Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water

6 Indictments Against Bottled Water

If you have been unconvinced by the accusations by advocacy groups about the environmental impact and health risks associated with bottled water, read this.

For years, advocacy groups have been raising concerns about bottled water: Not only do bottles end up littering the landscape, and not only are those plastic bottles derived from fossil fuels, but they also may leach chemicals into water and the quality of the water is not stringently monitored.

But many Americans have a healthy distrust of advocacy groups. If you're one of them, then consider this. The Government Accountability Office, the well-respected and nonpartisan research organization that serves Congress, has concluded a yearlong investigation, and come up with basically the same conclusions. Here's a summary:

Water Quality

Surveys have shown that perceived health benefits are behind the staggering increase in the consumption of bottled water -- from 13.4 gallons per person in 1997 to 29.3 gallons per person in 2007. While on paper, the Food and Drug Administration limits on contaminants in bottled water mirror the Environmental Protection Agency's strict limits on contaminants in tap water supplied by community water systems, that doesn't mean bottled water is as closely watched or as safe as tap water. Here's why:

• Phthalates
  Unlike the EPA, which has set limits on phthalates in water, the FDA has stalled for more than 15 years in publishing a limit on the phthalate DEHP in bottled water. DEHP is an ingredient in plastic, and (the GAO report does not detail the chemical's potential health effects as we do here) laboratory studies have linked some phthalates to problems with male fertility -- including decreased sperm counts and penis and testes sizes -- with obesity, and with other health problems related to hormonal imbalances. Several phthalates have been banned in children's products for this same reason: They inhibit the normal function of testosterone, the male hormone.

• Testing
  While the EPA requires drinking water suppliers to use certified labs to test their water, the FDA does not have this authority. Further, test results don't have to be reported to the FDA -- even if the test results show violations of drinking water quality standards. Even those states that have rules that exceed FDA requirements typically don't match EPA requirements.

• Labeling
  While the EPA requires public drinking water systems to annually publish the results of water quality testing, along with information about the drinking water source and known threats, the FDA does not require this of bottled water companies. The GAO reports: "In 2000, the FDA concluded that it was feasible for the bottled water industry to provide the same types of information to consumers that public water systems must provide. However, the agency was not required to conduct a rulemaking requiring that manufacturers provide such information to consumers, and has yet to do so."

• "High Risk" Regulation
  The GAO has repeatedly warned that the FDA is not up to the task -- lacking staff, funding and regulatory authority (while seeing staffing drop 19%, the facilities it was charged with inspecting increased 28% between about 2001 and 2007) -- to adequately police the nation's food supply. In January 2007, the GAO noted that the nation's food safety is a "high risk" area, in great part because it is policed by 15 separate agencies. Drinking water is only one more example.

Environmental Impact

• Waste
  While recycling of carbonated beverages, like soda and beer, is encouraged in many states with deposit laws, these bottle bills are much less common for bottled water. As a result, about 75% of water bottles are thrown in the trash, rather than recycled.

• Energy
  "Regarding the impact on U.S. energy demands, a recent peer-reviewed article noted that while the production and consumption of bottled water comprises a small share of total U.S. energy demand, it is much more energy-intensive than the production of public drinking water."

There are reasons to keep bottled water around: It's handy in case of an emergency, for instance. In most everyday cases, however, it's better for you and the environment to use a reusable water bottle and tap water (filtered if you think it improves the taste). Many of the issues with bottled water that the GAO identified can be solved with changes in regulation: Water quality could be assured if it matches EPA standards; labeling could provide full disclosure of source, testing contaminants detected; the nation's food safety regulatory structure could be totally overhauled; and recycling rates could be improved with new bottled deposit laws. However, bottled water will remain an item that lacks commonsense as long as U.S. tap water remains among the safest and most rigorously tested in the world.

The Daily Green previously summarized the problems with the bottled water industry like this:

The 7 Sins of Bottled Water

1. Plastic bottles are made from petroleum.

2. The bottles often go into the trash, rather than the recycle bin (in part because many states don't offer five-cent deposits to encourage recycling, as they do on soda and beer cans and bottles).

