Choosing Tap Water Over Bottled Water (Continued from Tap IN, post Aug. 26th)
The Natural Resources Defense’ Council has published a scientific’ study looking at the quality of’ bottled water. They tested 1,000′ bottles of 103 brands of bottled’ water. While most of the tested’ waters were found to be of high’ quality, some brands were contaminated. ‘ About one-third of the waters’ tested contained levels of contamination,’ including synthetic organic’ chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are both responsible for the safety of drinking water. EPA regulates public drinking water (tap water), while FDA regulates bottled drinking water.
FDA has set Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) specifically for bottled water. They require bottled water producers to:
- Process, bottle, hold and transport bottled water under’ sanitary conditions;
- Protect water sources‘ from bacteria, chemicals and other contaminants;
- Use quality control processes‘ to ensure the bacteriological and chemical safety of the water;
- Sample and test‘ both source water and the final product for contaminants
But should we believe it all????
According to Peter H. Gleick, a’ scientist at Berkeley, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, and author of’ ‘ ‘Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water’ says NO. ‘ ‘ ‘ Gleick writes, ‘œaround 350 million gallons of bottled water were sold in the United States ‘” almost entirely sparkling mineral water and large bottles to supply office water coolers. . . In 2008, nearly 9’ billion‘ gallons of bottled water were packaged and sold in the United States and five times this amount was sold around the world.’ ‘ That’s a 25-fold increase in three decades, and ‘œAmericans now drink more bottled water than milk or beer.’ ‘ Now, ‘œdata on beverage consumption reveals that on average, each of us is actually drinking around 36 gallons per year’ less‘ tap water.’
Gleick notes that ‘œwhen we do actually look, we find evidence that there are potentially serious quality problems with bottled water. . . the system for testing and monitoring the quality of bottled water is so flawed that we simply have no comprehensive assessment of actual bottled water quality.’
So, why hasn’t somebody done something about this? It turns out that the FDA is the culprit. Bottled water falls within the FDA’s purview. Gleick cites a study by the Government Accountability Office to the effect that ‘œwhile the FDA does very few actual inspections of water bottlers, the few they conducted between 2000 and 2008 found problems a remarkable 35 percent of the time. Even this warning sign led to little enforcement action.”
OK, maybe you feel bottled water tastes better than water from the tap. But you’re probably fooling yourself. As Gleick reports, ‘œtest after test shows the same things: people think they don’t like tap water, but they do. Or they think they can distinguish the taste of their favorite bottled water, but they can’t.’ Just check out ‘œbottled water taste test‘ on YouTube, if you don’t believe this.
Tap IN!