The crisis over unsafe tap water in Toledo, Ohio impacted roughly half a million people in recent days. Notwithstanding such scares, experts say tap water is just as clean and healthy as bottled water.
The water scare in Toledo made national headlines. On Monday, Michael Collins, the mayor of Toledo, lifted a two-day restriction on drinking tap water after officials there found high levels of a possible toxin from a continuing algal bloom in Lake Erie. Not all residents had to pay for bottled water: The Ohio National Guard distributed bottled water to residents as officials the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did further testing. Also see: Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, says water is now safe to drink.
Scares over possible water contamination have helped boost demand for bottled water over the last few decades, experts say, but people are often times drinking the same water that comes out of the tap. “The general public thinks bottled water is going to be safer and cleaner than tap water,” says Mae Wu, attorney in the health program at National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “For the most part, that’s not true.”
Toledo lifts its water ban
The mayor of Toledo, Ohio, lifted citywide restrictions on drinking water related to a suspected toxin from an ongoing algal bloom in Lake Erie. But what is an algal bloom? University of Toledo professor Isabel Escobar explains.
Nearly half of bottled water brands are sourced from the municipal water supply—the same source as what comes out of the tap. Some 45% of bottled waters in the U.S. are actually purified tap water, according to Peter Gleick, a scientist and author of “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.” Bottled water sourced from municipal water supplies include Dasani, owned by Coca-Cola KO, +1.87% and Aquafina, owned by PepsiCo PEP, +2.71%
Those within the industry say that doesn’t mean it’s the same as tap water. “Purified bottled water is not merely tap water in a bottle,” says Chris Hogan, spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association. Purified and spring water must meet Food & Drug Administration quality standards. “Our industry encourages people to just drink water. We compete with soda, juices and sports drinks—we don’t compete with tap water.” (Although Dasani and Aquafina use a public water source, spokeswomen for both companies say the water is filtered for purity using a “state-of-the-art” process.)
Consumers can purify their own tap water for a fraction of the cost, says Nick Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx, a brokerage and a services firm. “Is it better still to filter your own tap water than buy your own bottled water?” he says. “It’s more economical and better for the environment, and one way to avoid using a lot of scrap plastic.” That said, if you’re on the go and need some hydration, “bottled water will be healthier than a lot of sugary and carbonated alternatives,” he says.
In the four decades since the launch of Perrier water in the U.S. market in the mid-1970s, American consumption of bottled water has surged 2,700%, from 354 million gallons in 1976 to 9.7 billion gallons in 2012, Colas says. There is evidence that bottled water consumption has leveled off in recent years, as the chart above shows. Still, the industry grossed $11.8 billion in 2012, up 6.5% from $11 billion for the year earlier,
Those prices meant bottled water sold for an average price of about $1.22 per gallon nationwide, or 300 times the cost of a gallon of tap water. But Colas says it can cost far more for the consumer: 64% of 2012 bottled water sales came in the form of single-serve 500 milliliter bottles—rather than, say, three-gallon water-cooler containers—and smaller bottles often sell for as much as $1.99 each.
Bottled water is not without chemicals, according to studies of European bottled waters carried out in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France—one published in 2011 and the other in 2013—by Martin Wagner, a scientist at Goethe University Frankfurt’s Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology. “Bottled water had a higher contamination of chemicals than glass bottles,” he says. “There are many compounds in bottled water that we don’t want to have there. Part is leaching from the plastic bottles, lids or contamination of the well.” Most European bottled water comes from springs that aren't purified, Wagner says. Among the main compounds Wagner found: Endocrine disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, which can act like hormones in the body and have been linked to diabetes, breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.
(The International Bottled Water Association’s Hogan says the presence of EDCs in bottled tap water suggests that their origin may have been environmental rather than from a packaging material. “The study stops short of suggesting any serious adverse health consequences from the trace levels of EDCs found,” he says.)
Another reason to use your own kitchen sink purifier: Demand for bottled water also leads to more plastic bottle waste. People are expected to spend nearly $270 billion on bottled water by 2020, up from $157 billion in 2013, according to estimates released last month by Transparency Market Research, helped by the availability of different flavored and vitamin rich functional water. On the plus side, the recycling rate of plastic bottles rose to around 38% this year, and has more than doubled in the past 8 years, according to data from the National Association for PET Container Resources.
Other articles from Quentin Fottrell: