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Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants
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Douglas W. Morrison
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Oct 17, 2008 14:24 PDT
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Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants
Hello Folks
The Environmental Working Group has just released an excellent study
showing the many toxins found in most bottled water. They tested ten
major brands and found 38 different pollutants including disinfection
byproducts, fertilizer residue, and pain medication. They noted in
particular that "Two of 10 brands tested, Walmart's and Giant's store
brands, bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water
treatment — a cocktail of chlorine disinfection byproducts, and for
Giant water, even fluoride. In other words, this bottled water was
chemically indistinguishable from tap water."
For the full study and related articles, please visit their excellent
website at:
www.ewg.org
The EWG recommends the use of water filters. The water filter that I
personally use and recommend is from Aquasana, which has been voted Best
Buy for performance and value by Consumers Digest magazine five straight
years (2003-2007). For details, please visit my website at:
www.howweheal.com/filter.htm
Cheers,
Doug
Published on Environmental Working Group (http://www.ewg.org)
Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants
Bottled water contains disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and
pain medication
Published October 15, 2008
Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants
Authors: Olga Naidenko, PhD, Senior Scientist; Nneka Leiba, MPH,
Researcher; Renee Sharp, MS, Senior Scientist; Jane Houlihan, MSCE, Vice
President for Research
The bottled water industry promotes an image of purity, but
comprehensive testing by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals a
surprising array of chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand
analyzed, including toxic byproducts of chlorination in Walmart’s Sam’s
Choice and Giant Supermarket's Acadia brands, at levels no different
than routinely found in tap water. Several Sam's Choice samples
purchased in California exceeded legal limits for bottled water
contaminants in that state. Cancer-causing contaminants in bottled water
purchased in 5 states (North Carolina, California, Virginia, Delaware
and Maryland) and the District of Columbia substantially exceeded the
voluntary standards established by the bottled water industry.
Unlike tap water, where consumers are provided with test results every
year, the bottled water industry does not disclose the results of any
contaminant testing that it conducts. Instead, the industry hides behind
the claim that bottled water is held to the same safety standards as tap
water. But with promotional campaigns saturated with images of mountain
springs, and prices 1,900 times the price of tap water, consumers are
clearly led to believe that they are buying a product that has been
purified to a level beyond the water that comes out of the garden hose.
To the contrary, our tests strongly indicate that the purity of bottled
water cannot be trusted. Given the industry's refusal to make available
data to support their claims of superiority, consumer confidence in the
purity of bottled water is simply not justified.
Laboratory tests conducted for EWG at one of the country’s leading water
quality laboratories found that 10 popular brands of bottled water,
purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the
District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with
an average of 8 contaminants in each brand. More than one-third of the
chemicals found are not regulated in bottled water. In the Sam's Choice
and Acadia brands levels of some chemicals exceeded legal limits in
California as well as industry-sponsored voluntary safety standards.
Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria.
Walmart and Giant Brands No Different than Tap Water
Two of 10 brands tested, Walmart's and Giant's store brands, bore the
chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment — a cocktail of
chlorine disinfection byproducts, and for Giant water, even fluoride. In
other words, this bottled water was chemically indistinguishable from
tap water. The only striking difference: the price tag.
In both brands levels of disinfection byproducts exceeded safety
standards established by the state of California and the bottled water
industry:
* Walmart’s Sam’s Choice bottled water purchased at several
locations in the San Francisco bay area was polluted with disinfection
byproducts called trihalomethanes at levels that exceed the state’s
legal limit for bottled water (CDPR 2008). These byproducts are linked
to cancer and reproductive problems and form when disinfectants react
with residual pollution in the water. Las Vegas tap water was the source
for these bottles, according to Walmart representatives (EWG 2008).
* Also in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand, lab tests found a
cancer-causing chemical called bromodichloromethane at levels that
exceed safety standards for cancer-causing chemicals under California’s
Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65,
OEHHA 2008). EWG is filing suit under this act to ensure that Walmart
posts a warning on bottles as required by law: “WARNING: This product
contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer."
