Bottled Water Concerns

A total of 26 million plastic bottle are made each year. That equals 30 million tons of plastic. Unfortunately, most end up in garbage dumps rather than recycling centers. It takes hundreds of years for a plastic bottle to decompose—to dissolve into the soil. The bottles that are in the garbage dumps today will be with us for a long time.

Consumers in the United States feel bottled water is both safer and more convenient. The fact is that tap water is just as safe and tap water carried in a reusable container is just as convenient. Clearly, the advantages of bottled water are more imaginary than real reports Mark Acosta. (2)

Across the United States, people can turn on sink faucets to get some of the cleanest, healthiest tap water on Earth. Almost all chemicals and impurities have been removed to make this drinking water clean and safe. It is also inexpensive. On average a gallon of tap water costs a small fraction of one cent.

Even as bottled water sales have risen, tap water quality doesn’t appear to be getting worse. Since 2013, the percentage of the US populations serviced by community water systems with at least one reportable health-based quality violation has stayed below 10 percent, according to data from the EPA, which regulates tap water. These systems provide water to more than 90 percent of Americans. Says the EPA; “The United States provides some of the safest drinking water in the world.” (1)

CR’s investigation mentioned earlier shows that safety inspections of water bottling facilities by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water, have declined over the past 15 years. But while the FDA requires companies to test the quality of their products, the agency typically doesn’t conduct its own tests. And companies aren’t required to make the results of their tests available to the public, and often don’t. CR was able to get reports from just 133 bottled water brands, barely half of those they identified.

Just over 7 percent of the community water systems regulated by the EPA had at least one instance of violating a health-based standard, recent EPA data show. That includes exceeding a drinking water contamination limit.

When it comes to bottled water, precise figures can be even harder to come by. But the reality is that contamination in bottled water exists. It’s just difficult for consumers to find out about it. CR’s review of water quality test reports, combined with spot tests of bottled waters, found that 6 percent of brands had a contamination that exceeded state or federal limits. Comparison of tap water with bottled water is more standardized and rigorous.

For example, when a community water system discovers a level of a contaminant that potentially poses an immediate health threat, it must notify regulators within 24 hours. That’s one reason tap water contamination is an all-too-common feature of evening news broadcasts. (1)

Barcelona

Results from a recent study add to the above concerns. Bottled water has an environmental impact 3,500 times greater than tap water, according to a new paper, which carried out a life-cycle analysis of bottled water production to reveal the true extent of its environmental harms. (3)

In this, the first study of its kind, the researchers wanted to weigh up the perceived health risks alongside the environmental impacts of both bottled and tap water. They focused on a place with a long standing habit of bottled water consumption: Barcelona, Spain. Here, bottled water is the primary water source for 60 percent of the population. This appetite for packaged water is probably driven by historically high levels of carcinogenic compounds called trihalomethanes (THM) in parts of Barcelona’s piped water supply.

These compounds are a by-product of the water disinfection process, and some studies suggest they might be linked to increased risks of bladder cancer. However, with improvements to Barcelona’s water treatment process, THM concentrations have declined significantly since 2019. (4)

In the case of bottled water, a life cycle analysis included the life cycle stages of producing plastics, disinfecting and washing bottles before use, and the energy costs of filling them. Then the researchers quantified the combined environmental impacts of these production processes, in terms of ecosystem damage, the quantity of natural resources used, and the global human health impacts.

The life cycle analysis revealed the ecosystem impact to be 1,400 times higher than for tap water. Furthermore, if everyone drank only bottled water, the costs of extracting raw materials would amount to almost $84 billion annually, 3,500 times higher than the extraction costs for water that comes out of a tap. This is likely due to the much higher costs of input materials like packlaging for bottled water. (3)

Lastly, bottled water may not even taste better. Time after time, blind tests show most people can’t really tell the difference between bottled water and tap water, much less specific brands of water. (5)

References

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