Bottled Drinking Water: More than half of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly.  Sales have tripled in the past 10 years, to about $4 billion a year.  This sales bonanza has been fueled by ubiquitous ads picturing towering mountains, pristine glaciers, and crystal-clear springs nestled in untouched forests yielding absolutely pure water. But is the marketing image of total purity accurate? While most bottled water apparently is of good quality, publicly available monitoring data are scarce.  The under funded and haphazard patchwork of regulatory programs has found numerous cases where bottled water has been contaminated at levels above state or federal standards. In some cases bottled water has been recalled. NRDC has completed a four-year study of the bottled water industry, including its bacterial and chemical contamination problems.  They have conducted a review of available information on bottled water and its sources, an in-depth assessment of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and all 50 states' programs governing bottled water safety, and an analysis of government and academic bottled water testing results.  They have compared FDA's bottled water rules with certain international bottled water standards and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that apply to piped tap water supplied by public water systems.  In addition, NRDC commissioned independent lab testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 types of bottled water from many parts of the country (California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas). Standards and Regulations for Bottled Water Bottled water, because it is defined as a “food” under federal regulations, is under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—under much stricter standards — regulates tap water.  Thus, bottled water, depending upon the brand, may actually be less clean and safe than tap water.  The EPA mandates that local water treatment plants provide city residents with a detailed account of tap water’s source and the results of any testing, including contaminant level violations.  Bottled water companies are under no such directives. Also, while municipal water systems must test for harmful microbiological content in water several times a day, bottled water companies are required to test for these microbes only once a week. Similarly, public water systems are required to test for chemical water contaminants four times as often as bottled water companies. In addition, loopholes in the FDA’s testing policy do not require the same standards for water that is bottled and sold in the same state, meaning that a significant number of bottles have undergone almost no regulation or testing.

A recent article concerning Bottled Water

Pure? Coke's attempt to sell tap water backfires in cancer scare

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
20 March 2004


Dasani, the tap water bottled by Coca-Cola and marketed as specially
pure with a huge publicity campaign, was withdrawn from the market
yesterday after impurities were found to have been introduced in the
production process.


The water, which was launched two weeks ago, labelled prominently as
"pure" and referred to by Coke executives as "as pure as bottled water
gets", was found to have illegally high levels of bromate, a chemical
which the Food Standards Agency said could lead to an increased risk
of cancer.


The company said that the bromate had been formed during the
production process for bottling the water at its plant in Sidcup,
south-east London. Last night it was withdrawing all 500,000 bottles
of Dasani - sales of which had been expected to reach #35m in its
first year - which had arrived on high-street shelves.


The fiasco meant the collapse of Coke's attempt, with a #7m
high-profile publicity campaign, to break into Britain's burgeoning
bottled water market, which is worth more than #1bn a year and growing
by 20 per cent annually.


Executives at the Coca-Cola (Great Britain) headquarters in
Hammersmith, west London, were horrified by the PR catastrophe.
"Obviously, we are very upset about it," said one.


Increasing health concerns over sweet fizzy drinks - last year Diet
Coke sales outstripped those of traditional Coke for the first time -
were behind the company's decision to branch out further from its
traditional market. Targeted mainly at young people, Dasani was said
to undergo a complex purification process and then have carefully
selected minerals added to it.


The brand hit trouble straight away when it emerged that the source
for Dasani was the Thames Water mains supply to Coke's plant in
Sidcup, which has passed more than 99.9 per cent of quality checks,
making it already one of the purest drinking waters in the world.


While half a litre of Thames tap water costs 0.03p, half a litre of it
bottled as Dasani was costing 95p, a mark-up of more than 3,000 times,
or a profit of more than 300,000 per cent.


The company was widely compared to Del Boy Trotter in the Only Fools
and Horses comedy series, who attempted to sell gullible customers
bottled tap water from what he called "the Peckham Spring". Then the
Food Standards Agency announced an investigation into whether or not
Dasani could be specifically labelled as "pure".


Yesterday the bad publicity peaked when the company announced that its
own checks had found bromate in Dasani samples above permitted UK
levels of 10 micrograms per litre, and was withdrawing all stocks from
sale.


"This is a sensible measure by the company as bromate is a chemical
that could cause an increased cancer risk as a result of long-term
exposure, although there is no immediate risk to public health," the
Food Standards Agency said yesterday. "However, the agency understands
that some people may choose not to drink any Dasani they bought before
its withdrawal, given the levels of bromate it contains."


A spokeswoman for Coke insisted yesterday that the withdrawal was
entirely a precautionary measure.


She said: "In very, very large quantities it can affect your health
but we have been advised by the FSA that the levels of bromate that
have been detected in Dasani do not pose an immediate health risk.


"We have not been ordered to withdraw the product, it was our decision
because it did not meet regulations. Our consumers rightly expect that
our products meet only the highest possible standards for quality as
well as all UK regulations."


The bromate was produced as a result of adding calcium to the water -
a legal requirement - after it had been purified, the spokeswoman
said. "To deliver the required calcium, we add back calcium chloride
into the product.


"Because of the high level of bromide contained in the calcium
chloride, a derivate of bromide, bromate, was formed at a level that
exceeded British legal standards. This occurred during the ozonisation
process we employ in manufacturing."


With annual sales in Britain of #132m, Coke has nearly a third of the
carbonated soft drinks market. The company said it was too early to
say if it would try to re-enter the market for bottled water, but no
jobs would be lost at its Sidcup plant.
   20 March 2004 19:20


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=503150