* These same chemicals also polluted Giant's Acadia brand at levels
in excess of California’s safety standards, but this brand is sold only
in Mid-Atlantic states where California’s health-based limits do not
apply. Nevertheless, disinfection byproducts in both Acadia and Sam’s
Choice bottled water exceeded the industry trade association’s voluntary
safety standards (IBWA 2008a), for samples purchased in Washington DC
and 5 states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and
California). The bottled water industry boasts that its internal
regulations are stricter than the FDA bottled water regulations(IBWA
2008b), but voluntary standards that companies are failing to meet are
of little use in protecting public health.
Broad Range of Pollutants Found in 10 Brands
Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic
Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of
pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common
urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol);
heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes;
fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other,
tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents,
plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.
The identity of most brands in this study are anonymous. This is typical
scientific practice for market-basket style testing programs. We
consider these results to represent a snapshot of the market during the
window of time in which we purchased samples. While our study findings
show that consumers can't trust that bottled water is pure or cleaner
than tap water, it was not designed to indicate pollutant profiles
typical over time for particular brands. Walmart and Giant bottled water
brands are named in this study because our first tests and numerous
followup tests confirmed that these brands contained contaminants at
levels that exceeded state standards or voluntary industry guidelines.
The study also included assays for breast cancer cell proliferation,
conducted at the University of Missouri. One bottled water brand spurred
a 78% increase in the growth of the breast cancer cells compared to the
control sample, with 1,200 initial breast cancer cells multiplying to
32,000 in 4 days, versus only 18,000 for the control sample, indicating
that chemical contaminants in the bottled water sample stimulated
accelerated division of cancer cells. When estrogen-blocking chemicals
were added, the effect was inhibited, showing that the cancer-spurring
chemicals mimic estrogen, a hormone linked to breast cancer. Though this
result is considered a modest effect relative to the potency of some
other industrial chemicals in spurring breast cancer cell growth, the
sheer volume of bottled water people consume elevates the health
significance of the finding. While the specific chemical(s) responsible
for this cancer cell proliferation were not identified in this pilot
study, ingestion of endocrine-disrupting and cancer-promoting chemicals
from plastics is considered to be a potentially important health concern
(Le 2008).
With Bottled Water, You Don't Know What You're Getting
Americans drink twice as much bottled water today as they did ten years
ago, for an annual total of over nine billion gallons with producer
revenues nearing twelve billions (BMC 2007; IBWA 2008c). Purity should
be included in a price that, at a typical cost of $3.79 per gallon, is
1,900 times the cost of public tap water.1 But EWG’s tests indicate that
in some cases the industry may be delivering a beverage little cleaner
than tap water, sold at a premium price. The health consequences of
exposures to these complex mixtures of contaminants like those found in
bottled water have never been studied.
Unlike public water utilities, bottled water companies are not required
to notify their customers of the occurrence of contaminants in the
water, or, in most states, to tell their customers where the water comes
from, how and if it is purified, and if it is merely bottled tap water.
Information provided on the U.S. EPA website clearly describes the lack
of quality assurance for bottled water: "Bottled water is not
necessarily safer than your tap water" (EPA 2007b). The Agency further
adds following consumer information:
Some bottled water is treated more than tap water, while some is
treated less or not treated at all. Bottled water costs much more than
tap water on a per gallon basis... Consumers who choose to purchase
bottled water should carefully read its label to understand what they
are buying, whether it is a better taste, or a certain method of
treatment (EPA 2007b).
In conjunction with this testing program, EWG conducted a survey of 228
brands of bottled water, compiling information from websites, labels and
other marketing materials. We found that fewer than half describe the
water source (i.e., municipal or natural) or provide any information on
whether or how the water is treated. In the absence of complete
disclosure on the label, consumers are left in the dark, making it
difficult for shoppers to know if they are getting what they expect for
the price.
This study did not focus on the environmental impacts of bottled water,
but they are striking and have been well publicized. Of the 36 billion
bottles sold in 2006, only a fifth were recycled (Doss 2008). The rest
ended up in landfills, incinerators, and as trash on land and in
streams, rivers, and oceans. Water bottle production in the U.S. uses
1.5 million barrels of oil per every year, according to a U.S.