3. The water is pumped far from where it is sold, creating needless pollution as trucks and barges transport it across the country or around the world.

4. Some local communities have objected to the sale of their water, arguing that the water underground or flowing from natural springs is publicly owned and should not be exploited for profit.

5. Bottled water is rarely as closely monitored as tap water.

6. Tap water in the United States, when provided by a municipal system, is the most highly monitored and safe supply in the world.

7. Some of the water sold in little plastic bottles is tap water, but it costs an awful lot more per gallon.

Adapted information taken from TheDailyGreen released and posted on 7-9-09.

Rethinking Bottled Water: What You May Not Know...

Think bottled water is healthier? Think again!

Bottled water should be available for emergency situations only. It is not a sustainable solution.

The Environmental & health Problems with Bottled Water:
Bottled water uses fossil fuels
1.5 million barrels of oil are used annually to manufacture water bottles. 100,00 cars can be fueled for one year with this much oil!
1 billion pounds of CO2 is emitted in transporting these bottles.

2 Million tons of plastic bottles are landfilled every year! Only 1/10 are recycled.

It takes 1,000 years for a bottle to biodegrade!

The FDA does not regulate water that is bottled and sold in the same state. The FDA guidelines even allow a small amount of fecal matter in bottled water. (EPA allows none)

Bottled water costs between .25 - $10. per gallon or more! More than Milk, Gasoline, even Beer! This amounts to $2,000 per year for 750 gallons of water!

In 2006 Americans spent $11. Billion on bottled water. Second only to Soda!

Communities in developing countries need and deserve long term solutions. Filtration systems and utmost protection of precious water sources are viable long term solutions.

Bottled water corporations are succeeding at changing the very way people think about water. Though many bottled water brands come from the same source as public tap water, they are marketed as somehow more pure. What's more bottled water corporations sell water back to the public at thousands times the cost. Plastic bottles also require massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport. Billions of those bottles wind up in landfills each and every year.

DID YOU KNOW...

Seventy-four percent of Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drinks only bottled water.

Worldwide, consumers spent $100 billion on bottled water in 2005.

Each year more than 4 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter.

Making bottles to meet Americans demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year - enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year - and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

You can help reverse this trend -
Take action today! Buy a BPA chemical free reusable water bottle and fill it with tap water that has been filtered by a Purifica Unit.
Support efforts to reduce the social and environmental impacts of bottled water!

Unbottle your water with Purifica!

