Just about everything that you buy in a grocery store has an expiration date on it. From milk to meat to bread, you’re going to find expiration dates stamped on all of the items that you place into your cart.

Believe it or not, that will also go for bottled water in most instances. A lot of the companies that manufacture bottled water so that people can go about storing water include expiration dates on their products. And they do it for a bunch of good reasons.

If you’re someone who drinks bottled water on a regular basis or if you’ve gotten into the habit of storing tap water in water bottles in your home, you should be aware of what can happen to water over the course of a few months. It might make you think twice about drinking water that’s been in your home for a long period of time.

Continue reading to learn more.

Storing Water Can Make It Taste Stale

The first thing that you might notice when you take a swig of water that’s been stored for a long time is that it’ll often taste stale. While this water might not be bad for your health, it isn’t going to quench your thirst like fresh water will.

Water sometimes goes stale when carbon dioxide from the air finds its way into the water. This can make it a little bit more acidic than it would be otherwise, which leads to it developing a stale taste.

Storing water for too long could ruin it for you if this ever happens. It’s why you might want to steer clear of doing it.

It Can Also Become Contaminated by Plastic

As we just mentioned, stale water isn’t going to be too harmful to your health. It just won’t taste great.

Water that has been contaminated by plastic, on the other hand, can cause health complications. It’s why you should stay away from storing water for more than six months or so.

When you store water in plastic bottles, the plastic from these bottles can get into the water. You can then move this plastic into your body by drinking it and it can build up over time. It could potentially harm your gut health and cause respiratory issues at the same time.

This is another reason why you should try not to keep water bottles around for long stretches of time.

It Could Even Lead to Bacterial Growth

If you’re going to store water, it’s important to do it in the right way. You need to keep it sealed up tight in a cool, dark area where it won’t be exposed to any air or sunlight.

If you don’t seal water bottles up properly, bacteria might be able to get into them and wreak havoc on the water. This could obviously be very bad for your health if you then drink water with bacteria in it.

It’s one more reason you might want to think about refilling a water bottle every day and drinking from that rather than drinking from water bottles that have been sitting around for months on end. Click here to pick up a great water bottle for yourself.

Keeping Water in a Bottle for Too Long Could Be Very Bad for Your Health

You might be able to get away with storing water for more than six months without doing any harm to it. Water doesn’t technically expire like most other things.

But why risk it? You could be forced to deal with any or even all of the issues listed here when storing tap water or keeping old bottled water around. You’re better off drinking fresh water as often as you can.

Find more great health and wellness tips in the other articles on our blog.