What's Really in Bottled Water?
 New Study Reveals the Disturbing Truth
by www.SixWise.com

Americans drank about 29 gallons of bottled water each in 2007, for a total volume of nearly 9 billion gallons, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. Its popularity remains strong despite the fact that it can cost you from 240 to 5,000 times more than tap water, and the bottles are widely known to be an environmental burden (more than 30 billion plastic water bottles are thrown away each year in the United States alone).

Still, we are willing to pay more for water in a bottle for the simple fact that it is supposed to be safe, pure and certainly healthier than the water we can get for pennies straight from the tap.

Well, it's time we all started to rethink that logic, as a comprehensive investigation into bottled water quality has revealed something very murky about bottled water purity: it's nonexistent.

Here's a preview of what the study found:

"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."

Bottled Water is Impure

A two-year study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyzed 10 popular brands of water. They found 38 chemical pollutants, with an average of eight contaminants in each brand. Further, more than one-third of the chemicals found are not regulated in bottled water. What types of pollutants did they find?

• Disinfection byproducts

• Urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol)

• Heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes

• Fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia)

• A broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants

While all the brands tested met federal health standards for drinking water, the Sam's Choice and Acadia brands had levels of some chemicals that exceeded legal limits in California as well as industry-sponsored voluntary safety standards. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria.

"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," EWG writes.

"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," the authors concluded.

While some of the contaminants likely came from the tap water used to fill the bottles (the National Resources Defense Council found that about one-fourth of bottled water is actually bottled tap water), others most likely leached into the water from the plastic bottles, the researchers said.

Bisphenol-A (BPA), for instance, is a chemical widely used to manufacture plastic water bottles. The chemical is capable of leaching from the plastic into the water you drink, and has been strongly linked to diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, and diabetes, and to reproductive and neurological development damage.

Are You Ready to Ditch Bottled Water? Here's the Superior Alternative Experts Recommend

With the evidence in that bottled water is often contaminated and no safer than tap water, increasing numbers of Americans are deciding to ditch bottled water.

In fact, bottled water sales are expected to grow just 2.3 percent this year, compared to the double-digit growth the industry experienced from 2004 to 2006, Beverage Marketing Corp. reported.

So what is the best way to get pure, inexpensive water for you and your family? The Environmental Working Group recommends that people drink tap water filtered with a carbon filter instead of bottled water.

Filtering your own tap water costs about 31 cents a gallon (12 times lower than the typical cost of bottled water, EWG reports), and will remove any contaminants found in your tap water.

You can actually take things one step further and choose the Wellness H2.0, a personal, reusable water bottle that features a carbon filter and more. The Wellness H2.0 uses advanced enhancement media and microfiltration that not only purifies ordinary tap water, but also enhances the water for better absorption and hydration.

This is the only bottle on the market to produce nourishing, better-than-bottled-quality, "enhanced" water without the cost or waste associated with bottled water -- yet with the convenience of bottled water that so many love. With the Wellness H2.0, you can have superior quality water no matter where you are, just fill up and go!

When you're at home, you can also get superior water quality with The Wellness Kitchen Water Filter. It reduces chlorine, chloramines, cysts, VOCs, pesticides, and herbicides -- including DEET -- below detectable levels for the life of the filter.

The Wellness Kitchen combines the best filtration and enhancement technologies to deliver the purest and most natural tasting water available. It effectively reduces harmful contaminants, while at the same time enhancing the water by adding important yet delicate wellness "ions and minerals" that your body needs.

If you're fed up with paying more for contaminated water, and want to help protect the environment, you can help by joining the campaign to end bottled water once and for all.

Recommended Reading

Bottled Water: Which City's Tap Water System is Making a Flood of Cash off of You?

Six New Studies Confirm Health Dangers of Plastic

Sources

Environmental Working Group October 2008

Environmental Working Group October 31, 2008

CBSNews.com October 15, 2008