BOTTLED WATER
- 50 billion bottles of water are sold each year.
- Americans paid $12 billion to drink 9 billion gallons of bottled water last year alone.
- The bottled water industry promotes an image of purity, but comprehensive testing by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals a surprising array of chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed ― a cocktail of fluoride, chlorine and other disinfectants.
- University of Iowa tested 39 different brands of bottled water and found that 75% of them contained chemicals, dissolved metals, and traces of arsenic, barium and toluene. Their conclusion was “Bottled water is no better than tap water and, in some cases, even worse”.
- Most bottled water was chemically almost no different than tap water. The only striking difference: the price tag. The typical cost of a gallon of bottled water is $3.79, which is 1,900 times the cost of a gallon of public tap water.
- Ten popular U.S. bottled water brands contain mixtures of 38 different pollutants, including bacteria, fertilizer, Tylenol and industrial chemicals, some at levels no better than tap water, according to laboratory tests recently conducted by Environmental Working Group (EWG). The pollutants identified include common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals, an array of cancer-causing byproducts from municipal tap water chlorination, heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes, fertilizer residue and a broad range of industrial chemicals. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria.
- The bottle water industry has also contributed to one of the biggest environmental problems facing the world today. Only one-fifth of the bottles produced by the industry are recycled. The remaining four-fifths pile up at landfills, litter our neighborhoods and foul our oceans. About halfway between Hawaii and California, an area twice the size of Texas is awash in millions of plastic water bottles and other indestructible garbage.