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Spring water really from tap - This is no surprise. About half of the bottled water companies get their water from tap. What the companies do is filter the public water supply some more and then bottle it. Simple things you can do at home. But hey, when lawyers pick up a scent trail ... "A lawsuit against Poland Spring Bottled Water confirmed that the company was using tap water from a local water supply rather than from a bubbling stream., as its label indicated." Come on. I doubt there are many unpolluted bubbling streams in the U.S. anymore. A stat about the industry. "Bottled water is the second-biggest "ready to drink" beverage category in the United States after soft drinks and makes $8.6 billion a year."
posted by jr to health at 1:45 P.M. EST     (1 Comment)

Comments ...

Poland Spring is owned by Nestle. More about the lawsuit.

According to this September article from Environmental Magazine:

"But in most cases tap water adheres to stricter purity standards than bottled water, whose source — far from a mountain spring — can be wells underneath industrial facilities. Indeed, 40 percent of bottled water began life as, well, tap water."

According to this bottled water FAQ by the Natural Resources Defense Council:

"1. Isn't bottled water safer than tap water?

No, not necessarily. NRDC conducted a four-year review of the bottled water industry and the safety standards that govern it, including a comparison of national bottled water rules with national tap water rules, and independent testing of over 1,000 bottles of water. Our conclusion is that there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap. And in fact, an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle -- sometimes further treated, sometimes not."

In another article on bottled water:

"Many people are spending a lot of hard-earned money on a product that really isn't any better than tap water. Americans would be amazed to see the locations that some of the bottled water comes from. The industry's trade group, the International Bottled Water Association, admitted that a quarter of all bottled water is actually tap water that's drawn from a municipal water supply and only sometimes purified."
posted by jr at 03:47 P.M. EST on Wed Nov 12, 2003     #

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