practice of drinking eight glasses of water daily as a marketing creation that emerged around 1961 and 1962 when beverage industry figures, including people from the Pepsi-Cola company, decided to bottle and sell water. Doctors were paid to promote the eight glasses per day recommendation, and the instruction became widespread through medical and alternative health channels.

He noted that before the bottled water era, people in school would take two or three sips from a water fountain per day, and the primary beverages consumed were milk and, later, soda. Nobody was drinking eight glasses of water per day, and there was no biological necessity requiring them to. The promotion of large water consumption served the commercial interest of selling bottled water. The shift also coincided with the deliberate contamination of tap water, including the addition of fluoride and industrial chemicals, which made tap water unpalatable and drove consumers toward bottled alternatives.

In this framework, the widespread adoption of plastic water bottles was not simply a packaging choice but the material endpoint of a decades-long commercial project to make water a purchasable daily necessity. Aajonus was pointing out that this entire commercial structure delivered a product that was itself a source of plastic contamination, creating a health outcome the opposite of what was being marketed.

Aajonus stated that he drank approximately half a cup of water per month at most, and sometimes went extended periods without any bottled water. He reported going three weeks without any bottled water after Gerolsteiner switched to plastic. When he did consume water, he chose naturally sparkling mineral water in glass, with Apollinaris as his current selection at the time of his newsletter comments on the subject. He treated this extremely low water intake as the appropriate baseline for adults on the Primal Diet, since the foods on the diet contain substantial water content intrinsically.