Bottled Water, Your Daily Supply Of Bacteria And Deadly Toxins

Bottled Water, Your Daily Supply Of Bacteria And Deadly Toxins

If you’re not bothered about the quality of water you drink, your health, paying extortionate prices and playing a part in a global environmental catastrophe that will impact every generation for centuries to come, then bottled water is for you.

New research has shown that bottled water contains more bacteria than tap water, with some brands found to contain levels 100 times above permitted limits.
Source: Daily Telegraph

Bottled water is for the most part evil. The fastest growth and highest profits in bottled beverages doesn’t come from beer or fizzy drinks, it comes from bottled water. I am not against any company making a profit but when they are a major player in the destruction of our countryside, waterways, coastal and marine environments, then that’s something entirely different.

How much fossil fuel is being used up getting your favorite bottled water from its source in the French Alps to you? Some hotels in the US offer Evian water baths, if you want to partake be prepared to part with over $1,000. Quite disgusting really when you think that one child dies every 20 seconds because they can’t get clean drinking water. Incidentally, Evian is naïve backwards! This is all food for thought the next time you are reaching out for bottled water in Walmart.

Distributors of natural spring water are the luckiest people in the world. The water has been percolating through the mountains for thousands of years but they managed to catch it and bottle it just a few months before its "best by" date.
Danny Baker

Message In A Bottle

My concern, as far as this article is concerned, relates to the quality and efficacy of bottled water itself. Globally we spend over $100 billion on bottled every water and in the U.S. bury over $1 billion of plastic bottles in landfills. The market continues to grow despite the fact that most bottled water, including leading brands such as Aquafina and Dasani, has been exposed as nothing more than repackaged tap water with a multimillion dollar marketing budget.

The marketing dollars have been well spent – most people now believe that bottled water is the purest, healthiest water you can drink. This is simply not the case.

Phthalates are carcinogenic chemicals added to plastic water bottles to make them more flexible. Research has shown that Phthalates leach from the bottles into the water they contain and ultimately into our bodies. Once in the body, Phthalates act as endocrine disrupters which block the actions of hormones necessary for many of the body’s normal biological functions. Exposure to Phthalates during pregnancy can cause malformed reproductive organs in male fetuses, including undescended testicles. Phthalates have also been linked to low sperm counts.

NB. The amounts of Phthalates released into bottled water increases significantly as the plastic warms up. Keep plastic bottles out of direct sunlight, off the dashboard of your car or away other heat source.

Up until 1999 Phthalates were commonly used in the manufacture of plastic pacifiers and teethers. At the request of The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, U.S. manufacturers of pacifiers and teethers no longer use phthalates. If you are about to buy such a product make sure the country of manufacture is the U.S.

The long term impact phthalates might have on health is not yet known. Several government agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the National Toxicology Program's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction are currently researching this issue.

Phthalate Di(2-ethylhexyl) is described as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" in a study researching Carcinogens published by the National Toxicology Program. They also point out that di-n-butyl phthalate may adversely affect human reproduction or development.

Why Does Bottled Water Need A Sell By Date?

Water held in a factory sealed glass bottle should last indefinitely. As long as the bottle remains unopened and the seal intact, bacteria or microorganisms don’t pose a threat. Although there is no real reason to put a sell by date on glass water bottles, some states require that all food and beverages clearly state an expiration date on the label.

If water is contained in a plastic bottle things are completely different. An expiry date is there to prevent the taste and smell of the water being tainted by chemicals leaching from the bottle and to minimize the levels of Phthalates .

I previously discussed the problems associated with tap water in The Tapwater Cocktail And The Benefits Of Drinking Clean Water . So what’s the answer, if both tap water and bottled water both present health risks, what other options are open to us? This will be covered in part three of this series of articles.