Aaaaahhhh! The Sky is falling! The sky is falling! oh wait....I guess we're okay

I'm thinking of starting a website named rampantyahooism.org. Why you ask when there are such quality institutions such as mythbusters and the like? Maybe that's why the blog is so aptly named with it's URL. (quick disclaimer: I've said some stupid things, so I'm not casting stones, just a foam ball or two)Here's the question: do people actually think about the questions people might ask when they say things? I would put forth to you that in fact, no they do not. I'm at work this morning filling my plastic water bottle out of the hard plastic water cooler container. A co-worker walks by (not a particularly popular one for obvious reasons) and says "you know you shouldn't re-use plastic bottles to drink water."
Sam: Oh really? Why not?
Co-worker: The plastic leaches into the water. It's okay to do the first time. You just shouldn't re-use it.
Sam: Hmmm....( this is the end of the conversation as I ran to my desk to avoid more nonsense and was thinking "that sure does sound crazy!")
#1: How is a steady state plastic going to get more dangerous between its first and second use? I can buy that heated plastic is no good, but that bottle probably sat in a hot warehouse somewhere at some point, and it's almost always at room temperature for me. Think about it.
#2: Shouldn't we be far more worried about actually drinking enough water instead of worrying about the relatively insignificant number of toxins (if it is in fact true)? I think this part probably should not apply to pregnant women as babies are pretty susceptible to this stuff. Little different for non-pregnant adults (like men, for instance).

So a quick bit of internet research (avoiding of course the plastics website and looking for slightly more respectable sources) yielded the following from Johns Hopkins (interestingly enough, the locale often blamed for originally telling people not to drink out of plastic bottles. )

http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/articles/halden_dioxins.html

About 10 minutes later, another co-worker, who usually would be smarter than this, sent me an e-mail about Ericsson giving away free laptops if you just send this e-mail to 8 people and copy the person that works at ericsson. Oh and you'll get a better model if you make that 20.

Quick questions

#1: A publicly traded tech company is going to give away countless numbers of laptops ( a high-dollar item) for free? Or not so much

#2: So you copy this employee in an e-mail. No home address, no phone number, She's just gonna get back to you with that computer in a couple weeks with the millions of recipients and senders that are inevitably included in this mess? Right...

So some more quick internet research revealed the following:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/ericsson.asp

I'm just saying. Please ask the question why. It can save everyone a lot of trouble and wasted seconds on the internet (where everything is true).