Pure Drink or Pure Hype?
BOTTLED WATER CONTAMINATION: AN OVERVIEW OF NRDC’S AND OTHERS’ SURVEYS
Setting aside the question of whether bottled water is as pure as advertised, is the public’s view that bottled water is safer than tap water correct? Certainly the aggressive marketing by the bottled water industry would lead us to believe so.
NRDC undertook a four-year, detailed investigation to evaluate the quality of bottled water. We reviewed published and unpublished literature and data sources, wrote to and interviewed by phone all 50 states asking for any surveys of bottled water quality they have conducted or were aware of, and interviewed experts from FDA. In addition, through three leading independent laboratories, we conducted “snapshot” testing of more than 1,000 bottles of water sold under 103 brand names.
What NRDC has found is in some cases reassuring and in others genuinely troubling. The results of all testing NRDC conducted is presented in Appendix A; Figure 4 summarizes the results.
The bottled water industry generally has publicly maintained that there are no chemical contaminants in bottled water. For example, as noted in Chapter 2, a widely disseminated fact sheet on bottled water distributed by the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) — the industry’s trade association — states flatly that bottled water contains no chlorine or harmful chemicals. [75]
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap3.asp
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