BEWARE OF BOTTLED WATER!

-Sustainability Advisory Group for Environmental Stewardship, Wesleyen University

"...We are working with Bon Appétit to find ways to reduce our use of bottled water on campus. Individuals can help by not buying it. Transportation of bottled water is an unnecessary use of gasoline, and other statistics associated with bottled water's impact on the environment are staggering":

The EPA has stronger regulations for tap water than the FDA has for bottled water. Thus, bottled water is not necessarily safer to drink.

An estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle–sometimes further treated, sometimes not (NRDC).

86% of plastic water bottles in the US become garbage or litter, which is 30 million bottles a day (Container Recycling Institute).

Sent to the landfill, the bottles can take up to a millennium to biodegrade(E magazine).

Globally, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water per year. 1.5 million barrels of crude oil is used to produce the water bottles consumed by Americans each year. This amounts to enough to fuel about 100,000 US cars for a year.

Bottled water is 5,000 times more expensive than tap water.

Americans spend over $15,400,000 on bottled water every day.

Bottled water companies enter communities, dry up their local water resource, and degrade aquifers. This often leaves communities without an adequate safe water source (Earth Policy Institute).

Over one third of the world faces serious water shortages (United Nations Environmental Programme).

$100 billion is spent on bottled water annually. One year's worth of bottled water expenditures could completely cover the development of efficient and sustainable water infrastructure throughout the entire world, three times over(UN Millennium Development Goals).

-Source: Wesleyen University

Additionally, sales of bottled water in the U.S. and Canada have exploded in recent years, largely as a result of a public perception of purity driven by advertisements and packaging labels featuring pristine glaciers and crystal-clear mountain springs, and an increased awareness of the health effects of common water contaminants. But bottled water sold in the United States is not necessarily cleaner or safer than most tap water, according to a four-year scientific study recently made public by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The NRDC's study included testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water. While most of the tested water was found to be of high quality, some brands were significantly contaminated: about one-third of the water tested contained levels of contamination including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic (at least one sample exceeded allowable limits under either state or bottled water industry standards or guidelines).

A key NRDC finding is that current bottled water regulations are inadequate to assure consumers of either purity or safety, although both federal and state governments have bottled water safety programs. At the national level, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for bottled water safety, but the FDA's rules completely exempt water that is packaged and sold within the same state, which accounts for between 60 and 70 percent of all bottled water sold in the United States (roughly one out of five states don't regulate this water either). The FDA also exempts carbonated water and seltzer, and fewer than half of the states require carbonated waters to meet their own bottled water standards.

Even when bottled water is covered by the FDA's rules, it is subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water. For example, bottled water is required to be tested less frequently than city tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants. In addition, bottled water rules allow for some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform (which indicate possible contamination with fecal matter), contrary to tap water rules which prohibit any confirmed contamination with these bacteria. Similarly, there are no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia, unlike the rules for big city tap water systems that use surface water sources. This leaves open the possibility that some bottled water may present a health threat to people with weakened immune systems, such as the frail elderly, some infants, transplant or cancer patients, or people with HIV/AIDS.