I have little useful analysis to offer, the linked article and this one say what needs to be said. Basically, bottled water is neither safer nor healthier for you than tap water, because by and large it is tap water stripped of the chemicals that protect you from water-borne illnesses in order to improve taste. I understand not liking that chlorinated taste, because I don't like it. Our water filter at home takes that taste away and gives it another, so I don't really like that either. If you don't believe me about the sanitariness of the water, read this:
While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the quality of public water supplies, the agency has no authority over bottled water. Bottled water that crosses state lines is considered a food product and is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which does mandate that it be bottled in sanitary conditions using food-grade equipment. According to the influential International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), “By law, the FDA Standard of Quality for bottled water must be as stringent as the EPA’s standards for public drinking water.”
However, the FDA is allowed to interpret the EPA’s regulations and apply them selectively to bottled water. As Senior Attorney Erik Olson of the NRDC explains, “Although the FDA has adopted some of the EPA’s regulatory standards, it has decided not to adopt others and has not even ruled on some points after several years of inaction.” In a 1999 report, the NRDC concludes that bottled water quality is probably not inferior to average tap water, but Olson (the report’s principal author) says that gaps in the weak regulatory framework may allow careless or unscrupulous bottlers to market substandard products. He says that may be of particular concern to those with compromised immune systems.
How about other health hazards?
Olson says one brand of “spring water,” which had a graphic of mountains and a lake on the label, was actually taken from a well in Massachusetts in the parking lot of an industrial facility. The well, which is no longer used for bottled water, was near hazardous waste and had experienced contamination by industrial chemicals.
Great! Remove that nasty chlorine taste and replace it with the fresh zing of mercury!
The other concern is the environmental impact of the bottles themselves.
The WWF argues that the distribution of bottled water requires substantially more fuel than delivering tap water, especially since over 22 million tons of the bottled liquid is transferred each year from country to country. Instead of relying on a mostly preexisting infrastructure of underground pipes and plumbing, delivering bottled water—often from places as far-flung as France, Iceland or Maine—burns fossil fuels and results in the release of thousands of tons of harmful emissions. Since some bottled water is also shipped or stored cold, electricity is expended for refrigeration. Energy is likewise used in bottled water processing. In filtration, an estimated two gallons of water is wasted for every gallon purified.
When most people think of bottled water, they probably envision the single-serve plastic bottle, which has exploded in popularity and is now available almost anywhere food products are sold. The WWF estimates that around 1.5 million tons of plastic are used globally each year in water bottles, leaving a sizable manufacturing footprint. Most water bottles are made of the oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate, which is known as PET. While PET is less toxic than many plastics, the Berkeley Ecology Center found that manufacturing PET generates more than 100 times the toxic emissions—in the form of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene—compared to making the same amount of glass. The Climate Action Network concludes, “Making plastic bottles requires almost the same energy input as making glass bottles, despite transport savings that stem from plastic’s light weight.”
Ok, we may not be able to solve every problem, but we can't destroy the Earth because we don't like the taste of city water. Get a charcoal filter if you must, but drinking more tap water is the solution to this problem. I admit, I have drunk plenty of bottled water, but I'm going to make a promise to TWM to do better.
4 comments:
Well, I'll tell you what I do. I take a couple of those big Ozarka bottles up to Albertson's up the street, and use their big water filter devices, which just filters the tap water at the cost of 39 cents a gallon. If I buy water in a bottle when I'm out and about, I keep it and reause it probably about 20 or so times, just refilling it with water at home. If I do buy water somewhere, I usually buy the major label brands, so hopefully I'm not drinking ass-water from somewhere. So I think drinking filtered local water, and reusing the bottles that I do buy, helps to avoid any pollutants and chemicals and keeps from trashing up the environment as much as possible. At least, if that filtering up at Albertson's is really working.
That's a good plan, I'm sure you'd be able to tell just by taste. I think that's the only thing bottled water has over tap water.
"Olson says one brand of “spring water,” which had a graphic of mountains and a lake on the label, was actually taken from a well in Massachusetts in the parking lot of an industrial facility."
