Bottled Water: Worthy or Waste?

It strikes me as quite amusing that about a quarter of the bottled waters out there are actually just bottled tap water. This alone is proof enough in my mind that I should not be spending money on the one and only thing I can basically drink for free (okay - I do have a water bill, but the cost for the actual drinking water that is consumed is negligible versus what is required for laundry, showers, and washing dishes). There is a way to find out whether or not bottled water is tap water - bottled tap water has to be marked "from a municipal source," but this is obviously not the most prominent text on the packaging -- and in all reality, I didn't even know to look for those words until I started researching this topic.

There was an episode of the television news show 20/20 that addressed the question of whether bottled water was actually better than tap water. Information on their story can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=728070&page=1. In the story, which John Stossel commentated, an elaborate blind taste test was conducted with tap water from New York City and brands of bottled water. The results? The cheapest bottled water - K-Mart's own brand - was the winner. Iceland Spring tied the NYC tap water for third place. Even more surprising - the loser overall was Evian by a substantial margin. Evian was the most expensive bottled water in the taste test.

People seem to truly believe that there is something very frightening about drinking water from the tap. I would actually posit that it may be the media, even movies and television shows, which have contributed to the nation's strange phobia. Think about how many times you have heard the phrase "there must be something in the water." I think that we are actually programmed deep in our subconscious to believe that there may be some invisible evil lurking in the clear liquid that flows from our sinks. In some ways, the fears we have aren't entirely irrational. The movie "Erin Brokovich" was based on a true story, and in that flick we watched the aftermath of cancers and diseases that overtook a town with "something in the water."

I used to work at a local answering service. We answered for hundreds of local companies, water companies included, such as Rand Water and some other locals. We used to get multiple calls a night - on a regular basis - from people complaining of problems with their water. For a long time, Fishkill residents in certain areas were dealing with regularly brown or foggy water, sometimes even water that they described as "milky." For these people, drinking that water - even once it actually looks like clear water - must be tough. When you've seen your water dirty - dirty to the point that it is blatantly obvious - it's got to be very hard to believe that the regulations on drinking water are actually being upheld. However, for the most part, tap water in this country is every bit as safe - and sometimes healthier (because of the chlorine and fluoride, for example) than bottled.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=728070&page=1