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| Bottled Water |
Bottled water is drinking water, carbonated water, mineral water, distilled water, spring water, artesian well water, or de-ionized water packaged in plastic bottles or glass bottles. Sizes range from small single serving PET bottles to large carboys for water coolers.
The global bottled water sales have increased dramatically over the past several decades, reaching a valuation of around $60 billion and a volume of more than 115 million liters (30,379,786 U.S. gallons) in 2006. U.S. sales reached around 34 billion liters in 2008, a slight drop from 2007 levels.
The global rate of consumption more than quadrupled between 1990 and 2005. Spring water and purified tap water are currently the leading global sellers. By one estimate, approximately 50 billion bottles of water are consumed per annum in the U.S. and around 200 billion bottles globally.
Bottled water has been described as "one of the greatest cons of the 20th century" and as "marketing's answer to the emperor's new clothes".
Bottled water has come under criticism in recent years for the environmental impacts of groundwater extraction, the energy and environmental costs of the plastic packaging and transportation costs, and concerns about water quality and the validity of some marketing claims. One criticism of bottled water concerns the packaging. Bottled water commonly is packaged in Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which requires a significant amount of energy to produce. While PET is recyclable, only a fraction of plastic bottles made from PET are actually recycled. For example, in the United States, according to a NAPCOR study, water bottles account for 50% of all the PET bottles and containers collected by curbside recycling, and the recycling rate for water bottles is 23.4%, an increase over the 2006 rate of 20.1%. European recycling rates tend to be somewhat higher. In the United States, plastic used to create bottles uses an estimated 15 million barrels of oil annually.
In the United States, bottled water and tap water are regulated by different federal agencies: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the quality of tap water. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act the EPA has set maximum contaminant levels for approximately 90 contaminants that might be found in drinking water and 15 secondary maximum contaminant levels.
Often, enforcement and monitoring of water quality is uneven and irregular for both tap water and bottled water. While tap water contamination incidents must be reported promptly to the public, the same is not true for bottled water, and while contamination of bottled water does occur, many instances have never received public notice until recently (see, for example, the list of more than 100 bottled water recalls)
Since the 1950s, tap water is often treated with fluoride to prevent tooth decay. Since bottled water processed with distillation or reverse osmosis lacks fluoride ions which are present in some natural ground water, it is possible that the drinking of distilled water may increase the risk of tooth decay due to a lack of this element now added to many water supplies. The efficacy and safety of fluoride taken internally remain controversial, however, and some express concerns about adding it to water supplies.
According to a 1999 NRDC study, in which roughly 22 percent of brands were tested, at least one sample of bottled drinking water contained chemical contaminants at levels above strict state health limits. Some of the contaminants found in the study could pose health risks if consumed over a long period of time. The NRDC report conceded that "most waters contained no detectable bacteria, however, and the levels of synthetic organic chemicals and inorganic chemicals of concern for which [they] were tested were either below detection limits or well below all applicable standards." Meanwhile, a report by the Drinking Water Research Foundation found that of all samples tested by NRDC, "federal FDA or EPA limits were allegedly exceeded only four times, twice for total coliforms and twice for fluorides."
Another study, conducted by the Goethe University at Frankfurt found that a high percentage of the bottled water contained in plastic containers was polluted with estrogenic chemicals. Although some of the bottled water contained in glass were found polluted with chemicals as well, the researchers believe some of the contamination of water in the plastic containers may have come from the plastic containers. Leaching of chemicals into the water is related to the plastic bottles being exposed to either cold and high temperatures.