City Council Shuns Bottles in Favor of Water From Tap

New York Times Article Published: June 17,2008.Author: Jennifer Lee

The City Council has become the latest government agency to take a stand against bottled water.
Last week, the speaker’s office announced that it would stop buying bottled water for the Council’s downtown offices, which went through at least 6,000 single-serving bottles last year. As a result, bottled water will no longer be available at City Council events or official functions.
“We are obviously going to make paper cups available,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. “We are going to urge people to bring in their own reusable water bottles.”
In addition, the city has started a pilot program with water coolers that use filtered tap water. Nine of the coolers have been installed in the last six months at City Hall and in the Municipal Building.
“It is a bit hypocritical for the city to be buying bottled water for city buildings while it is encouraging New Yorkers to drink city tap water,” said Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn councilman who pressed the cooler issue at budget hearings.
These small shifts come as the United States Conference of Mayors, meeting this weekend in Miami, plans to debate a resolution urging city governments across the country to do the same.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a co-sponsor of the resolution, is a self-professed consumer of New York City tap water.
“Not only at home, but at every restaurant. Every time they say, ‘Would you like tap or still?’ I say, ‘New York City,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday. “This is the best water in the world. Restaurants like to sell bottles of water, I understand, but I always drink tap water.”
New York is just one of a number of cities that have moved to limit bottled water because of environmental and cost concerns. Bottled water costs 4,000 to 10,000 times as much as tap water, according to the Think Outside the Bottle environmental campaign. The plastic bottles, while recyclable, often end up in landfills. In addition, petroleum is consumed in producing and transporting them.
In June 2007, San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, prohibited spending city money on single-serving bottled water. Now, more than 30 cities and towns in the United States and Canada — from Fayetteville, Ark., to Seattle to Blue Mountains, Ontario — have taken steps to curtail spending on bottled water, according to Corporate Accountability International, an advocacy group that challenges corporate abuses and which runs the Think Outside the Bottle campaign.
In some cases — for example, not buying a case of bottled water at the local market to have at town functions — the impact of such pledges is relatively modest against a $10 billion-a-year national industry. But in some places, the measures include eliminating contracts for bottled water that are worth several hundred thousand dollars over several years; stopping sales by government cafeterias and vending machines; and even declaring an outright ban on the consumption of any bottled water in government buildings (as is the case in Blue Mountains).
“This was a way to lead by example,” said Dan Coody, the mayor of Fayetteville and a co-chairman of the Conference of Mayors’ Water Council. “When people complain about buying $4-a-gallon gasoline but buy $7-a-gallon drinking water, I think that disconnect needs to be recognized.”
In addition to Mayor Bloomberg, the sponsors of the bottled water resolution include the mayors of some of the largest cities in the United States, including Chicago, Miami, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The resolution “encourages cities to phase out, where feasible, government use of bottled water and promote the importance of municipal water.” (However, the officials emphasized that cities would still be able to buy bottled water for emergencies.) Mr. Coody said the resolution was widely expected to pass.
The movement, however, has raised concern in the beverage industry. Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the American Beverage Association have all increased their lobbying against it. Last year, Coca-Cola and the association passed out fliers at the Conference of Mayors that argued against a resolution, introduced by Mayor Newsom, to study the impact of bottled water on municipal waste.

“It’s myopic and shortsighted — it’s like banning rope until you need a lifeline,” said Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the association. “We’re not trying to compete with tap water here. We are trying to supplement the water available to consumers.”
Patrick McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., the site of a large Coca-Cola bottling plant, worked with the beverage association to introduce a rival resolution for the mayors’ conference that emphasized maintaining the nation’s water infrastructure and the importance of recycling.
“Our focus needs to be on keeping our water clean and safe and using it in an efficient manner,” Mr. McCrory said. “If someone has a bottled water as opposed to much more destructive drinks, I think that is progress.”
In April, representatives from Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the beverage industry pressed their case with Laurel Lunt Prussing, the mayor of Urbana, Ill., who sits on a conference committee that deals with water issues.
“Their argument was: Why pick on us? We are only a small part of the waste stream, and we are selling a healthful product,” Ms. Prussing said. “I told them I was really a tough sell.”

Take back your tap with Purifica Water and ensure that the water you are drinking is healthy, revitalized and free from harmful plastic toxins.
It is time to make the necessary commitment needed to restore your health as well as the health of our planet.

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Adapted information from Care2makedifference and the New York Times

HOPE...

The Center for Progressive Reform passed on their suggestions for 7 Executive Orders for the President’s First 100 Days and so I pass them on to you to debate, discuss and otherwise armchair analyze.

They cover a range of perennial issues familiar to TreeHugger readers—Climate change, chemicals in products intended for children, pollution, preserving ecosystems on public lands. Here they are:

1. Reduce the Federal Carbon Footprint

The new President should issue an Executive Order requiring each federal agency to measure, report, and reduce its carbon footprint. Not only would the Executive Order have a meaningful impact on the federal government's carbon emissions, it could also lead to the creation of uniform, practical standards for measuring such footprints, standards that could be applied government-wide and beyond. Each of the provisions of this proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.

2. Consider Climate Change in All Decisions

The next President should issue a new Executive Order clarifying that all federal agencies are obligated to consider the global climate change-related implications of their actions. This proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.

