A US power company battery technician was on his break when he noticed smoke coming from his truck. And the culprit? A bottle of water! “I looked over and noticed light was being refracted through a water bottle and starting to catch the seat on fire,” Dioni Amuchastegui said in a video shared on the company’s Facebook page on July 13.
The evidence shows why you shouldn’t leave a water bottle in a hot car. Two burn marks were left on the seat of Dioni’s vehicle.
Firefighters are warning drivers about the hazard, too.
In a test conducted by a US fire department, sunlight magnified by a water bottle reached 250 degrees. The sunlight will come through, when it’s filled with liquid, and act as a magnifying glass as you would with regular optics. It uses the liquid and the clear material to develop a focused beam and sure enough. It can actually cause a fire, a combustion.
In conclusion, the risk of such a disaster occurring is low. Officials say that taking water bottles with you when exiting the car is the best way to prevent this type of fire.
Study suggests that leaving a water bottle in a hot car could release harmful chemicals in plastic bottles.
A new University of Florida study looked at 16 brands of bottled water. The findings might impact current recommendations surrounding BPA levels in plastic water bottles. While the current low levels in the plastic have been deemed safe. The researchers for this study watched these supposedly harmless levels grow over a four-week period when left in 70 °C heat.
Although this extreme heat is a worst case scenario. Drivers can certainly relate to finding a lost water bottle on the floor of the car and drinking it, no matter how long the bottle has lived there. If you’re parked in the sun on a hot summer day, the car’s internal temperature can reach between 55-77 °C. Plastic water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate. A material that’s used for a lot of packaging since it’s lightweight, durable, and shatterproof. However, when heated, it releases the chemical BPA. Which some experts say can affect hormone levels by mimicking estrogen, and may trigger health risks if exposed at high levels. While the initial levels of BPA found in the 16 brands did not exceed EPA standards for these chemicals. Scientists are more concerned about how the chemicals increased over time.
