Nutrition - Sunday, November 9, 2008 9:39 - 0 Comments

Bottled Water Vs Tap Water-The Shocking Best Source of Good Water

We are first going to let the experts weigh in with their opinions concerning tap water and bottled water, and then we are going to see what we can conclude. Finally, we will make our choice for the best way of getting good, healthy water.

Okay, let the first salvo in the water wars be fired at tap water…there are those who believe it is not safe to drink.

Here’s what the water geeks have to say. What say you?

1. “Each day, millions of Americans turn on their taps and get water that exceeds the legal limit for dangerous contaminants.” USA Today-Special Report, “How Safe Is Your Water?”

2. “Cancer risk among people drinking chlorinated water is as much as 93% higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine.” This was from the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality

3. The “Ralph Nader Research Group” stated, “U.S. drinking water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.”

4. The Environmental Working Group, stated in their report, “Weed Killers by the Glass”, that “Weed killers were found in the tap water of 28 out of 29 cities tested.”

5. Some very good reporting on water contamination over the years has come from the Associated Press and they reported recently on their investigation that showed at least forty-one million Americans had a large assortment of pharmaceutical drugs in their drinking water.

What did they find? Here are just a few: medicines for infections, pain, chemotherapy treatment, heart disease, asthma, and high cholesterol, plus antibiotics and sex hormones.

My first thought when I read some of these reports was, “I hope they don’t start charging us a drug delivery fee”. Now, it is bottled water’s turn.

1. The World Wildlife Fund commissioned a university study that showed the only clear difference between some bottled water and tap water was, “…it is distributed in bottles rather than pipes.”

2. An association representative of the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) stated, “Bottled water standards in the US are at least as protective as those for tap water.” (I feel so much better!)

3. “Bottled water”, which is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, “is not tested as thoroughly or as frequently as tap water”, which is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, said Jon Coifman, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

4. The university study mentioned above also stated, “Toxic chemicals can be released into the environment during the manufacture and disposal of bottles,” and they went on to mention that 1.5 million TONS of plastic are used annually to bottle the water.

5. Most of the bottled water suppliers that do filter the water they sell, proudly advertise they are selling “pure” water. Often this means chemically “pure” water or, H2O, which has been stripped of its natural minerals. In this state it is an acid with a pH below 7 and it is believed by some to be dangerous over long-term consumption because:

(a) The acidic water we drink will try to return to a neutral state by pulling calcuim from our cells, bones or teeth, and…

(b) In an acidic environment cancer seems to thrive and the number of free radicals increase, both lead to increased risk for cancer.

The cheapest bottled water I could find in the store today was priced at $4.83 on a per gallon basis, more expensive than gasoline, and all they have to do is bottle it and take it to the stores. No paying for government leases, oil exploration, expensive drilling, shipping to a refinery, refining, etc.

Not bad (if you’re in the BW business)!

From this article alone you’ve seen how destructive tap water is for our health, and we have seen that bottled water’s regulations are even more lax. Twenty five percent of their bottlers do take water right from the tap according to the IBWA.

So, what can we conclude?

1. We can surely say tap water is a real threat to our health and that bottle water is “chancy”, to say the least, due to lack of oversight.

2. In addition, landfills are facing an environmental nighhtmare from the plastic bottles, bottled water is very costly, and the acidic ones are considered to be harmful.

It kinda looks like a case of “name your poison” doesn’t it? Either way we go we are the real loosers.

Fortunately, bottled and tap are not the only choices and a far better solution is to bottle our own water, in reusable bottles, with the use of home water filtration units.