3. Protect Children from Chemicals

The next President should amend Executive Order 13045 (issued initially by President
Clinton and then amended by President Bush) to mandate that agencies establish an affirmative agenda for protecting children from lead, mercury, perchlorate, phthalates, fine particulate matter, ozone, and pesticides; require the reform of risk assessment policy so that children are accounted for as a vulnerable group; and end the use of discounting the value of children's lives in cost-benefit analysis. As is the case with the provisions of the existing Order on Protecting Children, each of these recommendations is consistent with the goals of the various environmental, safety, and public health statutes.

4. Environmental Justice

The next President should amend or replace the original Executive Order [12898] on Environmental Justice. The new Order should require a meaningful analysis of the environmental justice impacts and implications of all major new rules; impose on agencies a substantive obligation to take affirmative steps to ameliorate environmental injustice; launch an affirmative Environmental Justice agenda; hold agencies accountable for carrying out their environmental justice obligations; and clarify key terms from the current Order, including “environmental justice communities” and “subsistence,” to avoid the kind of narrow interpretation of the terms applied by the Bush Administration. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Environmental Justice, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

5. Transparent Regulatory Review

The new President should issue an Executive Order restoring open government in three areas where unwarranted secrecy has developed. The Order should restore the presumption of disclosure concerning exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so that political appointees and career government employees cannot operate free of scrutiny; forbid agencies from taking advantage of loopholes that limit the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) so that the public can be assured that special interests do not have undue influence on agency decision making; and improve the transparency of regulatory review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA) so that efforts by political appointees in the White House to override the judgment of scientists and other experts in regulatory agencies can at least be transparent to the public. All of the proposed Order's provisions are consistent with the goals of FOIA and FACA.

6. Protect Stronger State Laws from Weaker Federal Ones
CPR points out that the Bush Administration often preempted stronger state laws on environmental regulation with weaker federal ones,

The next President should [...] should amend the existing Executive Order on Federalism to strengthen provisions setting forth a presumption against preemption; require agencies to provide a written justification for preemption; and require that, when a federal statute allows states to adopt more stringent standards or seek a waiver of statutory preemption (as in EPA's denial of California's Clean Air Act waiver), agencies must provide a written justification to the White House before denying the state's regulatory authority or waiver request. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Federalism, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of the various statutes under which the environmental, safety, and public health agencies operate, including the National Environmental Policy Act.

7. Promoting Ecological Integrity

The next President should issue a new Executive Order declaring a national policy of
promoting ecological integrity as a baseline requirement for sustainable public land use. The President should also revoke two Bush Administration Executive Orders issued in 2005 (Executive Orders 13211 and 13212) that made it easier to develop energy resources on public lands, even at the risk of causing long-term degradation of natural resource values. In addition, the President should amend a third Bush Order (Executive Order 13443) by providing equal opportunities for public participation in federal land use decision making to a wide variety of constituencies, in addition to those promoting hunting. All of these measures are consistent with the goals of the various public lands statutes.

These are just the summaries of what CPR believes President Obama should do (obviously the document was worded with either Obama or McCain in mind). The full version of Protecting Public Health and the Environment by Stroke of a Presidential Pen goes into much more detail as to why these Executive Orders should be enacted.

Barack Obama
Barack Obama Faces Environmental Clean Up After Two Centuries of Bingeing: Bill McKibben
Obama Cites Michael Pollan's Sun-Food Agenda
Be the Change... Obama Should Reinstall White House Solar Panels

Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:

• Solar Thermal Power + New Direct Current Electric Grid Could Make US Renewable Energy World Leader
• Focus Earth: January 17, 2009: Detroit Auto Show and Bush's Environmental Record

Adapted from Treehugger News

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Alternatives to Bottled Water....

What can you do?

There’s a simple alternative to bottled water: buy a stainless steel thermos or a reusable BPA Chemical Free water bottle and use it. Don’t like the way your local tap water tastes? Do you question the safety of your local tap water that your family is currently drinking? Then filter your tap water with a Purifica Unit. Depending upon your drinking water needs Purifica offers three different size filtration units. Your health as well as your environment will benefit.

You spend time making many choices. Choices that matter. Where should we send our children to school? What vehicle is the safest for our family to drive around in?Have you considered that there is a healthy, safe choice when it comes to the drinking water your family consumes? Today take the time to make the educated choice about your drinking water. Go Healthy, Go Green, Go Purifica Water!

