ABSTRACT

Water stored in plastics have become popular as it is perceived as source of clean water. Nigeria has become one of the largest in consumption of stored rain water. Due to its low diffusivity and chemical inertness (Franz and Welle, 2002), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the most popular material for food or beverage packaging, accounting for >99% of all beverage bottles (ILS I-Europe, 2000). However, recent studies demonstrated that PET bottles can release harmful chemicals such as antimony (Sb) and bisphenol A (BPA) into water (Santhi,el al., 2012; Westerhoff, et al., 2008), therefore, its safety becomes a controversial issue. Antimony trioxide (Sb2O3) is one of the most important catalysts widely used for solid-phase poly-condensation of PET. It offers high catalytic activity, does not induce undesirable colors, and has a low tendency to catalyze side reactions (Duh, 2002). PET bottles typically contain I 90e300 mg/kg Sb (Duh, 2002) with the highest Sb concentration being 353 mg/kg (Hureiki and Mouneimne, 2012). Bottled waters become contaminated during storage due to Sb release from PET plastic (Shotyk and Krachler, 2007), which primarily attributes to PET degradation (Takahashi,et al., 2008). Unlike Sb, BPA should not be present in PET bottles since BPA is not involved in PET manufacturing (Bach, et al., 2012). However, detectable BPA in PET bottled water has been reported (Li,et al., 2010; Toyo'oka and Oshige, 2000).