OT Environmental Working Group: Bottled water can't be trusted

[Guest guest]

Sorry this is sort of off-topic, but it does affect the health of our

children!

 

Tracy

 

 

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> Hi there,

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> We've all heard this before and we have trouble doing without the

> convenience, especially if we are trying to drink more water!

> This recent study and report by the EWG held some surprising

> information for me and it may be of interest to you.

>

> EWG found that Sam's Club (Walmart) and Acadia water consistently

> contains more environmental chemicals than most tap water and exceeds

> safety standards for cancer-causing chemicals under California's

> Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986!

> EWG is suing them to post a warning label (as required by CA state

> law) on their bottled water for containing carcinogenic compounds

> They also tested 9 other brands (anonymous but the results are in

> the report). I thought you may want to stay

> away from Sam's Club water for now if you currently use it!

>

> Here are a few excerpts from the (long) report that you may find

> interesting (please forgive me if you don't!). (http://www.ewg.org/

> reports/bottledwater)

> Bottled water contains disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue,

> and pain medication

>

> " 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. 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 not regulated in bottled

> water ... 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. "

>

> What can consumers do?

>

> Drink filtered tap water

> Some reports show that up to 44 per cent of bottled water is just

> tap water – filtered in some cases and untreated in others

> (O'Rourke, 2008). It has also been noted that bottled water can

> cost up to 10,000 times more than tap water (Earth Policy

> Institute, 2006). A carbon filter, whether tap mounted or the

> pitcher variety, costs a manageable $0.31 per gallon, and removes

> many of the contaminants found in public tap water supplies,

> therefore rendering the water just as good as, if not better than,

> most brands of bottled water.

> Forgo the plastic bottles

> Plastic additives, many of which have not been fully assessed for

> safety, have been shown to migrate from the bottles into bottled

> water to be consumed (Nawrocki 2002). EWG recommends that consumers

> use a stainless steel bottle filled with filtered tap water to

> avoid these potentially harmful contaminants.

> Consumers can urge policymakers to improve and adequately fund

> source water protection programs

> The only long-term solution to our water problem is a clean water

> supply. This can only be achieved if policymakers enforce more

> stringent source water protection programs to ensure that our

> rivers, streams, and groundwater are adequately protected from

> industrial, agricultural, and urban pollution.

> More on the above recommendations:

>

> 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.

> Americans pay an average of two-tenths of a cent per gallon to

> drink water from the tap. A carbon filter at the tap or in a

> pitcher costs a manageable $0.31 per gallon (12 times lower than

> the typical cost of bottled water), and removes many of the

> contaminants found in public tap water supplies.2 A whole-house

> carbon filter strips out chemicals not only from drinking water,

> but also from water used in the shower, clothes washer and

> dishwasher where they can volatilize into the air for families to

> breathe in. For an average four-person household, the cost for this

> system is about $0.25 per person per day.3 A single gallon of

> bottled water costs 15 times this amount.

>

> 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.

>

> The Environment

> 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).

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