USA Water Filter Blog

You’ve probably heard a lot about bottled water. That it’s healthier for you than tap water, that it can replace your vitamins, that it’s really only tap water and how environmentally unfriendly it is.

With this type of conflicting information about water, it’s easy to get confused. Let’s see if we can help you cut through the clutter and lead you down the path to healthier water consumption.

Environmental Impact

There’s no sense in sugar-coating it. Bottled water is destructive to the environment. It is a fact that 67 million water bottles are thrown away each day.

That’s a staggering amount of waste considering only 10 percent of these water bottles are ever recycled. Despite the good reputation recycling has, this practice is not always best for the ecosystem as it is labor-intensive, costly and burns natural resources. Also, just because you are throwing your used water bottles into the recycling bin, it does not necessarily mean they are able to be recycled.

Another problem with bottled water is the incredible amount of fuel needed to transport these heavy loads of plastic (and sometimes glass) bottles to your local supermarket, home or office.

Where Your Bottled Water REALLY Comes From

About 40 percent of bottled water is nothing more than bottled tap water! So not only might you still be drinking all the chemicals you were trying to avoid in the first place, you may be exposing yourself to even MORE chemicals by drinking from plastic bottles….

The Dangers of Plastic

Drinking water from a plastic water bottle poses serious health risks to you and your family. Let’s take a look at some of these dangers  to give you a better idea of why bottled water is not the healthy choice you’ve been led to believe it is.

Plastic would obviously be an issue for most bottled waters but it also comes into play for home or commercially filtered waters, or even raw spring water in that you need a container to store your water before you consume it. Obviously the best container is glass because when you choose plastic you are potentially exposed to the following chemicals.

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Environment/bisphenol_a_0115110834.html

NSA Water Filters

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued guidance recommending how public water systems might enhance monitoring and sampling programs specifically for hexavalent chromium. The recommendations are in response to emerging scientific evidence that chromium-6 could pose health concerns if consumed over long periods of time.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) lit a political firestorm in December when it reported that the toxic metal hexavalent chromium was present in the tap water of 31 of 35 U.S. cities tested.

EWG said samples from 25 cities contained the cancer-causing metal at concentrations above the 0.06 parts per billion maximum proposed by California regulators. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that hexavalent chromium (also known as chromium-6) is a likely carcinogen.

EWG said, “At least 74 million Americans in 42 states drink chromium-polluted tap water, much of it likely in the cancer-causing hexavalent form. Given the scope of exposure and the magnitude of the potential risk, EWG believes the EPA should move expeditiously to establish a legal limit for chromium-6 and require public water suppliers to test for it.”

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) noted that water utilities monitor for total chromium, of which hexavalent chromium is a sub-category. “There is nearly universal compliance with the existing standard, which is good news for tap water consumers,” it said.

http://www.waterworld.com/index/display/article-display/5176819340/articles/waterworld/drinking-water/epa-issues-guidance-for-chromium-6-in-drinking-water.html

NSA Water Filters

I think humour may be the best way to stop the bottled water madness. And by humour, I mean ridicule. Yes, I think it’s time to start openly mocking people who buy bottled water. There isn’t really a nice way of putting it. Buying bottled water is just dumb.

The next time you see someone purchase a bottle of water, ask him if he would like to buy some air with that. Fan a few handfuls of air his way, and ask for $3. OK, he probably won’t buy it. Maybe you’ll have to put the air in a plastic bottle, and label it “pure” or “natural” or “forest fresh.” That is the equivalent of what’s happened with water.

Consider that just a couple of decades ago, nobody was fool enough to buy this stuff. A few restaurants were trying to talk us into coughing up big bucks for sparkling water, but mostly people just smiled and said tap water would be fine. Now, more than a billion plastic bottles of water are sold each year in Quebec, according to Recyc-Quebec. One billion. Have we lost our minds?

In Montreal alone, taxpayers are coughing up about $250 million each year to ensure that clean, high quality water runs from our taps. This water is tested more frequently and rigorously than bottled water is. And then thousands of us go ahead and buy these plastic bottles of water, and then we pay again for a system to recycle the bottles. It’s nuts.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Just+with+flow/4234797/story.html

NSA Water Filters

A recent report about the carcinogen chromium 6 in drinking water from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) garnered a lot of headlines and a lot of people wondering if they should be drinking bottled water instead. The answer to that question is usually no. Estimates are that around 40 to 50 percent of bottled water in the U.S. comes from the same source as tap water. Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires way more testing than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for bottled water. Plus, bottled water creates a ton of waste, with the minority of the containers making it into the recycling bin.

Now, another report from the EWG paints an even grimmer picture of bottled water companies. Since 2009, bottled water sold in California is required to provide information on the label revealing the source of the water. Packages must also list two ways in which consumers can contact the water bottling company to get a report on the quality of the water.

Now, two years later, it seems that water bottlers are not being too compliant. EWG looked at 96 different kinds of bottled water in the state and found that only 24 percent were following the law. Let’s let that sink in a minute — fewer than one-quarter of bottled water brands were compliant with state law. And, to throw a little salt in the wound, EWG also found that labels on bottles sold in California listed their source less often than those on bottles sold in other states.

http://news.change.org/stories/water-bottling-companies-break-labeling-laws

NSA Water Filters

Amid the GOP push to curtail the deficit (so long as it doesn’t involve taxing the most privileged among us), a number of excesses have come to light: earmarks, Congressional salaries … and now this: bottled water for the Sens and Reps, which costs the taxpayer some $750,000 a year.

