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« Because pesticides on your food aren't bad enough | Main | EWG heads to Congress: Thanks for your help »
Is bottled water safe? Who knows!?
By Lisa Frack
As you might imagine, I read labels before I buy pretty much anything. But when they don't tell me a thing, why bother? Take, for example, bottled water.
Labels disclose very little. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Our new research into 200 popular brands of bottled water shows that less than 2 percent disclose the water's source, how the water has been purified and what chemical pollutants each bottle of water may contain. Just 2 of the 188 individual brands EWG analyzed disclosed these three very basic - and arguably essential - facts about their water. You can easily find your brand with our searchable (and embeddable) widget.
Some brands are better than others
Somewhat surprisingly, mainstream brands such as Sam's Club and Walgreen's scored relatively high marks, while waters marketed as elite, including Perrier, S. Pellegrino and the Whole Foods store brand, flunked because they provided almost no meaningful information for consumers. Ahhhh, marketing.
Speaking of marketing...
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the non-profit consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch explains the industry's marketing scam:
The Bottled water industry's strategy has been to market bottled water as the safe and clean alternative to tap water. This myth has been used to trick consumers into paying thousands times more for a product that is the same or even more polluted than the water available from our faucets.Tap water in the United States undergoes rigorous testing for contaminants--as often as 480 times a month, far more than the once-a-week test for bottled water.
Why the glaring lack of disclosure?
When EWG's Jane Houlihan testified in Congress yesterday, she reported that bottled water companies enjoy a regulatory holiday under the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which give beverage corporations complete latitude to choose what, if any, information about their water they divulge to customers.
In contrast, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- the federal agency that oversees the nation's municipal water utilities -- requires all 52,000 community tap water suppliers nationwide to produce an annual water quality report: The utilities' reports detail water source and pollutant testing results for customers, as required under the Safe Drinking Water Act. An estimated 58 percent of these reports also describe water treatment methods. Houlihan notes:
Many people assume bottled water is healthier and safer to drink than ordinary tap water. But some companies have lured consumers away from the tap with claims of health and purity that aren't backed by public data. The ugly truth is that under lax federal law, consumers know very little about the quality of bottled water on which they spend billions every year.
You can hear it for yourself on the Today Show:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
PS - Thanks a million to our fans who provided us with the bottled water labels - we couldn't have done it without you.
I would certainly hope my bottled water is safe...bottled water is big business - about $11.1 billion in the US in 2008. While there are certainly self-imposed and federal regulations that govern the industry and product, many feel that not enough is being done.
There's a great debate going on at economixt on this topic right now -
http://www.economixt.com/2009/07/in-context-the-bottled-water-industry
I must say this article is singularly badly researched.
First of all, please read up on chloramine if you REALLY want to drink tap water.
Secondly, of course it's terrible that FDA regulations for bottled water are lax.
But you gave imported German mineral waters as an F,
because their information is on the German-only website. Ok so that is bad marketing, but you need to dig deeper if you are interested in actually FINDING safe water. As a native German I can read http://www.gerolsteiner.de/fileadmin/pub/img/mtv-03-03-03-aktuell_01.pdf. It clearly states in the first sentence that "natural mineral waters" must fulfill all requirements of tap water (under European law), plus a number of additional conditions. In general, don't just repeat "tap water is best" when it is clearly contaminated with a very dangerous substance (chloramine). AND: actually recommend and look for safer alternatives. That is the information we need: if FDA does not provide it, try to find and reward companies which will do comprehensive testing. We need a label like "organic", "fair trade" - "natural mineral water- regularly tested" in the US.
I stopped buying bottled water because of the waste it adds to our landfills. I did not enjoy metal or plastic water bottles so I found a glass bottle that I like drinking out of so much that I started selling them on my green website: www.livinglavidaverde.net.
It is important to provide clean, safe drinking water for everyone and that is why 2% of our profits are donated to the UNICEF Tap Project which helps to provide clean drinking water to people all over the world.
The focus should not be on paying bottled water companies for something that should be provided for all. We should fix any problems that may exist with tap water so that we are all able to access it.
Waterwise-
Thank you for your comment. You have bring attention to the very important issue of chloramines, a chemical that EWG has been studying for a number of years. This EWG report may be of interest to you- Chlorine Pollutants at High Levels in DC Tap Water- http://www.ewg.org/reports/dctapwater. In that report, we highlight that many water utilities have switched from chlorine to chloramines as the preferred water disinfectant and while chloramines appear to help lower the levels of certain disinfection byproducts, they also produce an entirely different set of byproducts for which we have less information about long-term human health effects. We go on to cite an EPA study that found that water treated with chloramines had the highest levels of iodacetic acid, a byproduct that in animal studies has been found toxic to cells and DNA.
Due to the presence of these disinfection byproducts as well as other contaminants, we recommend that people drink filtered tap water, not tap water straight from their tap. Based on our research, we conclude that filtered tap water is the best option: on a monetary/value basis- on average you pay 1900 times less for tap water than for bottled water and the quality is sometimes very similar; it has less negative environmental impacts; and with tap water, you know exactly what you are getting (because of the information provided in the annual water quality reports) and therefore you are able to make a decision about which filter would be best to remove the contaminants from your water.
Thank you for your reference to the website in German. You can learn more about our methodology of how bottled water brands were rated on this page of the report:
http://www.ewg.org/health/report/bottledwater-scorecard/methodology
Regarding imported bottled waters - as you are probably well aware, bottled waters from different countries are sold in the US, and it is impossible to anticipate that shoppers will be familiar with all the languages of all those countries that produce bottled water. If the product is sold in the US, the information should be available in english in order for it to beneficial to the consumers in this country. Information provided exclusively in a language other than English does not provide adequate transparency regarding bottled water quality for the majority of the shoppers.
Pellegrino and the Whole Foods store brand, flunked because they provided almost no meaningful information for consumers. Ahhhh, marketing.