When you start feeling sick or nauseous for no apparent reason, it’s usually a good idea to check what you’re eating or drinking, especially if your mouth feels earthy or musty afterward. As many of us do, one Pennsylvania woman was drinking water without conscious thought, as it’s an instinctual necessity to stay hydrated. It wasn’t until she was getting stomach aches that she noticed the dark-colored spots at the bottom of the bottle she reused on the daily: mold spores were sprouting. And the warm water she’s been drinking during winter was the perfect environment for its growth.
“I found the source of my tummy aches lollll,” the woman exclaims in her post on r/MoldlyInteresting. “So, I’ve been refilling this bottle and I do rinse it out. I didn’t put two and two together to realize I’ve been getting nauseous lol.”
She claims she’s been drinking warm water out of the same mold-infested bottle for 4 days straight. Of course, once she realized the growth, she threw out the bottle and isn’t feeling sick anymore.
“Jeepers OP. That’s the kind of bottle you don’t reuse. Go get a proper one please,” remarks the top commenter, pointing out that recyclable plastic bottles are disposable for a reason. The Pennsylvania woman says that she hasn’t been putting the bottle in the dishwasher with the rest of her dishes. Instead, she would just fill it with hot water and shake it up to rinse it out.
A response warned her that that method was more or less just giving the bacteria inside a Turkish bath; handwashing with soap and water is what would remove the nasty stuff sticking to the inside of the bottle.
In the end, she ended up getting a proper bottle, a stainless steel thermos that would both keep her water warm and keep the mold at bay, as long as she regularly cleans it, of course. Her post is a good reminder to periodically wash out cups or bottles you regularly use for water; otherwise, you might be sheltering an unwanted fungal grotto.
