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Bottled Drinking Water

Bottled Water – Misperception of Being of Higher Quality than Tap Water

Bottled water sales have skyrocketed in the past decade, rising more than threefold in the United States, surpassing milk, beer and juice, to become the second most popular beverage after soft drinks. Three in four Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drink only bottled water (despite the fact that it can be up to 1000 times more expensive than tap water).

Why Bottled Water? At least one third of consumers say that they buy it because of safety concerns with their tap water. But can you be really sure that the water comes from the beautiful mountain spring shown on the bottle label? How do you know the water in the bottle is any cleaner or safer than your tap water? What about the costs in short and long term, compared with other water purification options?

The Reality of Bottled Water

In most cases bottled water is simply water from some municipal water source that a company has placed in a bottle for resale. Tens of millions of dollars are spent each year on advertising campaigns to give consumers the perception that bottled water comes from some pristine and natural mountain spring. The truth actually is that bottled water mostly is little more than bottled tap water.

Bottled water can have minimal processing, or no processing at all - it can be left as natural spring or mineral water, or it can be completely filtered and de-mineralized to (almost) pure water (and then have minerals added to make it taste better). Still, there are no assurances or requirements that bottled water is of any higher quality than tap water.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) conducted a study of 103 brands of bottled water and found that one-third contained synthetic organic chemicals and bacteria. The NRDC maintains that city tap water is required to undergo more rigorous testing to achieve higher purity standards than bottled water. Some published reports even suggest that 25% of all bottled water contains known carcinogens and about 20% contain industrial chemicals.

Too high costs, inconvenience due to moving and storing as well as the environmental impact are major disadvantages of bottled water. It costs anywhere from $0.50 a gallon (water from a vending machine) to $1.00 (water to purchase in a store) to $2.00 - $2.50 or more (water delivered to your home). Bottled water weighs about eight pounds per gallon, manufacturing the water bottles uses precious natural resources, and waste disposal problems can occur of the bottles which aren’t recycled.

It is still believed that bottled water contains fewer contaminants than untreated tap water. The bottled water industry would like the public to believe that its water is of purer quality and safer than tap water or any other filtered or purified water. Yet the actual quality of bottled water depends solely on the water company selling the bottles, and high quality home water purifier and treatment systems (e.g. granulated active carbon filter, reverse osmosis, distillation) can usually produce water of equal or better quality, and even more economically.

Above that, the federal regulations that govern bottled water only apply if the water is transported across state lines (even then it’s only required it to be "as good as" tap water). Most bottled water is bottled and sold within the same state to avoid these regulations.

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