Consider taking Food and Water Watch’s No Bottled Water Pledge. Conserve water wherever possible, and stay on top of local water issues. Want to know more? Start with the Sierra Club’s fact sheet on bottled water.

An industry-rattling report from the Environmental Working Group

Bottled Water: Buyer Beware

It's just what we've all suspected - pure, "straight from the mountains" bottled water is not so pure after all. Yesterday, EWG released an industry-rattling report that reveals the dirty truth about bottled water.
We tested 10 brands and found an alarming array of contaminants, including cancer-causing byproducts of chlorination, fertilizer residue, industrial solvents and even caffeine.
In light of these disturbing findings, here's what you can do:
• Drink filtered tap water instead of bottled or unfiltered tap water.
• Mix infant formula with filtered, non-fluoridated water.
• Carry water in safe, reusable containers.

Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants Bottled water contains disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and pain medication

October 2008

Authors: Olga Naidenko, PhD, Senior Scientist; Nneka Leiba, MPH, Researcher; Renee Sharp, MS, Senior Scientist; Jane Houlihan, MSCE, Vice President for Research

The bottled water industry promotes an image of purity, but comprehensive testing by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals a surprising array of chemical contaminants in in tap water. Several Sam's Choice samples purchased in California every bottled water brand analyzed, including toxic byproducts of chlorination in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice and Giant Supermarket's Acadia brands, at levels no different than routinely foundexceeded legal limits for bottled water contaminants in that state. Cancer-causing contaminants in bottled water purchased in 5 states (North Carolina, California, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland) and the District of Columbia substantially exceeded the voluntary standards established by the bottled water industry.

Unlike tap water, where consumers are provided with test results every year, the bottled water industry does not disclose the results of any contaminant testing that it conducts. Instead, the industry hides behind the claim that bottled water is held to the same safety standards as tap water. But with promotional campaigns saturated with images of mountain springs, and prices 1,900 times the price of tap water, consumers are clearly led to believe that they are buying a product that has been purified to a level beyond the water that comes out of the garden hose.

To the contrary, our tests strongly indicate that the purity of bottled water cannot be trusted. Given the industry's refusal to make available data to support their claims of superiority, consumer confidence in the purity of bottled water is simply not justified.

Figure 1. Pollutants in Walmart and Giant Bottled Water Exceed Industry and California Standards

The California legal limit of 10 parts per billion (ppb) for total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) in bottled water has been set by the California Health and Safety Code, Division 104, Part 5 (Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law, CDPH 2008). The industry standard, Bottled Water Code of Practice, published by the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA 2008a), also sets a limit for TTHMs at 10 ppb. Two of the TTHM chemicals, bromodichloromethane and chloroform, are regulated in California under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, also known as Proposition 65 (OEHHA 2008). For bromodichloromethane, a concentration above 2.5 ppb exceeds a cancer safety standard, as established by the state of California (OEHHA 2008). The standard is based on the Proposition 65 No Significant Risk Level for bromodichloromethane at 5 micrograms per day. For a water consumption rate of 2 L/day (Title 27, California Code of Regulations, Article 7, Section § 25721), this corresponds to a contaminant concentration in water of 2.5 ppb. The concentration values indicated by the bars correspond to findings from the specific brand purchased at the specific location. For the entire dataset, see section Walmart and Giant Water Exceeds Safety Limits. Two independent samples of Sam's Choice water were purchased in Oakland, CA, with total trihalomethane levels at 21 and 23 ppb and levels of bromodichloromethane at 7.7 and 8.5 ppb. Two independent samples of Acadia water were purchased in Stafford, VA with total trihalomethane levels at 22 and 23 ppb.

Laboratory tests conducted for EWG at one of the country’s leading water quality laboratories found that 10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand. More than one-third of the chemicals found are bottled not regulated in bottled water. In the Sam's Choice and Acadia brands levels of some chemicals exceeded legal limits in California as well as industry-sponsored voluntary safety standards. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria.

