A week after Z Recommends published an exclusive report that provided extensive evidence that Gaiam water bottles previously marketed as “BPA-free” were likely to contain the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A,
the company has quietly added information to its retail website which
admits to independent lab test results showing leaching levels at 23.8
parts per billion. These findings are more than ten times the detection
limit SIGG said revealed no leaching from their own bottles and over 18 times more than the leaching levels found in independent testing of SIGG bottles shared with ZRecs by an anonymous source.

SIGG’s revelation of the use of BPA in their aluminum water bottles after years of obfuscation sent the company into a PR tailspin,
despite their claims of no leaching, and their readiness with a new
BPA-free alternative. In the case of Gaiam, the company itself has
admitted to leaching at nearly twenty times that detected in SIGG
bottles, in bottles currently being sold, after explicitly marketing
them as BPA-free as recently as Spring 2009, claims Gaiam customer
service representatives repeated to ZRecs less than a month ago.