Bottled water production has become a disastrously wasteful use of resources. Last year alone over 26

billion plastic bottles were sent to landfills and incinerators only in the US. The massive waste is enough

of a reason to cut out bottled water.

Recently, the [worldwide, leading, world acknowledged] Environmental Working Group (EWG) revealed a

surprising array of chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed, including toxic byproducts of chlorination at levels no different than routinely found in tap water.

The laboratory tests conducted for EWG at a leading US water quality laboratory found that 10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers contained 38 chemical pollutants in total, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand. More than one-third of the chemicals found are not regulated in bottled water.

Research revealed some types of bottled water bore the chemical signature of a standard municipal water treatment process — a cocktail of chlorine disinfection byproducts and even fluoride. In other words, this bottled water was chemically indistinguishable from tap water.

The levels of disinfection byproducts exceeded safety standards established by the state of California and the bottled water industry.

• The bottled water was polluted with disinfection byproducts called

trihalomethanes at levels that exceed the state’s legal limit for bottled water.

These byproducts are formed when disinfectants react with residual pollution in

the water. They have been linked to cancer and reproductive problems in humans.

• Also 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)

The 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.

Reference: http://www.ewg.org/reports/bottledwater

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Why we should stop using plastic bottled water?