What is Spring Water Really?
There seems to be so much confusion over something so basic as water and especially spring water. Mostly it seems to be due to the not so accurate advertising being pitched as fact. Most folks seem to believe that spring water is really “pure water”, but in fact it contains many of the impurities of well or tap water! Since springs feed our streams and rivers and lakes, there is a lot of spring water in your tap water already. Basically the purity of spring water is comparable to to the TDS (Tota Disolved Solids) of much of the nations tap water with some having more or less.
100% Pure spring water is not advertising the purity of the water, but the purity of the water source or spring! So 100% pure means it came purely from below the ground, and not from the surface. Most people believe them to be true even though they are just a “smart marketing” phrase, so legal but certainly unclear! (Pun Intended)
Natural spring water is another of those advertising terms that conjure pictures in our mind of pristine wilderness, but it can mean almost anything! This vague, unregulated term for water just means the source is natural, like from a lake or river or spring, so how would you like a huge glass of your local “natural” river water?
Protected Source spring water is another term that conjures up images of a secluded mountain spring, unpolluted and safe from the harms of civilization. The “protected” source is often a well head surrounded by a chain link fence and a padlock! The marketing for spring water is nature, mountains, wildlife and cold, pure streams from a secluded spring… with quite a different reality.
Bottling does not happen at most spring water sources so that means big diesel tankers are roaring through that “pristine” image in your mind. Also, health regulations require that the water in the tankers always be chlorinated or ozonated to protect the water from bacteria. So now if they are chlorinated, we really just have tap water!
When the water arrives by truck, they have to use a carbon filter to remove the chlorine but most of the remaining impurities still exist in your spring water. Then it finally goes through treatment of micron filtration to take out the floating particles and ozonation before it gets packed into your favorite “Spring Water”. Really they should filter for nitrates and various metals too!
Many of the spring water bottling companies are huge and/or foreign companies that takes all of our money for spring water, but it is our job to be more mindful of what is or is not in Spring Water, and make sure we consider alternatives or at least filter our own water for our families and homestead!
Here is the complete list of water types:
- Spring Water is sourced from a spring and filtered to remove the “big stuff”.
- Tap Water has been filtered and then chlorinated.
- Sparkling Water is tap water with the chlorine removed.
- Distilled Water is for specialized equipment and not normally for drinking.
- Purified Water has been filtered and cleaned by several methods leaving highly pure water.
Photo Source: CC-WikiMedia.org