Bottled water isn't the answer

On Monday, the Associated Press released a report on the discovery of trace amounts of various types of pharmaceuticals in drinking water around the country.

I got invited to discuss the subject on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show (go here if you'd like to listen). The conversation quickly turned to bottled water as a possible solution, which it is not.

Here's why bottled water doesn't help, according to Food and Water Watch:

• 40% of the bottled water sold in the United States is tap water anyway.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires hundreds of tests each month on municipal water supplies, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates bottled water, requires only one test a week on bottled water.
• Only 40% of bottled water--that which is sold across state lines--is regulated by the FDA in the first place.
• Plastic bottles in the United States require some 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture each year--enough to power 100,000 cars.
• 86% of plastic bottles in the United States never get recycled.
• Tap water costs about a penny a gallon and bottled waters costs up to $10 a gallon.
• Chemicals that leach from plastic water bottles may affect our health.
• If people abandon the use of municipal drinking water, then there will be no political will to ensure that we invest the necessary resources in the water infrastructure.
• The United States has some of the best drinking water in the world and we must keep it that way.

The real answer, at least for me, is to:

• Continue drinking tap water. You can contact your local water utility to ask for a copy of your area's Annual Water Quality Report (the EPA keeps many of them here).
• Choose a filter, if necessary, with the help of these Food and Water Watch guidelines.
• Most importantly, ask Congress to provide the funds to keep our water safe.
• Support Food and Water Watch's campaign to create a national Clean Water Trust Fund (similar to the trust fund used to pay for our highways) by clicking here.

Read Food and Water Watch's new report on bottled water here.

Read their argument for a Clean Water Trust Fund here.

Image courtesy of Food and Water Watch.

 

Comments

[stomv]

How much? Parts per billion... and in many cases, parts per trillion. These are tiny tiny amounts -- nowhere near enough to have any health impact.

It's a scare story. Walk around in the fall and wonder how many parts per billion/trillion of dog feces you breath in after it's kicked in the air by leaf blowers. Ponder how many parts per billion of urea you ingest after you touch your hand to your mouth hours after touching something that somebody who didn't wash his hands touched outside the bathroom.

The amounts are so small that they really don't matter.

[jewishfarmer]

There are other measures that could balance the crappy choices between bottled and contaminated tap. Like a move to composting toilets even in cities - it would take time and work, but if we stopped peeing and pooping in clean drinking water and then drinking it again, we'd do an enormous amount to avoid these crappy choices. The same is true of ceasing to use cleaning chemicals.

Sharon

[water]

I followed the link, which took me to another page with another link, and so on and so forth. The last page was not found. How can I find the water report for the city of new york???? Why is it so complicated to find?

[Allison]

If rich people don't insist on safe drinking water, it will cease to exist. Bottled water is a genius marketing scam with evil consequences.

[Allison]

Evalyn Parry has an excellent spoken-word piece about bottled water. You can hear it on her website here:
http://www.evalynparry.com/2007/10/29/bottle-this/

[just ducky]

I absolutely agree with you on this, NIM. I also wholeheartedly support and want to "second" Sharon's (aka jewishfarmer)comment as well.

Bottled water is NOT the answer. Composting toilets and appealing in large numbers to our local, state and federal legislatures will be far more productive (and less harmful) in the long run.

[Greenpa]

Stom v; "The amounts are so small that they really don't matter."

That is an argument that goes on constantly, even behind closed academic doors. Watch out who you listen to here.

There's a very big difference between breathing in "normal" waste materials- which certainly does go on, and always has (imagine New York City air in the days of horses!) - and drinking- chemicals that are designed to have hormonal or nervous system activity.

And- a fine point of biological research; always taught in grad school, and usually forgotten immediately; what a researcher can actually SEE; and MEASURE - is only the tip of the biological iceberg. Always; if something is having an effect so big you can SEE it- you know, for a fact, there are a ton of small effects going on that are just too subtle for your quick look to pick up.

Those are the ones left to the epidemiologists to sort out; after 20 years of illnesses accumulate, in millions of people.

Infinitesimally small amounts of chemicals CAN have a real impact; never doubt it.

[dura mater]

Oh, boy. While there may be some sensationalism underlying the AP story yesterday, it is a no-brainer that drugs get into the drinking water. We ingest them, excrete them, and they have to go somewhere. This shows once again how interdependent living systems are, and how you cannot tweak one part of the system without ramifications in another part.

This troubles me, both as a drinker of water and as a prescriber of medicines. I am a cog in the wheel of the machinery of pollution. While I try to minimize the use of unnecessary meds ("All drugs are bad," I tell patients. "We only use them when they are less bad than the disease."), the definition of "unnecessary" varies from person to person & disease to disease. I think people, both patients & doctors, have a lower threshold than previously for using medications; we now use them to improve quality of life, rather than just to save life. In addition to creating pharmacologically enhanced water (Hey, there's a marketing opportunity!), this is part of what drives up the cost of medicines and medical care.

I would love to see a post some day about the ecological consequences of medical care. I am sure it won't be pretty. . .

Once again, thanks for the blog, Colin.

[Eric Prescott]

http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org

[arduous]

I think Stom V does make a good point though. Greenpa, I think you're right that infinitesimally small amounts can make a difference, but Stom V is correct that this is a scare story.

Yes, we should try to get composting toilets. Yes we should not look to bottled water as the answer.

IN THE MEANTIME, probably the chemicals aren't going to kill you. Look, I'm not thrilled about this anymore than anyone else. But I do believe that hysteria is never the answer. Keep drinking tap water. Keep calling for clean drinking water. And try to relax as much as you can.

