Monday, March 08, 2004
Puuuuure wataaaaaaahhhh
It made for great headlines, but the fact that the UK version of Coca-Cola's Dasani brand bottled water comes out of the London public supply should hardly have come as a surprise.
-clip-
Figures from independent beverage research company Canadean show that at least two out of every five bottles of water sold around the world are, like Dasani, "purified" waters, rather than "source" waters which originate from a spring.
Most of the supermarket own-label bottled waters consist of treated mains water. They may be dechlorinated, filtered further, purified using ultraviolet light and have minerals either added or subtracted. They may also be carbonated.
In short, they are subjected to many of the same treatments that source waters undergo to satisfy public health requirements after being pumped up from the ground.
But generally speaking, anything that doesn't say "source" or "spring" on the label is just fancy tap water.
Evian spelled backwards is "naive."
UPDATE: Scott points out that bottled water may not be as pure as the marketers would like us to think.
A key NRDC finding is that bottled water regulations are inadequate to assure consumers of either purity or safety, although both the federal government and the states 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 waters that are packaged and sold within the same state, which account for between 60 and 70 percent of all bottled water sold in the United States (roughly one out of five states don't regulate these waters 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 waters are covered by the FDA's rules, they are subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water (see chart below). 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.
Maybe we should all just drink beer.
posted by chris at 4:16 PM
------------------
|
