Water, water everywhere but which drop to drink?
Don’t like the taste of your drinking water? Well, you could buy bottled water at an outrageous price. What, spend all that money for water? Well, grab some plastic gallon milk bottles and head for the nearest roadside spring. They’re all over the place. The water is free and some say it’s the best water you can get.
Mark Carmon, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, had this to say. “A lot of these springs you see by the side of the road are little more than a pipe that somebody stuck into a rock. The trouble is that no one is monitoring these springs, to see if the water is safe to drink or not.” Carmon continues, “You really don’t know where the water comes from. The source could be miles away, and the water could be running through a cemetery, or somebody’s septic system, or a mine pool. I wouldn’t wash my car with it, let alone drink it.”
Dan Miller, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said people could suffer from serious health problems from springs that contain bacteria or other harmful microorganisms.
Well, that kind of puts a damper on springs so I guess it’s back to bottled water. Or is it?
Marylynn Yates, microbiologist and chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California, Irvine, said, “In some cases, bottled water is more contaminated than tap water.” Yates, who previously worked as a researcher with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) went on to say “An appealing name and fancy label don’t guarantee purity.”
While municipal tap water is subjected to enforceable standards established by the EPA, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has much less stringent guidelines regarding water purity and monitoring.
In fact, the FDA exempts bottled water packaged and sold within the same state, which accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of bottled industry sales. It also subjects carbonated and seltzer water to more lax “sanitation” guidelines as opposed to contamination regulations.
Well, I see where this is headed. It’s back to tap water. If your tap water is bad, what can you do? Did you ever hear of the Carbon County Groundwater Guardians?
AN OPINION FROM THE BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,145282.shtml
Posted : Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:15:16 GMT
Author : Breck Speed
Category : PressRelease
Is Tap “Just As Good” as Bottled Water?
I must admit to being conflicted about current discussions regarding the quality of municipal tap water versus bottled water. It is a debate the bottled-water industry, by and large, has left to others; members of my industry would rather sell the positives of their product – great taste, portability of the product, and the overall health benefits of drinking lots of good, clean water.
But recently my bottled-water industry has come under particularly harsh criticism for alleged gross waste and pollution. Critics fault the use of clean water resources by private enterprise, the cost of packaging, and the energy it takes to transport bottled water to market. And there is some truth to their arguments; it takes substantial energy and natural resources to manufacture our product and move it to where consumers want it.
I also really want to buy into the ideal, as voiced by some pundits, that municipal tap water is “just fine” for human consumption as it flows virtually free from the kitchen faucet. Wouldn’t it be great if all sources for municipal tap water were pristine, easy to purify, locally abundant, treated only with absolutely safe chemicals to kill water-borne pathogens and preserve pipes, and transported at low cost through completely clean pipes?
Emotions aside, the reality is that bottled water is truly a lot better for you than is municipal tap water. And it is not at all true that bottled water entails more cost to society than the cost of creating and distributing municipal tap water equal in quality to the bottled variety.
First, let’s look at the quality issue. A lot of the “fresh” water our local governments use as a source for tap water doesn’t start out all that healthy for humans. Some ground waters and surface waters have naturally occurring and abundant organic and inorganic contaminants. In the western United States, many source waters have issues with arsenic and radon. Although this isn’t the result of human pollution–it occurs naturally–it is still bad for humans. In the Great Plains, where the water table is subject to rapid recharge and there is a lot of agricultural activity, water tends to be high in phosphates (fertilizer) and atrazine (herbicide). In coastal areas of the United States, you will often find high sodium and/or sulfur in local water. Everywhere, you find additives to the source water from human activity (bacteria), the burning of fossil fuels (MBTE) and chemical manufacturing and consumption byproducts (this list is far too long to cite here but you owe it to yourself to check out the EPA’s website).
Our local governments try to make their local source waters suitable for us by treating the water with chemicals like chlorine (although some chemicals, like lime and sodium hexametaphosphate, are added to prevent corrosion of their pipes) and by the magic of “dilution.” Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency–through the Safe Drinking Water Act–says it is legal to serve a vast array of inorganic chemicals to tap water customers as long as they are below the maximum contaminants levels (or MCLs) they set by rule making. Any municipality having contaminants in their tap water below these levels can proudly say to their customers their tap water is just fine.
But is it really? The EPA sets the bar for this reassuring pronouncement by creating MCL standards for only 35 potential contaminants. The process that produces those MCLs entails years of review and a lot of input from industry lobbyists as well as everyday citizens. If you have concerns about any chemicals other than those 35 (and, if you pay attention to reports of recent medical research, you probably should have concerns) then you are out of luck; the local water works isn’t even testing for them at any contaminant level.
I can say with complete and utter assurance that consumers of bottled water do not have to deal with questionable source water, added chemicals, or limited testing. We know consumers will punish us if we don’t provide them with something far better than what comes from the tap. Our company, like most bottled-water companies, uses a protected natural spring as a source (others use deep wells). Some do use municipal tap water as a source but clean it with highly sophisticated filtration processes before putting it in a sterile, sealed bottle. Obviously, we don’t send water to the consumer through less-than-pristine pipes, either.
In addition to the minimal standards of the EPA, the bottled-water industry is also subject to the standards of the Food and Drug Administration which regulates bottled water as a food product. The FDA has several quality standards for bottled water in addition to the EPA standards as well as container standards and labeling standards.