Walmart and Giant Brands No Different than Tap Water

Two of 10 brands tested, Walmart's and Giant's store brands, bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment — a cocktail of chlorine disinfection byproducts, and for Giant water, even fluoride. In other words, this bottled water was chemically indistinguishable from tap water. The only striking difference: the price tag.

In both brands levels of disinfection byproducts exceeded safety standards established by the state of California and the bottled water industry:

• Walmart’s Sam’s Choice bottled water purchased at several locations in the San Francisco bay area was polluted with disinfection byproducts called trihalomethanes at levels that exceed the state’s legal limit for bottled water (CDPR 2008). These byproducts are linked to cancer and reproductive problems and form when disinfectants react with residual pollution in the water. Las Vegas tap water was the source for these bottles, according to Walmart representatives (EWG 2008).
• Also in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand, lab tests found a cancer-causing chemical called bromodichloromethane at levels that exceed safety standards for cancer-causing chemicals under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65, OEHHA 2008). EWG is filing suit under this act to ensure that Walmart posts a warning on bottles as required by law: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer."
• These same chemicals also polluted Giant's Acadia brand at levels in excess of California’s safety standards, but this brand is sold only in Mid-Atlantic states where California’s health-based limits do not apply. Nevertheless, disinfection byproducts in both Acadia and Sam’s Choice bottled water exceeded the industry trade association’s voluntary safety standards (IBWA 2008a), for samples purchased in Washington DC and 5 states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and California). The bottled water industry boasts that its internal regulations are stricter than the FDA bottled water regulations(IBWA 2008b), but voluntary standards that companies are failing to meet are of little use in protecting public health.

Broad Range of Pollutants Found in 10 Brands

Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol); heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes; fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.

The identity of most brands in this study are anonymous. This is typical scientific practice for market-basket style testing programs. We consider these results to represent a snapshot of the market during the window of time in which we purchased samples. While our study findings show that consumers can't trust that bottled water is pure or cleaner than tap water, it was not designed to indicate pollutant profiles typical over time for particular brands. Walmart and Giant bottled water brands are named in this study because our first tests and numerous followup tests confirmed that these brands contained contaminants at levels that exceeded state standards or voluntary industry guidelines.

The study also included assays for breast cancer cell proliferation, conducted at the University of Missouri. One bottled water brand spurred a 78% increase in the growth of the breast cancer cells compared to the control sample, with 1,200 initial breast cancer cells multiplying to 32,000 in 4 days, versus only 18,000 for the control sample, indicating that chemical contaminants in the bottled water sample stimulated accelerated division of cancer cells. When estrogen-blocking chemicals were added, the effect was inhibited, showing that the cancer-spurring chemicals mimic estrogen, a hormone linked to breast cancer. Though this result is considered a modest effect relative to the potency of some other industrial chemicals in spurring breast cancer cell growth, the sheer volume of bottled water people consume elevates the health significance of the finding. While the specific chemical(s) responsible for this cancer cell proliferation were not identified in this pilot study, ingestion of endocrine-disrupting and cancer-promoting chemicals from plastics is considered to be a potentially important health concern (Le 2008).

With Bottled Water, You Don't Know What You're Getting

Americans drink twice as much bottled water today as they did ten years ago, for an annual total of over nine billion gallons with producer revenues nearing twelve billions (BMC 2007; IBWA 2008c). Purity should be included in a price that, at a typical cost of $3.79 per gallon, is 1,900 times the cost of public tap water.¹ But EWG’s tests indicate that in some cases the industry maybe delivering a beverage little cleaner than tap water, sold at a premium price. The health consequences of exposures to these complex mixtures of contaminants like those found in bottled water have never been studied.

