Bottled Water: Pure Water or Pure Hype?

Your bottled water comes from pure mountain springs, right? Or a glacier, or pristine forest, untouched by human hands? More than half of all Americans drink bottled water; a third of us drink it regularly. And while you might not entirely believe the marketing hype, you kind of think you’re getting something better than what comes out of the tap.

But that’s not necessarily true.

NRDC conducted a four-year study of the bottled water industry, and a review of available information on bottled water and its sources. You might be surprised...

• Although most bottled water apparently is of good quality, publicly available monitoring data are scarce –- which means it’s hard to find out about any possible contaminants that might be lurking in that bottle.
• About one third of the bottled waters we tested contained significant chemical or bacterial contamination in at least one test.
• In lab tests for FDA-regulated contaminants, nearly one in four of the waters violated California’s state limits for bottled water in at least one sample, most commonly for arsenic or certain cancer-causing compounds.
• Nearly one in five tested waters contained more bacteria than allowed under some state, industry, or European Union guidelines in at least one sample. Learn more about the FDA's rules for bottled water and NRDC's study.

Whether our water comes from a tap or a bottle, we have a right to know what’s in it, and need to know that it’s safe. NRDC is working to ensure that our rights to clean water are preserved, and to keep pollutants out of our water. Here are a few simple actions you can take to make sure you’re getting safe drinking water.

Make sure you have the right water filter for your home.	Ask your water utility for a copy of its annual water quality report, and find out how safe your tap water is.	Recyle your used motor oil. A single quart of motor oil that seeps into groundwater can pollute 250,000 gallons of drinking water. Ask your local sanitation or public works department how to do it, or when you buy motor oil, ask if the store or service station has a program to buy back waste oil and dispose of it properly.

Comments (12)

7. 09/21/2007 09:17:14 AM

Here are some NRDC stats that might help you decide if you want to wean yourself from bottled water: 
 
Try to avoid bottled water in your personal life too. If NRDC's report doesn't convince you, these facts might:  
 
* NRDC's independent testing has shown that bottled water is not necessarily any purer than tap water. The bottled water industry has successfully lobbied for lax government regulations on purity so in many ways tap water is more closely monitored;  
 
*The production of the plastic for water bottles produces large amounts of toxic chemicals, as well as about 800,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year (the amount produced by 8 power plants, or 140,000 cars), and most water bottles are never recycled (only about 13% of water bottles are recycled by being made into other materials)  
 
*It takes 26 times more water to make the plastic bottle than the bottle contains  
 
* About 300 million gallons of bottled water were imported into the U.S. in 2006. California bottled water imports alone result in about 10,000 tons of unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, and over 600 tons of smog-forming pollutants. This only counts pollution at the ports, and doesn't count domestic transport of bottled water or pollution from the ships or source  
 
* U.S. consumers use 50 billion plastic water bottles every year; globally we use about 150 billion

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