The Best Drinking Water Comes from Your Tap (Sort Of)

According to ever diet and nutritionist in the world, we're supposed to be drinking at least 8 glasses of water per day to keep ourselves as healthy as possible. But is the water we're drinking these days hurting us or helping us?

I grew up on Michigan well water (yum!), but a moves to the East coast and later to the Western desert have turned me into a bottled/filtered water convert. In a basement apartment in DC, the water was so full of sulfur we filtered it twice before we'd even cook with it.

For years, I carried a plastic Nalgene bottle around. On a college swim team trip we even talked the bus driver into running over someone's bottle with the bus to see if it really was shatterproof (it didn't break!).

However, it was recently reported that Bisphenol-A (BPA), the chemical that makes the bottles shatterproof, can leech into the water over time, disrupt hormones (BPA mimics estrogen), and possibly even contribute to cancer risk and hyperactivity. The plastics industry told us all not to worry, but Nalgene was concerned enough that they pulled their line of shatterproof bottles off the shelves. My college friends and I all reluctantly retired our Nalgene bottles and went in search of new solutions.

For a while I bought cases of filtered water for the grocery store. They're expensive, heavy, and so wasteful. The amount of trash generated from all of those bottles made me sick. And I found myself rationing water so that I wouldn't have to go back to the store and lug another case home. Plus reports have shown that plastic drinking water bottles, even the disposable kind can be carriers of chemicals and bacteria when used multiple times.

The one thing I haven't tried is some sort of home water service like Culligan, but it almost seems to me like this is just the plastic water bottle problem on a larger scale. At least there is significantly less waste.

In the end, my solution to the problem was to purchase two things: A Pur water filter that attaches to my faucet and a stainless steel water bottle (mine is manufactured by Kleen Kanteen). There was an initial investment of about $60, but I haven't lugged a case of water home from the grocery store since!

And then just last week, a report was issued that many popular brands of drinking water contain a wide range of chemicals and bacteria. The recommendation: buy a carbon filter for your tap at home and use a metal water bottle.