Conference of Mayors’ resolution passed in 2007, enough energy to power
250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year (US Mayors 2007). As oil
prices are continuing to skyrocket, the direct and indirect costs of
making and shipping and landfilling the water bottles continue to rise
as well (Gashler 2008, Hauter 2008).
Extracting water for bottling places a strain on rivers, streams, and
community drinking water supplies as well. When the water is not bottled
from a municipal supply, companies instead draw it from groundwater
supplies, rivers, springs or streams. This "water mining," as it is
called, can remove substantial amounts of water that otherwise would
have contributed to community water supplies or to the natural flow of
streams and rivers (Boldt-Van Rooy 2003, Hyndman 2007, ECONorthwest,
2007).
Recommendations
Currently there is a double standard where tap water suppliers provide
information to consumers on contaminants, filtration techniques, and
source water; bottled water companies do not. This double standard must
be eliminated immediately; Bottled water should conform to the same
right-to-know standards as tap water.
To bring bottled water up to the standards of tap water we recommend:
* Full disclosure of all test results for all contaminants. This
must be done in a way that is readily available to the public.
* Disclosure of all treatment techniques used to purify the water,
and:
* Clear and specific disclosure of the name and location of the
source water.
To ensure that public health and the environment are protected, we
recommend:
* Federal, state, and local policymakers must strengthen protections
for rivers, streams, and groundwater that serve as America’s drinking
water sources. Even though it is not necessarily any healthier, some
Americans turn to bottled water in part because they distrust the
quality of their tap water. And sometimes this is for good reason. Some
drinking water (tap and bottled) is grossly polluted at its source – in
rivers, streams, and underground aquifers fouled by decades of wastes
that generations of political and business leaders have dismissed,
ignored, and left for others to solve. A 2005 EWG study found nearly 300
contaminants in drinking water all across the country. Source water
protection programs must be improved, implemented, and enforced
nationwide (EWG 2005b). The environmental impacts associated with
bottled water production and distribution aggravate the nation's water
quality problems rather than contributing to their solution.
* Consumers should drink filtered tap water instead of bottled
water. Americans pay an average of two-tenths of a cent per gallon to
drink water from the tap. A carbon filter at the tap or in a pitcher
costs a manageable $0.31 per gallon (12 times lower than the typical
cost of bottled water), and removes many of the contaminants found in
public tap water supplies.2 A whole-house carbon filter strips out
chemicals not only from drinking water, but also from water used in the
shower, clothes washer and dishwasher where they can volatilize into the
air for families to breathe in. For an average four-person household,
the cost for this system is about $0.25 per person per day.3 A single
gallon of bottled water costs 15 times this amount.
EWG's study has revealed that bottled water can contain complex mixtures
of industrial chemicals never tested for safety, and may be no cleaner
than tap water. Given some bottled water company's failure to adhere to
the industry's own purity standards, Americans cannot take the quality
of bottled water for granted. Indeed, test results like those presented
in this study may give many Americans reason enough to reconsider their
habit of purchasing bottled water and turn back to the tap.
Footnotes.
1 A recent survey documented bottled water prices ranging from $0.89 to
$8.26 per gallon (Food and Water Watch 2007). Retail prices vary widely
depending on whether people are buying bottled water in bulk or
individual bottles. Given this wide range in prices, EWG assumed a flat
$1.00 per liter price per liter (or $3.79 per gallon), which is what
most consumers would pay for a typical liter bottle of water bought from
a convenience store. In comparison, EPA estimates that tap water costs
consumers about $0.002 per gallon, on average, nationwide (EPA 2004).
2 EWG compared the prices and capacities of 7 faucet-mounted and pitcher
filters. The prices ranged from $19.99 to $39.99 with treatment
capacities ranging from 40 gallons to 100 gallons. With this
information, we estimate an average cost of these types of systems as
$0.31 per gallon.
3 EWG compared 5 different whole house carbon filter units and
documented prices in the range between $64.99 to $795 per unit, with
life spans between 3 and 36 months. Thus, the annual cost is in the
range of $260 - $595 with an average of $375. This leads to an estimated
cost of $1.00/day that translates into $0.25 daily cost per person for
an average four-person household.
Douglas W. Morrison
www.howweheal.com
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