How long is bottled water good for after its expiration date if not opened?
It is suggested that you not store water for long periods (greater than 1 year) Most bottled waters have no expiration date, and while it is unlikely that substantial amounts of microbial growth would occur, it makes no sense to purchase bottled water for it’s purity and then allow algae to grow in it. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (which regulates bottled water) has not set any limitation to the shelf life of bottled water. You may have noticed that most bottled water containers sold have a two-year expiration date. That is only used for stock rotation purposes. It does not mean the water will go bad if stored (properly) longer. In the United States bottled water’s shelf life is date stamped for two years. It should be stored in a dark, cool, dry area away from any solvents or chemicals. The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) further adds: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the quality and safety of bottled water, has neither set nor suggested a
Let’s examine how long all the ingredients of bottled water last. First, we’ll make a list of all the ingredients. Ingredients of bottled water: • Water. • Bottle. • Air. Water doesn’t expire. It’s water. It has no component chemicals to mix or do anything. It is largely inert. If you leave it by itself in a vacuum for a billion years, it’ll be just fine to drink in a billion years. Now let’s look at the air. Air’s fine. Air mixes with water all the time. Presumably there could be a few contaminants, but the amount of contaminants in a sealed container wouldn’t actually increase over time, so it wouldn’t be any worse to drink it later than sooner, unless we consider that the bottle may not be air tight. But let’s figure it probably is air tight, and so we still have an infinite number of years of service. Finally, let’s look at the bottle. Uh oh, the bottle is plastic. Plastic bottles do all sorts of nasty things. No wonder there’s an expiration date! The bottle will be constantly leak
If the water is pure enough, packaged securely enough, and stored safely enough then it will remain just pure water until the Sun explodes and burns up the Earth, several billion years from now. But since it was obviously packaged by fallible human beings, it’s not very likely much of it is done quite that well. Yours? Who can tell? Store it in the dark, and when you consider opening some, hold it up to bright light – if you see *anything* at all in it, then consider it all bad. But if you don’t, then I’m certain it’s safe to open and smell. Again, if there’s *any* smell, again consider the whole batch bad, but if not … on to the tasting. We’re all equipped with senses which evolution has granted us certain abilities, and while we’re not well equipped to detect specific things like chemical contamination, we’re pretty good at detecting cloudy, smelly, or off-tastes. Yes, there are plenty of completely invisible dangerous organisms which could be in OPEN water, but they couldn’t survi
New Jersey requires an expiration date on all consumable items, including bottled water. The water companies decided to put an expiration date, of two years, on all of their bottles, rather than separating the water that goes to New Jersey. They admit that there is no proof that an unopened bottle of water would ever go bad, but that it may change to a musky taste after several years, due to the plastic. They aren’t even sure about that. There is no way for bacteria to get to the water in a bottle that has never been opened or damaged. It really doesn’t matter to the manufacturers. if you throw your unused bottles out, as long as you replace them, so they really have no reason to fight the New Jersey law. I checked out the expiration date, when I first noticed it, too. What could it turn into! tap water? Oh my! My worry is the cost of the plastic bottles. Given the amount of bottled water sold, in the USA alone, the amount of throw away bottles is astronomical! Sources:
