What’s Inside Your Bottled Water?
It would be wonderful if water would be much more transparent.
Bottled water companies do not disclose much about their water. That’s the evidence presented within the latest Bottled Water Scorecard, published by the prominent third party public health organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
Your mother and father usually stated, ‘You get what you pay for.” So whenever you pay good cash for bottled water, you probably expect high quality. Nevertheless, the Scorecard finds that in many instances bottled water is no better – or worse – than a drink from a hose. The Scorecard also suggests a defieicency of details made available by bottled water offer. Namely, several brands do not specify:
– Where their water originates.
– If their water is truly spring water – or simply tap water – regardless of the attractive labels with pictures of mountain streams.
– What tests – if any – have been executed to detect impurities.
“Life is like a bottle of water, you never know what you’re gonna get.”
What Forrest Gump knows – and you most likely don’t – is that your personal local water supply is tightly regulated. Your municipality is required to perform hundreds of tests annually on their tap water to ensure it meets the requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for drinking water. And they must disclose the results.
There are no such rules and regulations inside the bottled water industry. Regardless of what the high costs may lead you to assume. Bottled water companies do not test and don’t disclose, since they do not have to.
The EWG did check bottled water. In tests beginning in 2008, they sampled a variety of prominent bottled water brands, locating a wide range of contaminants. Your favorite bottled water brands had been found to include:
– Disinfection byproducts
– Organic material, such as vegetation
– Urban wastewater contaminants like pharmaceuticals and caffeine
– Heavy metals and minerals, such as arsenic and radioactive isotopes
– Fertilizer residue, such as ammonia
– A broad range of other pollutants, including achievable carcinogens.
Those contaminants had been inside the water just before it went into the bottle. Do not even get us started on what takes place to the water while it is in the bottle.
Still don’t like the taste of tap? Or still worried about it? Filter it.
Tap water is tepid and typically tastes, well, bad. (That taste is mostly caused by chlorine and minerals). Despite the thought that bottled water is usually greater quality, poor publicity about our public water supply turns many of us off to tap water.
If you’re one of those people, and if you are outraged at the misconceptions perpetuated by bottled water organizations, why not check out bottleless water coolers? These coolers — also called filtered water coolers or POU (Point of Use) coolers — cleanse water straight from your tap.
The evidence is in. Pass on bottled water. Give some thought to bottleless water coolers, and check out the EWG’s scorecard.