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Is bottled water safer than tap water? Is tap water dangerous? Are we all being poisoned by our municipal water supplies? The answer is No, No, and No. All of us have seen bottled water in the supermarket aisles, in beverage machines, and it is often available to purchase at restaurants. But, is bottled water any better for us than regular tap water?
The water that we buy in bottles is water from any source of supply that has been placed in a bottle by a company that is hoping to sell its product. It is not regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency, but by the Food and Drug Administration. The water that is in bottled water does not have to go through any laboratory testing prior to its placement within a bottle, and may not be treated in any way.
In comparison, water that is treated by a municipal supply must undergo constant testing and laboratory analysis in order to be an approved public water supply. If a public water supply does not meet the certain minimum standards, set by the US EPA, it is subjected to fines and may even be closed down. No private water supply undergoes such scrutiny, yet it is often bottled and marketed as being more ‘pure’ than tap water.
Before you buy bottled water – check the water source.
Most bottled water will list the source of the water that has been placed inside the bottle. The source may say something like pure artesian well water, spring water, or even list a municipal water source. If the source is not listed on the bottle, do not purchase the bottled water. What do these terms mean to the consumer?
Artesian Wells – The term ‘artesian’ is a hydrogeologic term, not a term for water purity. ‘Artesian’ describes a specific type of well, not the water in the well. Artesian wells are different from water table wells. All this means is that the level of water in the well, when the well is not being pumped, is higher than the formation that surrounds and contains the aquifer, or water-producing geologic formations. Take a look at the illustration. You can see that the top of the aquifer is confined by an impermeable layer. The water within the aquifer is under pressure, so the water in the well rises above the bottom of the confining impermeable layer. Therefore, the term ‘artesian’ just means that a well is operating under pressure—it makes no claim to purity or quality of the water.
Springs – The term ‘springs’ is also a hydrogeologic term, not a term for water purity. A ‘spring’ refers to the water that is traveling through a geologic formation, in such a way that it naturally comes to the surface. Water that comes from springs is moving downhill on top of an impermeable layer within the geologic formation, until it reaches an outlet at the ground surface. Take a look at this illustration. You can see that a spring requires an impermeable layer for the water to be caught and transported to a point where it reaches the surface. Water from a spring is no more pure than any other groundwater.
Municipal Water Supply – Usually, the bottled water will list the source of the supply as XCity Water Company, or will use the term Municipal Water Supply. A municipal water supply is also not a term describing the purity of the water, other than, to be a municipal water supply, the water has been treated, whether its source is a surface water supply, a groundwater supply, or a combination of both. If you are curious as to the quality of a municipal water supply, this information is readily available to the public through the EPA’s Website, Consumer Confidence Reports. Follow the links to Where You Live to find out about the water quality for your municipal water supply, or for source water of your bottled water.
What is the water quality in a Municipal Water Supply?
As discussed above, you can check the water quality of any municipal water supply by visiting the EPA’s web site that lists the Consumer Confidence Reports for all municipal water supplies in the US. Every municipal was supply must, by law, supply this report to the US EPA, which then checks the accuracy of the report from the results of water quality analysis performed on the municipal water supply daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
Municipal water supplies perform hourly and daily tests of many of the constituents within water, and, for those constituents not required for daily testing, water samples are collected and analyzed weekly, monthly, or quarterly. To see a listing of the materials that are required to be tested, visit this EPA Web site for Drinking Water Standards. This site lists the Primary, and Secondary drinking water standards, the Volatile Organic Chemicals, (VOC’s), the Synthetic Organic Compounds, (SOC’s), Disinfectants, Disinfection By-products, Micro-organisms, and Radionuclides that are tested constantly for all municipal water supplies in the US. This web site also lists those chemical constituents that will be tested in the near future, and information about specific contaminants that many municipal water supplies test for that are not on a required list.
A private person wishing to have their water tested for these chemical constituents must contact an EPA-approved laboratory, collect the samples in the manner specified by the laboratory, and overnight mail the samples to the laboratory with many of them iced down. The cost is approximately $5000 - $8000 for one set of samples. Bottled water is not required to perform this stringent testing regimen, nor it is regulated by the water quality experts, because bottled water is considered to be a food product.
But what about chlorine in the water?
Chlorine is highly effective in producing bacteria-free water, which is what most customers want. Chlorine in water has probably been the single most important health benefit for mankind, because it keeps water supplies clean and safe to drink. The complete elimination of deadly diseases such as cholera, typhoid and other water-borne diseases is now taken for granted by the population.
Chlorine has been in use since the early 1900’s and has overwhelmingly proved its effectiveness since that time. Chlorine is as important to safe drinking water as the smallpox vaccine has been to smallpox. Even water that has been disinfected by other methods, (example: ultraviolet radiation), must maintain a certain chlorine residual at its farthest point from the treatment source, and it is mandatory in most states. Despite the benefits of chlorine to mankind, many people have switched to bottled water because they don’t like the taste of chlorine.
But, what most people don’t realize is that the bad taste is actually due to an insufficient amount of chlorine residual in their water. If you can smell or taste chlorine in your drinking water, there isn’t enough chlorine residual in it. The proper dosage of chlorine to maintain the required minimum residual of “free” chlorine is the important key. If the residual falls below the “free” minimum, the reforming of the chlorine atoms produces chloramines and chlororganics-- and that is what produces the taste and odor.
So, what do we do? You can buy a water filter, such as a filter containing activated carbon. An activated carbon filter will remove the chlorine from the water so that it has no taste, and will also remove certain other chemicals. But it will do nothing for many other chemical constituents in the water, and may, in and of itself, become infested with bacteria, so that it makes the water even less pure than the water coming from the tap.
If you decide to purchase an activated carbon filter, buy one that will fit in a pitcher and replace it as frequently as is recommended by the manufacturer. Carbon filters placed on a faucet or within a refrigerator often become clogged or need replacing, and they are so much trouble to fool with, most of us don’t bother. Wrong! Be sure to replace these filters at least as often as is recommended, and don’t rely on the filters to do anything more than remove the chlorine from the water, if you don’t like the taste. Other contaminants may need a longer contact time to be removed from the water, or a different form of activated carbon to remove the specific contaminant.
Consumers may also be startled to learn that many of the bottled waters contain carcinogens, cancer-causing chemicals, in amounts that exceed federal standards. If these chemicals are found in bottled water, there are no regulations that require the public to be notified, unlike for a municipal water supply. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment conducted a study of 80 bottled water companies and found that there were carcinogenic chemicals in 15% of the bottled water, and nine of the chemicals tested were discovered to exceed federal limits. (For more information, please go to this Water and Wastes article.)
More to come!
The Truth about Bottled Water, Part 2
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Thanks for coming by!
