Bottled water has become an integral part of our collective lives. In fact, most Americans drink more bottled water than beer, milk or any other beverage. After all, entire aisles at the local grocery store are probably full of expensive bottled water. However, that does not mean that we should happily continue to drink bottled water all the time.
Many of us have heard that bottled water is definitely not a good idea, but few people know exactly how bad it is for our health, our wallet and the environment at large. Let us check out the main reasons due to which we should avoid bottled water as much as we can:
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1. Bottled Water Might Not Even Be Filtered Properly
The bottled water industry would have us believe that bottled water is better than plain tap water. However, this is usually not the case. When it comes to answering the question of which is better bottled water or purified water, we can see the answer clearly enough. It is very simple really. In many cases, bottled water is basically nothing more than glorified tap water.
While some manufacturers spend resources to filter their water before bottling it, this is not always the case. Instead, they simply charge for the packaging! In other words, it is the same as the water you get in your taps.
But of course the, cost of bottled water is definitely higher than tap water and this price difference makes you feel that you are buying a high-quality product. In fact, it is entirely possible that bottled water is actually less safe than tap water. This is largely due to the fact that most municipal water supplies are very highly regulated.[1]
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates public tap water supplies and it also sets legal limits for around a hundred contaminants that could potentially show up in your water supply. Apart from setting standards, they also routinely test the water lines and pump stations for these contaminants.
On the other hand, bottled water typically undergoes very little regulation. Many studies have found arsenic in bottled water and that is the least of it. Some bottled water samples had traces of mold, phthalates and dangerous microbes along with various other contaminants.
2. They Contain Plastic Toxins
When it comes to bottled water vs purified water, the latter is the hands-down winner. This is because water bottles are almost always made of plastic. And even though most drinking water is not acidic, you can still be exposed to the risk of ingesting the chemicals that have been used to manufacture the bottle. This is very common with older water bottles that many of us tend to use and reuse without a thought. For instance, if you drink from a plastic water bottle left in the car in summer, BPA and other plastic toxins might mix with the water and end up in your bloodstream. Do it often enough and you are looking at liver and kidney damage. [2] Moreover, many of these chemicals are inherently carcinogenic in nature and can lead to cancer.
Many companies have started using BPA-free plastic, but that does not mean that you are out of the woods yet. There are plenty of other harmful chemicals present in plastic bottles, and that also includes BPA free bottles. These chemicals can mess up the hormone levels in your body. Add to that the fact that there are also plenty of PFAS in bottled water. These chemicals can adversely affect our bodies in ways that we have not been able to understand as yet.
3. Bottled Water Labels Can Be Very Misleading
Just because the packaging shows a peaceful mountain stream, doesn’t mean that the water inside is equally pure and fresh. Lead in bottled water is a clear and present danger and there have been cases where the deadly E.coli bacteria have also been found. In fact, you may be paying many thousands of times more for water that is anything but clean and pure.
4. Bottled Water Has No Proven Benefits
The NRDC has conducted a lot of research and it came to the conclusion that there are no major benefits of drinking bottled water when compared to its tap counterpart.[3] It is very important to note here that the US federal government does not require commercially available bottled water to be any safer than tap water. In fact, in many cases, the very opposite is the truth due to the stringent safeguards in place for tap water.
5. The Methodical Destruction of the Environment
There is no doubt whatsoever that drinking bottled water creates a whole lot of totally unnecessary waste. In fact, plastic waste from bottled water is now becoming one of the world’s major environmental issues.
Many people think that this is not that big a problem because water bottles are being recycled. After all, they have that little recycling logo, so it must be all good right? Wrong. The vast majority of plastic bottled are not being recycled at all. This means that an overwhelming majority of those bottles end up in landfills and the world’s oceans where they cause irreparable harm to marine bio-diversity. Since they are not biodegradable, the tens of billions of bottles being thrown carelessly away every year, remain a threat to the environment for centuries.
o The Environmental Impact of Creating Plastic Bottles
The environmental impact of waste plastic may seem massive, but it pales in comparison to the production as well as the transportation of this patently useless commodity. Millions of barrels of oil are consumed by this industry and tens of thousands of tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year, just to fuel our appetite for bottled water.
Conclusion
In light of the above, we can safely conclude that there is no harm in shifting from bottled water to tap water. Once you do that, you will not only be helping the environment but also taking care of your own
[1] https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/drinking-water-regulations
[2] http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-81232012000200015&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
[3] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/truth-about-tap?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8ZTr8pfc1QIVCYppCh0rkAQ2EAAYASAAEgJDKfD_BwE&utm_medium=google
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