Bottled water can expire

Though water itself doesn’t expire, bottled water often has an expiration date.

In 1987, New Jersey became the first and only U.S. state to pass a law requiring that all food products — including bottled water — have an expiration date of 2 years or less from the date of manufacture.

When this law was passed, printing an expiration date became an industry standard for bottled water manufacturers across the country.

However, this law was later changed, and no current legislation in the United States requires manufacturers to print an expiration date on bottled water.

Still, it’s generally not a good idea to drink water from plastic bottles that’s way beyond its expiration date.

This is because plastic can begin to leach into the water over time, contaminating it with chemicals, such as antimony and bisphenol A (BPA) (5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source).

If ingested regularly, these plastic compounds can slowly accumulate in your body, which could harm gut health, immunity, and respiratory function (8Trusted Source, 9Trusted Source).

Additionally, bottled water that’s carbonated may eventually become flat, losing its carbonation and developing an off taste.