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What's in the bottle?
Consumer Reports, January 2003

AROUND THE WORLD: With 212 new varieties appearing in 2001 alone, a supermarket's water aisle can resemble a beverage United Nations. The latest splash in the market is "enhanced" water, which can include flavors, vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes.

Bottled water isn't necessarily safer than tap water. About one-quarter of bottled water is tap water that has been processed and repackaged, according to industry estimates.

And though bottled-water quality is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), whose standards for contaminants take into account the Environmental Protection Agency's tap-water standards, the two standards aren't always identical.

For example, the EPA requires that tap water be monitored for asbestos, while the FDA imposes no such requirement on bottled-water manufacturers, maintaining that the sources aren't likely to contain asbestos.

While bottled-water companies must hew to rules for sanitary production, some standards for bottled water are stricter than for tap, such as those for fluoride and lead. But some are not.

Bottled-water companies aren't required to disinfect or test for parasites such as Cryptosporidium or Giardia -- a requirement for city tap water. Again, the FDA says the sources of bottled water are unlikely to harbor the parasites.

For most people, bottled water is safe if it meets FDA standards. Our August 2000 report, which tested and analyzed major brands for contaminants, revealed few worrisome results. Here's what we found then:

  • Arsenic (a poison). All tested brands met current EPA and FDA arsenic standards of 50 parts per billion (ppb). All but two would also meet the EPA's new, 10-ppb standard, effective in 2006.
  • Trihalomethanes (suspected carcinogens). Products we tested had levels below the new standard of 80 ppb. Some seltzers had levels of about 50 ppb.Spring waters and water from municipal sources had few or no THMs.
  • Plastic components. Eight of the 10 five-gallon polycarbonate jugs we checked left residues of the endocrine disrupter, bisphenol A, in the water.

The Choices

RISING TIDE: Spurred by sales of the market leaders, Coke-owned Dasani and Pepsi-owned Aquafina -- "purified" waters whose sources are municipal supplies -- bottled water sales surged 11.5 percent in 2001.

Here are the main types of bottled water available:

    1. Spring water. This comes from an underground formation and must flow naturally to the earth's surface or through a sanitary borehole.
    2. Purified drinking water. This has been processed to remove chlorine and a majority of dissolved solids, such as magnesium. The source need not be named unless it is untreated public-source water.
    3. Naturally sparkling water. This is naturally carbonated from a spring or artesian well.
    4. Seltzer. The FDA regulates this as a soft drink, under rules less strict than those for bottled water.
    5. Mineral water. Typically spring water, it contains dissolved solids--usually calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, silica and bicarbonates.

Price and Taste

Bottled water isn't cheap; prices average about 89 cents for a 1-gallon jug, the kind supermarkets sell. At that rate, a typical household would spend $214 a year for drinking water. And if they wanted it delivered at home? Add about $325 or more per year.

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