I'll Just By Bottled Water!

This piece turned out much longer than I'd planned, but I think it's very interesting, and will wind up our series on drinking water. Grab a glass and take a few moments to read.

Bottled water is convenient and it tastes good. But is it any healthier or does it taste any better than tap water? We've all seen the ads showing billions of bottles of water circling the globe a hundred times, so we all know how much waste is produced by drinking bottled water. We also know plastic water bottles contain BPA and we should never reuse or freeze them as this may release the harmful chemical into your water.

So where does it come from? Some bottled water comes from a spring. Some bottled water is distilled, meaning it's had all the impurities removed from it. Bottled water sometimes comes from a municipal source, which means it is straight tap water.

Recently I watched a story on television about people in one community who were all sick and dying and blamed it on the tap water. While I do believe the story was true, I do not believe it is the norm. Most large cities, including ours, have very clean tap water. I have a friend who works for the Health Department in our town who tells me our tap water is among the finest in the nation and it is actually bottled and sold.

So let's get some facts.

From The Consumerist:
Bottled water isn't any safer than tap water, and could actually be more dangerous, according to a report from the Government Accounting Office. The big difference lies in the government regulator: tap water is covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act, administered by the aggressive and powerful Environmental Protection Agency, while bottled water falls under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act overseen by the powerless anything-goes industry-lovers over at the Food and Drug Administration.


This piece is from John Stossel, ABC News:
It started with Perrier. Somehow, a French company convinced people it's cool to buy bottled water. Today, Evian has surpassed Perrier in sales and now it's the chic French water of choice. Why? It costs about 5 bucks a gallon! Why do people pay so much for something they can get virtually free?

Many people say they buy bottled waters because they taste better. We spoke with people in New York City, asking them why they liked bottled better than tap water.

"I drink Dasani. It tastes good, it tastes crisp, like -- natural," one girl said.

"I think tap water kind of tastes like sewer," said another.

People also say they drink bottled water because they believe it's safer than tap water.

One man told me he's the only one "who's brave enough" to drink tap water at home. His family's afraid to drink tap water because of germs, he said.

At recent Earth Day celebrations, a lot of people told us they believe tap water is unhealthy. "As a parent I feel more comfortable giving her bottled water," one father told us.

Bottled water, we were told, is cleaner, safer, healthier.

Watching bottled water ads, you'd think that tap water might not be healthy. But it's not true.

"20/20" took five bottles of national brands of bottled water and a sample of tap water from a drinking fountain in the middle of New York City and sent them to microbiologist Aaron Margolin of the University of New Hampshire to test for bacteria that can make you sick, like e. coli.

"There was actually no difference between the New York City tap water and the bottled waters that we evaluated," he said.

Many scientists have run tests like that and have consistently found that tap water is as good for you as bottled waters that cost 500 times more.

Even Yale University School of Medicine's Dr. Stephen Edberg, the person whom the International Bottled Water Association told "20/20" to talk to, agreed that bottled water is no better for you. "No, I wouldn't argue it's safer or not safer."

"Healthy is a funny definition," he said.

"I wouldn't say it's healthier than tap water. I mean, they both provide water," Edberg added.

Maybe a taste difference justifies spending more money?

"I can definitely taste the difference between like a Fiji water and an Evian and a Poland Spring," one woman said. Many brands -- Aquafina, Deer Park and Dasani -- had loyal fans.

The labels of the bottled waters do suggest they're special. Some show mountains or polar bears or glaciers. You have to look at the fine print to find out Everest Water is not from Mount Everest. It's from Corpus Christi, Texas. Glacier Clear Water is not from a glacier in Alaska. Its source is tap water from Greeneville, Tenn.

Big-selling Dasani and Aquafina are also just reprocessed tap water from cities around the country. One of Aquafina's sources is the Detroit River! At least the popular French water, Evian, does come from France.

But does that make it taste better?

That's what people say, but is it true?

We ran a taste test, offering people New York City tap water and five other bottled waters, Evian, the top-selling bottled water Aquafina, Poland Spring, Iceland Spring (which comes all the way from Iceland), and American Fare, a discount brand from Kmart, which sells for less than half the price of Evian.

Would people be able to tell the difference when they didn't know what they were drinking? Would they still prefer their favorites?

Many who took our taste test were bottled water drinkers. They pay for it, they say, because tap water just doesn't taste as good.

It tastes flat and flavorless, they said.

Would the taste test show that?

We asked people to rate the waters as bad, average or great. Lots of people said one of the waters was particularly bad. Was that the tap water? No. Tap water did pretty well. Even people who said they don't like it, liked it on the blind test.

The "20/20" taste test was just one unscientific test, but lots of tests keep finding that people like tap water.

I suspect many people who buy the fancy waters are getting suckered by the ads or the labels.

In our test of bottled waters, Kmart's American Fare -- the cheapest brand -- won. Big-seller Aquafina came in second.

Iceland Spring tied the ordinary tap water for third place. Fifth place went to Poland Spring, and in last place, by far, with almost half the testers saying it tasted bad, was the most expensive water -- the fancy French stuff, Evian.

"It tasted like toilet water," one man said.

Evian had no comment about that review.

Bottom line, if you buy bottled water because you think it's healthier than tap, test after test shows no evidence of that. And if you buy fancy brands because you think they taste better, you're probably just buying the hype.


From TreeHuggers:
1.5 million barrels of oil in the US alone are used to make water bottles from polyethylene terephthalate, 86% of which are landfilled or incinerated. Often it is shipped long distances, like the 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water sent 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) to Saudi Arabia, or the popular Fiji water found in the US and Canada. ''Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing--producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy,'' said researcher Emily Arnold. ''Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more.'' Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances--and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders--by boat, train, airplane, and truck. This ''involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels,'' Arnold said. Its time to buy a Nalgene and refill it rather than tossing empties.

Finally.....Mary's Opinion:
Bottled water...few and far between. Nice to have on hand but shouldn't be your main source. Know your city's tap water quality, fill up your Nalgene bottle, KEEP IT CLEAN EVERY DAY, and drink up!!