Personally I don't see the point of bottled waters. I must admit that I've usually been living in areas of very high quality spring water in the utility mains. But not always. There are locations where I have an ion exchange filter inline, for the water contains too much minerals for my use. But the filter is quite enough for me to use the tap water again. Even with the periodic replacement of the filter cartridge, we're talking costs orders of magnitude lower than for bottled water.
I don't get office water coolers, either. Tap water at the office, too.
Even pricy 'spring waters' such as Zephyrhills (a regional one round here) are ... if the source of the town's water is a from a live, free-flowing aquifer (an artesian well or spring), they can claim 'spring water' status.
A local high-school science teacher decided to test out the 'bottled water is better' theory on his students with a taste test of several bottled waters, with a ringer snuck in: the local tap water, which won hands down.
I haven't tracked down the stories about the bottles' leaching substances into the water stored in them; that would be another fun thing to track down.
I used to work in the water industry and did sample testing for the water company that covered about half of Illinois. We were approached to run some tests on our water vs bottled water out there on the market because there was a company that wanted to use our water to process for bottled water and wanted to know how it compared.
We tested the water over the course of three months. Within the first two weeks, the bottled water began to grow bacteria. Withing five weeks, about half the brands that we tested ended up over *our* criteria (dictated by the IEPA and health department) for what was acceptable to put out into our pipes for delivery. By the end of the study, the *only* water that didn't show signs of bacteria was our water.
If you want filtered water, go the extra step and buy one of the tap purifiers for your faucets. Make sure they're clean and don't let the water sit around excessivly. It's *far* healthier than bottled.
I do in general trust bottled waters to be okay, but no better or worse than tap water. It boils down to whether you want to pay a premium for taste. I do sometimes.
Stuff like Dasani and Aquafina taste nasty to me. Why bother with that?
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Date: Mar. 20th, 2004 01:13 am (UTC)From:I don't get office water coolers, either. Tap water at the office, too.
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Date: Mar. 20th, 2004 10:52 am (UTC)From:Even pricy 'spring waters' such as Zephyrhills (a regional one round here) are ... if the source of the town's water is a from a live, free-flowing aquifer (an artesian well or spring), they can claim 'spring water' status.
A local high-school science teacher decided to test out the 'bottled water is better' theory on his students with a taste test of several bottled waters, with a ringer snuck in: the local tap water, which won hands down.
I haven't tracked down the stories about the bottles' leaching substances into the water stored in them; that would be another fun thing to track down.
no subject
Date: Mar. 20th, 2004 12:33 pm (UTC)From:We tested the water over the course of three months. Within the first two weeks, the bottled water began to grow bacteria. Withing five weeks, about half the brands that we tested ended up over *our* criteria (dictated by the IEPA and health department) for what was acceptable to put out into our pipes for delivery. By the end of the study, the *only* water that didn't show signs of bacteria was our water.
If you want filtered water, go the extra step and buy one of the tap purifiers for your faucets. Make sure they're clean and don't let the water sit around excessivly. It's *far* healthier than bottled.
no subject
Date: Mar. 20th, 2004 03:57 pm (UTC)From:I do in general trust bottled waters to be okay, but no better or worse than tap water. It boils down to whether you want to pay a premium for taste. I do sometimes.
Stuff like Dasani and Aquafina taste nasty to me. Why bother with that?