-This is the only problem case ever cited by bottled water oponents -because it's the only one.
"The other concern is the environmental impact of the bottles themselves."
-Of course, an environmental "issue". I should've known that this blog was a green blog in the first place, my mistake.
One other thing; What if you don't want to drink the fluoride in the water? You've got 2 options, buy bottled, or buy a filter or reverse osmosis machine costing hundreds - and hope they work as advertised.
Boy, it sure would be nice if these people who came along to argue about something would actually read the articles cited.
"Olson says one brand of “spring water,” which had a graphic of mountains and a lake on the label, was actually taken from a well in Massachusetts in the parking lot of an industrial facility."
"-This is the only problem case ever cited by bottled water oponents -because it's the only one."
Bullshit alert! Bullshit alert!
From the article (duh):
"An earlier NRDC-commissioned study tested for hundreds of different chemicals in 38 brands of California bottled water. Two samples had arsenic contamination, six had chemical byproducts of chlorination, and six had measurable levels of the toxic chemical toluene. Several samples violated California’s bottled water standards. In a study published in the Archives of Family Medicine, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University compared 57 samples of bottled water to Cleveland’s tap water. While 39 of the bottled water samples were purer than the tap water, 15 of the bottles had significantly higher bacteria levels. The scientists concluded that although all of the water they tested was safe to drink, “use of bottled water on the assumption of purity can be misguided.”
Another area of potential concern is the fact that no agency calls for testing of bottled water after it leaves its initial packaging plant, leaving some to wonder what happens during months of storage and transport. To begin to examine this question, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment tested 80 samples of bottled water from retail stores and manufacturers. All 80 of the samples had detectable levels of chlorine, fluoride and sodium. Seventy-eight of the 80 contained some nitrate (which can cause methemoglobinemia, or blue-baby syndrome, in higher doses), 12 had nitrite, 53 had chloroform, 33 contained bromodichloro-methane, 25 had arsenic and 15 tested positive for lead.
Forty-six of the samples contained traces of some form of the carcinogen (and hormone disrupter) phthalate, while 12 of those exceeded federal safety levels for that chemical. According to Olson, phthalates may leach out of some plastic bottles into water. “Phthalates are not legally regulated in bottled water because of intense industry pressure,” says Olson. Although Co-op America concludes that there is little evidence of a link between phthalate exposure from bottled water and any health problems, the group suggests using glass over plastic bottles as a precaution. Similarly, if your office cooler is made of polycarbonate, it may be releasing small amounts of the potential hormone disrupter bisphenol A into the water. "
So...you were saying?
"The other concern is the environmental impact of the bottles themselves."
"-Of course, an environmental "issue". I should've known that this blog was a green blog in the first place, my mistake."
Oh, my bad, I didn't realize that to even consider environmental concerns because of a human industrial process is wrong. Duh, silly me, here I was thinking that you had to consider whether something was a good idea or not before you do it. Well I guess we'll have to go with your idea of doing whatever the hell we want and if it leaves the kids a poisonous atmosphere, well, hell, that's their problem!
"One other thing; What if you don't want to drink the fluoride in the water? You've got 2 options, buy bottled, or buy a filter or reverse osmosis machine costing hundreds - and hope they work as advertised."
Yeah, your choices are to buy bottled and possibly end up drinking lead and arsenic, or buy a water filter, of which Amazon has many models costing much less than one hundred dollars. They even have reverse osmosis systems for about $115.
You say that last statement as if they could possibly be any less reliable than the filtration you get in bottled water. Again, that is because you haven't actually read the resources provided to you by me at the expense of my own free time. Try that first before you go around bitching about stuff you know nothing about. Besides which if you decide that from now on you're only going to drink bottled water, well, unless you get it for free you're already spending money on water, so why not buy a filter which can make you thousands of glasses of clean water for cheaper? You obviously spent no time thinking about your own objections. Of course, if you spent time thinking, you probably wouldn't have written such a useless, stupid comment when you know not a damn thing.
Go to school and get an education so you don't have to suffer the humiliation of being spanked every time you get into an argument. To learn more about water, go here and read the links provided at the bottom of the page.
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