Drink It Not

Drink It Not !

Chemicals, contaminants, pollution, price: new reasons to rethink what you drink and beware of bottled water.

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I have always been against the bottled drinking water. I have a sense of dislike for them (because I still see water as a necessity and don't approve of it being placed as a luxurious commodity) since the time I heard of it. How can you sell 'water' ??!!! This is a height of consumerism from Marketing & Sales in a big way. I have often heard "marketing can sell 'nethng'.. however downgraded it may be".. but cmm'on.. have a look.. they can actually downgrade as simple a thing as water.

I still recall the days our way back from school.. cycling all the way under the angry sun.. pushing ourselves to the nearest 'piyaou' to squeeze the thirst. 'पियोऊ' is an old concept in western rajasthan, its like a social initiative to serve drinking water to passing commuters... gone are the days.

Here, I am offering some key points from an article published over 'Readers digest'. Statistics are with ref to US and eurpore but still hold relevant in context of the subject

consumed over eight billion gallons of the stuff in 2006, a 10 percent increase from 2005.

Evocative names and labels depicting pastoral scenes have convinced us that the liquid is the purest drink around. "But no one should think that bottled water is better regulated, better protected or safer than tap," says Eric Goldstein, co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting health and the environment.

more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price.

Most people are surprised to learn that they're drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren't required to list the source on the label.

Labels can be misleading at best, deceptive at worst. In one notorious case, water coming from a well located near a hazardous waste site was sold to many bottlers. At least one of these companies labeled its product "spring water." In another case, H2O sold as "pure glacier water" came from a public water system in Alaska.

Lisa Ledwidge, 38, of Minneapolis, stopped drinking bottled water a couple of years ago, partly because she found out that many brands come from a municipal supply. "You're spending more per gallon than you would on gasoline for this thing that you can get out of the tap virtually for free," she says. "I wondered, Why am I spending this money while complaining about how much gas costs? But you don't ever hear anyone complain about the price of bottled water." Ledwidge says she now drinks only filtered tap water.

1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. (This is the most recent major report on bottled water safety.) While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards. Since the report, no major regulatory changes have been made and bottlers haven't drastically altered their procedures, so the risk is likely still there.

The NRDC found that samples of two brands were contaminated with phthalates, in one case exceeding Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards for tap water. These chemicals, used to make plastic softer, are found in cosmetics and fragrances, shower curtains, even baby toys, and are under increasing scrutiny. They're endocrine disrupters, which means they block or mimic hormones, affecting the body's normal functions. And the effects of exposure to the widespread chemicals may add up.

When exposed to high levels of phthalates during critical developmental periods, male fetuses can have malformed reproductive organs, including undescended testicles. Some experts link phthalates to low sperm counts.

Water bottles do not contain the chemical, which means the phthalates detected by the NRDC probably got into the water during processing at the bottling plant, or were present in the original water source (phthalates have been found in some tap water).

Bottlers don't have to let consumers know if their product becomes contaminated, but sometimes they pull their products from stores. In fact, between 1990 and 2007, this happened about 100 times, says Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. Among the reasons for recall: contamination with mold, benzene, coliform, microbes, even crickets.

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