The price tag isn’t the only problem with bottled water. The water comes, often for free, from public aquifers or even taps, only to be sold back for a profit. It’s rarely tested for pollutants. The bottles usually contain BPA, which has been linked to a growing number of fertility and behavioral disorders. Plastic waste gathers in waterways, killing the birds and fish that mistake it for food for the hundreds of years it takes to break down.

For the members of Congress who don’t give a hoot about pollution, price could be a powerful motivator. How can they justify an outlay of three-quarters of a million dollars a year when they could just as easily fill up some pitchers at the water fountain down the hall?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=80888

NSA Water Filters

Next time you’re eating lunch in the Reid Café, you might notice that bottled water is absent from refrigerator shelves. Starting this semester, Whitman College and Bon Appétit will no longer be selling bottled water on campus. The decision was made largely because of environmental concerns about the impacts of bottled water.

“It just makes sense to reduce our consumption of plastic,” said Sean Gehrke, chair of the Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption use about 17 million barrels of oil annually, according to a United Nations report released last spring. In addition, 86 percent of bottles are not recycled, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

Gehrke said that the Committee hopes to encourage students to carry reusable water bottles and fill them with tap water.

“We have fantastic drinking water here in Walla Walla,” he said, adding that tap water is cheap and widely available on campus.

Whitman is one of a growing number of schools to limit or end sales of bottled water on campus. Earlier this fall, Seattle University became the first college in Washington to ban sales, after a three-year student-led campaign. Nationwide, eight schools have completely banned bottled water sales, according to The New York Times.

http://whitmanpioneer.com/news/2011/01/27/end-of-bottled-water-sales/

NSA Water Filters

Here in the heart of southeast Minnesota farm country, everyone knows you don’t drink the water.

“It’s just not safe,” Linda Liebfried said one recent afternoon as she watched over a couple of toddlers, including her own 2-year-old daughter, at a day care center. “Every doctor will say not to drink it.”

The city’s water is contaminated with nitrates — chemicals from fertilizer that have been linked to cancer and can cause a potentially lethal blood disorder in infants. In Lewiston they come from nitrogen, applied every season on the fields that butt right up to the edge of town.

At the State Capitol and in town halls across the state, there is growing urgency to confront the problem. Thousands of private wells have been found to exceed state health limits for nitrates, and some communities have spent millions on filtration systems to clean their drinking water.

http://www.startribune.com/investigators/114865059.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

NSA Water Filters

I’m kind of known in my close circle of friends to be a little bit of a freak about the environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect and probably a bit of a hypocrite—after all, I drive an SUV, but I try my best to teach my children the value of being kind to Mother Earth.

Sometimes my efforts to defend our planet might go a little too far. If I see someone throw a bottle or can into a trash can instead of a recycling bin, I’ll most likely not only shake my head in disgust, but go retrieve it.

During soccer season, I’ll often bring a big plastic bag to the field to collect water bottles that have been stranded on the sidelines.

“You’re not going to dig through the trash this time are you?” my daughter asks in horror. She does not want to be known around school as the girl with the Dumpster-diving mom.

“No, this is just for the lazy kids who leave their water bottles on the sidelines,” I say.

Leaving plastic bottles on the sidelines is not an option for my family. We don’t buy them. We all have our own stainless-steel water bottle to fill when we leave the house.

http://agourahills.patch.com/articles/raising-my-kids-green

NSA Water Filters

Geology): It’s no secret that the use of bottled wateramong the public has been skyrocketing recently as concerns over the purity of household tap water continue to grow. With this rise in the sales of water in plastic containers have also come many adverse environmental side effects, as well as some looming health concerns about the chemicals found in these plastic bottles.

As a smarter, healthier and more eco-friendly alternative to bottled water, a new line of water care products have been created that turn ordinary tap water into a healthy source of natural hydration. Nature’s Own Water Care products transform water conditioning into water care, replacing traditional water-conditioning products with a blend of pure, high-grade elements designed to return the water in your home to its natural state of purity. The resulting water is purer, tastier and gentler on your clothing and appliances than ordinary household tap water. Additionally, water treated with Nature’s Own soothes and rejuvenates the body.

http://coalgeology.com/eco-friendly-alternative-to-bottled-water-going-green-tips/13055/

NSA Water Filters

More than 2,000 people are asking Congress to set an example for this nation and go bottled water-free. There’s no sense in wasting taxpayer dollars on bottled water in this time of budget cuts. In addition, our representatives surely should be drinking the DC tap water that they are responsible for funding. Our nation’s water mains, sewers and reservoirs are crumbling and are in need of their help.

The head of DC Water, the city’s water provider, has even offered to give members of Congress their own free reusable water bottle. That’s an offer that’s hard to pass up.

But enough of my arguments. Let’s here it in the voice of just a few Change.org members who have signed this petition.

Philip Ateto, Annapolis, Maryland:

“Bottled water is one of the greatest misconceptions put on the American public. In other countries they have to drink bottled water because their tap water is undrinkable, but in the U.S. it’s quality is far below that of tap water, and even contains dangerous chemicals in the water and from the plastic bottles! At a time when we are all tightening our belts, it’s important that our leaders in government lead by example on how we all can do our part to save money, and the environment.”

http://news.change.org/stories/americans-speak-out-tell-congress-to-stop-wasting-money-on-bottled-water

NSA Water Filters