But even those governmental standards are clearly, by themselves, not enough to assure consumers they are getting a product which is “better” than tap water. My company voluntarily belongs to the International Bottled Water Association, which requires testing for 298 potential organic and inorganic contaminants and has extensive requirements about compliance with best manufacturing practices. We are inspected and certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. We are also inspected by military and private customers who require only the highest-quality and most consistent products for their end customers. And, yes, we are even certified kosher.
In the end, this is not a close call. Our bottled water is a lot better than the minimally tested, chlorinated, flocculated, fluoridated municipal tap water that also happens to be transmitted through miles of old pipe. My kids are drinking bottled.
But let’s pause. Even though I am making a strong statement about bottled versus tap water quality, I sincerely believe we are only talking about a minor sub-issue. The real overriding issues in this discussion–the elephants I see in the room–are: (1) our throw-away culture which wastes the vast majority of our food and beverage containers, and (2) the real wisdom of our government trying to make all tap water as good as bottled water when less than 5% of municipal tap water is actually used for human consumption.
As is the case with any beverage, bottled water requires the use of containers. But it is also true that those containers have clear benefits to consumers. They make beverages portable, sanitary, and safely preserved until it is time to use them. Bottled water is uniquely useful to our society when disaster strikes and the municipal tap water systems don’t function at all.
It is unfortunately also true that consumers throw most of those containers in the trash instead of recycling them. If we as a society recycled all of our beverage containers – glass, plastic and metal – instead of throwing them away, what would be the benefit to our society? We would clearly avoid landfill costs, create jobs in the recycling industry, and avoid tapping virgin, natural resources for our reasonable container needs. Therefore, rather than waste time debating whether tap water is “just as good” as bottled water, we would be better served to avoid the negative effects of throwing the containers away when those containers are designed and made to be recovered and reused in a variety of ways. There are many ways to get that done. Container deposit laws have been enacted in a number of states. Almost 50% of municipalities now have some form of curbside recycling. Other countries (including close neighbors like Canada) have much higher recycling rates; we should be learning from the tools and incentives that already work elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be better for us to work as a society to recycle our consumer packaging instead of attacking
one product after another because they utilize packaging consumers currently throw away?
Municipal tap water, although relatively cheap to homes because it is subsidized by taxpayers and industry, is not without substantial cost. If we didn’t have to spend billions (and soon to be trillions) of dollars on pipes, treatment plants, and chemicals, could we better spend that money on other needs? The vast majority of tap water is actually used for industrial processes and other mundane purposes such as washing cars and flushing toilets. Does it make sense—indeed, is it even possible—for local governments to attempt to bring tap water up to the higher quality of bottled water? Maybe we could use the money saved by not treating water to impossibly high standards to instead improve our natural water sources for uses other than drinking water. What about the real benefit of not adding tons and tons of chemicals like chlorine and chlorine byproducts to our waterways?
In the final analysis, a back-and-forth debate about tap versus bottled water quality doesn’t begin to address the bigger issues we face as inhabitants of this planet. We can recycle. We can make wise decisions on how to spend our tax dollars. We can work together vigorously to keep our surface and ground water suitable for wildlife and recreation. Municipal tap water can be used with great confidence for many purposes. And the bottled water industry can continue to be held to the highest standards of taste and quality for human consumption.
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EARTHTALK
Week of 07/22/2007
Dear EarthTalk: Bottled water companies would have us all believe that tap water is unsafe to drink. But I’ve heard that most tap water is actually pretty safe. Is this true?
— Sam Tsiryulnikov, Los Angeles, CA
Tap water is not without its problems. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) in 2005 tested municipal water in 42 states and detected some 260 contaminants in public water supplies, 140 of which were unregulated chemicals, that is, chemicals for which public health officials have no safety standards for, much less methods for removing them.
EWG did find over 90 percent compliance on the part of water utilities in applying and enforcing standards that exist, but faults the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to establish standards on so many of the contaminants—from industry, agriculture and urban runoff—that do end up in our water.
Despite these seemingly alarming stats, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has also conducted extensive municipal as well as bottled water tests, says: “In the short term, if you are an adult with no special health conditions, and you are not pregnant, then you can drink most cities’ tap water without having to worry.” This is because most of the contaminants in public water supplies exist at such small concentrations that very large quantities would need to be ingested for health problems to occur.
NRDC does caution, however, that pregnant women, young children, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses and those with weakened immune systems can be especially vulnerable to the risks posed by contaminated water.” The group suggests that anyone at risk obtain a copy of their city’s annual water quality report (they are mandated by law) and review it with their physician.
As for bottled water, it is first important to know that 25 to 30 percent of it comes straight from municipal tap water systems, despite the pretty nature scenes on the bottles that imply otherwise. Some of that water goes through additional filtering, but some does not. NRDC has researched bottled water extensively and has found that it is “subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water.” Bottled water is required to be tested less frequently than tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration bottled water rules allow for some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform, contrary to EPA tap water rules which prohibit any such contamination.
Similarly, NRDC found that there are no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia, unlike more stringent EPA rules regulating tap water. This leaves open the possibility, says NRDC, that some bottled water may present similar health threats to those with weakened immune systems, the elderly and others they caution about drinking tap water.
The bottom line is that we have invested considerably in highly-efficient municipal water delivery systems that bring this precious liquid straight to our kitchen faucets anytime we need it. Instead of taking that for granted and relying on bottled water instead, we need to make sure our tap water is clean and safe for all.
CONTACTS: Environmental Working Group, EPA Local Drinking Water Information and NRDC