Water has always been essential to our body’s system, health and our survival, but recently, it has become one of the most popular “fitness crazes” as people all over the world seek to gain the health benefits of drinking optimal amounts of clean water filtered through pure water systems and bottled water.
Although people previously relied largely upon ordinary old tap water to get their daily quota of drinking water, in the last 25 years, many consumers have started to shy away from this historical water source, due to various public health scares. Bottled water companies, promising a purer, healthier water product than tap water have expanded greatly in order to supply growing demands for quality drinking water.
Clearly, the bottled water industry has been around for nearly three decades and is here to stay, but is the price of bottled water really worth it? Do consumers truly receive a better, more purified water product for their money?
Recent allegations against the Coca-Cola Company and its numerous brand names of bottled water have publicly highlighted one of the greatest misconceptions about the quality of bottled water. Coca-Cola, advertising its bottled water as either “pure” or “still water,” is now being investigated in the United States for deliberately misleading consumers about the true nature of the contents of its bottles. Rather than sourcing its water from natural springs, Coca-Cola had actually been filling its bottles with filtered tap water in many cases.
Unfortunately, the process of bottling tap water is not only limited to the Coca-Cola Company. In 1999, the National Resources Defence Council of the USA conducted a four-year study in which their research teams tested more than 1,000 samples of 103 brands of bottled water. These researchers found that: “An estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated through a water filtration system, sometimes not.”
In one case, a brand of bottled water, advertised as “pure, glacier water,” was found to be taken from a municipal water supply while another brand, flaunted as “spring water,” was pumped from a water source next to a hazardous waste dumping site. While “purified tap water” is arguably safer and purer than untreated tap water (depending upon the purification methods), a consumer should expect to receive something more than reconstituted tap water for the exceptional prices of bottled water. One would have to ask then about the business ethics of these companies all over the planet, including here in Australia. This is a very valid question considering the above results.
If bottled water does not necessarily offer a much purer water product than tap water, surely it provides a much better tasting water product, right? The answer to this question is no. Water from a bottle does not always taste any better than tap water, let alone much better.
While taste is certainly highly subjective, a recent study shows that bottled water essentially holds nothing over tap water. In many cases, the water is no purer than tap water, and it may not even taste better. Thus, bottled water, depending upon the brand, may actually be less clean and safe than your tap water. FACT: about one fifth of bottled water brands tested positive for the presence of synthetic chemicals, such as industrial chemicals and chemicals used in manufacturing plastic like phthalate, a harmful chemical that leaches into the water from its plastic container. Bottled water companies, because they are not under the same accountability standards as municipal water systems, may provide a significantly lower quality water than the water one typically receives from the tap.
Through the use of a water purifier such as a reverse osmosis system or whole house filter, the quality of tap water in any home can be further increased, removing any harmful chemicals or contaminants that may be present to provide confidence in the safety of drinking water not from plastic bottles.
