Acorn

Issue date: 12/7/07 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Merion Read

Bottled water has been hyped as a healthy and clean alternative to tap water, often using iconographic images of fresh mountain springs to drive this message home.

In fact, bottled water is not only extremely environmentally damaging, but also much less safe than tap water to drink. There are so many myths, misconceptions and horror stories about bottled water that it will be difficult to explain them all in this article, so I therefore encourage all readers to further their investigations online.

First, there is the myth that bottled water is being produced from fresh mountain spring water.

While some bottled water is obtained from springs, many brands are actually produced in industrial parks.

The corporations that are obtaining water from springs are doing so in non-sustainable ways, draining those springs, in some cases, to such an extent that they are altering the local water cycles.

Regardless of where the water is obtained, it is still significantly less safe than tap water.

Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and has strict regulations that require hundreds of tests and treatments each month for chemical contaminants and pathogens. Bottled water however is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and has to pass almost no tests before being sold.

When the Natural Resource Defense Council, a non-profit organization, performed a test on bottled water, they found that "one fourth of the tested bottled water brands contained microbiological or chemical contaminants in at least some samples at levels sufficiently high to violate enforceable state standards or warning levels."

In addition to the impurities of the water when it is put into the bottle, there are also toxic plastics that leach into the water as it sits in your garage.

The carcinogenic and hormonal disrupters phthalate and bisphenol A are two such chemical that leaches from the plastic containers into the water.

And while there are "regulatory standards limiting phthalates in tap water, there are no legal limits for phthalates in bottled water" states the NRDC.

Exposure to these chemicals can cause "adverse changes in the genitals of baby boys," and "impaired mammary-gland development," as one Tuft's University test concluded in the San Fransisco Chronicle.

Bottled water can cost as much as 10,000 times more than tap water. Producing and shipping bottled water uses millions of barrels in oil and, in the United States alone, creates two million tons of plastic trash each year. There are many good reasons to stop consuming bottled water as it is one of the most absurd and environmentally destructive acts practiced by American consumers.

Instead of drinking bottled water, let's focus on keeping our public water infrastructure in a working and safe condition, a far more cost effective and sustainable source of drinking water.

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