[Taffy]

Ever heard the phrase "Don't shit in your own mess kit" ? We are masters at the opposite.

For one take on the environmental effects of medicine, read "The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler about the end of the oil era. Fascinating reading.

[Zach]

Hey Colin,

I remember something being said about estrogen in our water supplies building up since the 50's on the fitness website, t-nation.com. I passed it off as a joke that could make sense until now. Now I'm going to have to re-read to make sure they didn't say parts per billion or parts per million.

This kinda sounds like the PR war that Gillette raised back in the early 1900's when they said that straight razors were dangerous and their new disposables were better. Catch is, many of those straight razors can still be used, even today. That sounds much more "eco-friendly" to me.

Thought this post might be relevant:
Green Living vs. Sustainable Living

[Leila]

There is one more con to bottled water: it is trucked in versus the pipe system that tap water is delivered. Pipes are much more efficient.

It's strange they would advocate bottled water without at least a cursory analysis of whether those same chemicals are in the bottled water as well. Most likely they are.

But I do agree that chronic exposure to even small amounts of chemicals can be dangerous. Maybe it's just a scare story and maybe there is no health danger -- yet. But I still think something should be done to prevent further contamination. Composting toilets may work for those of us brave enough to have them, but won't the pharmaceuticals still be present in the compost? I don't think there is an easy solution to this one.

[Labrat]

I don't see a lot of people drinking plain old water; who is drinking all this bottled water? I see teenagers sucking down diet sodas which are sold on campus, college students walking around with their Starbucks, Gatorades out on the kids soccer fields and at the pro games. Of course the market drives the consumption, so it only makes sense; once the medical establishment told people they need to drink more water, the bottlers jumped all over that baby, and once more, we march like lemmings to their tune.

[Zach]

@labrat:

hahah Idiocracy all over again. Soon we'll be feeding gatorade to our crops instead of water (out da toilet?). hehehe.

zach
pennywise-poundfoolish.typepad.com

[Greenpa]

Arduous - sorry, I was taking the media hype aspect as a given. Of course they hype it up. Are we men all about to grow breasts and females, um, thingies, then get cancer and die next week? No.

But it's "not nothing", either.

[matt]

Further proof that we're basically living experiments for what the human body can endure. Unless I've missed something, this has probably been going on since the introduction of pharmacology into our society.

[Keith Beavan]

Use of bottled water is a large issue in Britain and some other European countries and cities (including Venice, which seems appropriate).Bowing to public opinion, focused by a detailed BBC documentary on the subject, the Government last week told all departments to end use of bottled water, pointing out in its directive that tap water uses only 0.3% of the energy needed to produce bottled water,without creating waste.The market in britain is the equivalent of about $4 billion.Revelation of such expenditures led the British Environmental Minister to state such expenditure was "morally unacceptable" when Britain has perfectly good tap water and when a billion people around the world do not have safe water.
Does anybody have figures on how much money it costs the taxpayer to supply federal, state and/or city governmental departments with what the BBC said was "a luxury bauble while others die from its absebce"?

[Evan]

There is also the cost of moving that water all over the place - when rain does this for free.

I have used a water filter though.

[Caroline]

Oh! Add, taking the water from the aquifers to bottle (a la Poland Springs' new facility in Fryeburg, ME)can have serious consequences for the people who LIVE THERE and need that water for their OWN consumption. Check out news stories about bottled water companies causing area wells to go dry and forcing local people to go get - wait for it now - bottled water because they can't get potable water from their own wells! Bottled water is a HUGE scam.

[Caroline]

Oh! Add, taking the water from the aquifers to bottle (a la Poland Springs' new facility in Fryeburg, ME)can have serious consequences for the people who LIVE THERE and need that water for their OWN consumption. Check out news stories about bottled water companies causing area wells to go dry and forcing local people to go get - wait for it now - bottled water because they can't get potable water from their own wells! Bottled water is a HUGE scam.

[Meghan]

My question about tap water is, what about the pipes? What if they are lead pipes or dirty/rusty/contaminated pipes. We have no way of knowing this info because we'd have to dig up mainline pipes and then each house's own plumbing. Obviously not a possibility.

We filter because I have no idea what's in our pipes! Anyone have answers for this?

[Tuuli]

I've got family in Finland, and their cabin has no access to the sewage or water networks of the city, but my experience with an outhouse wasn't particluarly daunting. In fact, with enough sawdust there was no smell, and the cute 'moon' window in the door made it look like a cute shed.

And tap water here in Britain is fantastic; which is good because I can't afford bottled water on my student loan! Course, if you head down London way it doesn't taste quite so good...

[Jennifer]

Filters are better than bottled water as far as impact.... I think they are a good happy medium while you bug your local water district to clean up!

I stopped using BC pills for this very reason (and the bad effects they were starting to have on me after 7 years). The fact that the build up in my system of them was what hurt me makes me even more nervous that they are in our water for me to KEEP ingesting..

[Greenpa]

Meghan- actually, the information on exactly what your pipes are is probably on file with your city.

In most cases, city engineers are very darn careful with that information.

You'll notice, however, that I'm saying "probably", and "most" - of course, there are lapses, and cases of corruption where substandard materials may have been substituted. sigh.

So it's partly a matter of ; do you trust your city? It should be possible to get the pipe details for every foot of the run to your house. If it's modern; and was laid down during a time when people were trustworthy in your neighborhood - you might trust it.

Lead pipe, incidentally, hasn't been used for drinking water lines for a long time. Which doesn't mean it's not in the system somewhere.

lol. was that helpful? probably - not.