Unlike public water utilities, bottled water companies are not required to notify their customers of the occurrence of contaminants in the water, or, in most states, to tell their customers where the water comes from, how and if it is purified, and if it is merely bottled tap water. Information provided on the U.S. EPA website clearly describes the lack of quality assurance for bottled water: "Bottled water is not necessarily safer than your tap water" (EPA 2007b). Information the Agency further adds following consumer information:

Some bottled water is treated more than tap water, while some is treated less or not treated at all. Bottled water costs much more than tap water on a per gallon basis... Consumers who choose to purchase bottled water should carefully read its label to understand what they are buying, whether it is a better taste, or a certain method of treatment (EPA 2007b).

In conjunction with this testing program, EWG conducted a survey of 228 brands of bottled water, compiling information from websites, labels and other marketing materials. We found that fewer than half describe the water source (i.e., municipal or natural) or provide any information on whether or how the water is treated. In the absence of complete disclosure on the label, consumers are left in the dark, making it difficult for shoppers to know if they are getting what they expect for the price.

Figure 2. Walmart and Giant Are Bottling Tap Water

The municipal water sources of the Walmart’s Sam’s Choice and Giant’s Acadia bottled waters were identified either by calling the company representatives (Walmart) or from the label (Giant). Data on the levels of disinfection byproducts (total trihalomethanes or TTHMs) in these municipal water sources were obtained from Blairsville (GA) Water Department, Las Vegas Valley Water District, and Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. These data were from tap water tests carried out in 2007, which the water utilities disclosed to their customers in the annual reports. For every utility the range of values from lowest to the highest represents the concentrations of TTHMs that were found in the tap water over the course of the year.

This study did not focus on the environmental impacts of bottled water, but they are striking and have been well publicized. Of the 36 billion bottles sold in 2006, only a fifth were recycled (Doss 2008). The rest ended up in landfills, incinerators, and as trash on land and in streams, rivers, and oceans. Water bottle production in the U.S. uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per every year, according to a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ resolution passed in 2007, enough energy to power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year (US Mayors 2007). As oil prices are continuing to skyrocket, the direct and indirect costs of making and shipping and landfilling the water bottles continue to rise as well (Gashler 2008, Hauter 2008).

Extracting water for bottling places a strain on rivers, streams, and community drinking water supplies as well. When the water is not bottled from a municipal supply, companies instead draw it from groundwater supplies, rivers, springs or streams. This "water mining," as it is called, can remove substantial amounts of water that otherwise would have contributed to community water supplies or to the natural flow of streams and rivers (Boldt-Van Rooy 2003, Hyndman 2007, ECONorthwest, 2007).

Recommendations

Currently there is a double standard where tap water suppliers provide information to consumers on contaminants, filtration techniques, and source water; bottled water companies do not. This double standard must be eliminated immediately; Bottled water should conform to the same right-to-know standards as tap water.

To bring bottled water up to the standards of tap water we recommend:

• Full disclosure of all test results for all contaminants. This must be done in a way that is readily available to the public.
• Disclosure of all treatment techniques used to purify the water, and:
• Clear and specific disclosure of the name and location of the source water.

To ensure that public health and the environment are protected, we recommend:

• Federal, state, and local policymakers must strengthen protections for rivers, streams, and groundwater that serve as America’s drinking water sources. Even though it is not necessarily any healthier, some Americans turn to bottled water in part because they distrust the quality of their tap water. And sometimes this is for good reason. Some drinking water (tap and bottled) is grossly polluted at its source – in rivers, streams, and underground aquifers fouled by decades of wastes that generations of political and business leaders have dismissed, ignored, and left for others to solve. A 2005 EWG study found nearly 300 contaminants in drinking water all across the country. Source water protection programs must be improved, implemented, and enforced nationwide (EWG 2005b). The environmental impacts associated with bottled water production and distribution aggravate the nation's water quality problems rather than contributing to their solution.
• Consumers should drink filtered tap water instead of bottled water.

EWG's study has revealed that bottled water can contain complex mixtures of industrial chemicals never tested for safety, and may be no cleaner than tap water. Given some bottled water company's failure to adhere to the industry's own purity standards, Americans cannot take the quality of bottled water for granted. Indeed, test results like those presented in this study may give many Americans reason enough to reconsider their habit of purchasing bottled water and turn back to the tap.