News Coverage
Is bottled water healthier or safer than tap?
Ask Plenty
Published October 23, 2008
Q. I know bottled water is an environmental no-no because it generates plastic and because energy is required to ship it around, but is it any healthier? I feel sort of guilty about it, but I do want to make sure I’m not drinking a bunch of chemicals. –Wallace, North Dakota
A. There’s really no reason to think bottled water is healthier or more pure than tap. In fact, recent testing suggests that bottled water is, in the case of some brands, just tap water poured into plastic. Beverage companies aren’t required to disclose the origins of their water, or the results of any in-house testing they do for contaminants (except in California). That means that they can pretty much fill those resource-and-energy-hogging plastic bottles with any old H20, slap a picture of a mountain on it, and charge you an arm and a leg for it. The Environmental Working Group just tested ten brands of bottled water and found everything from arsenic to chlorine to fertilizer residue in them. Some brands were completely indistinguishable from municipal supplies, and contained byproducts of the disinfectants used in tap water. Funny thing, that.
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