24520 potential EDCs found in bottled water

"It's better for you," they said. "Tap water has chemicals in," they said. "Why would paying three dollars for water be ridiculous?" they said.

The sad thing is, I'm not actually surprised at this. It's been clear that chemicals leach out of bottle plastic for years now.

On the one hand, I've always considered convincing people to pay for and haul around containers of something they can get out of a tap almost anywhere a great example of hucksterism and a scathing indictment of the american educational system, considering that I've heard a lot of that bottled water comes from municipal systems.

On the other hand, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the american drinking water infrastructure a grade of D+, which is a scathing indictment of government's failure to provide a basic service critical to the survival of its population that it claims only it can successfully provide.

Now we find out that the agency we pay to protect us has allowed manufacturers to distribute this vital fluid in dangerous containers. It sounds like both sides have some culpability in this stunt.

There's certainly plenty of blame to spread around. The question is how do we fix it?

I honestly choose bottled water to my tap water due to the fact my tap water makes me sick even when filtered. If people want to solve the issue then they can start making my tap water not taste like pool water!

Don said:

On the one hand, I've always considered convincing people to pay for and haul around containers of something they can get out of a tap almost anywhere a great example of hucksterism and a scathing indictment of the american educational system, considering that I've heard a lot of that bottled water comes from municipal systems.

On the other hand, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the american drinking water infrastructure a grade of D+, which is a scathing indictment of government's failure to provide a basic service critical to the survival of its population that it claims only it can successfully provide.

Now we find out that the agency we pay to protect us has allowed manufacturers to distribute this vital fluid in dangerous containers. It sounds like both sides have some culpability in this stunt.

There's certainly plenty of blame to spread around. The question is how do we fix it?

Click to expand...

There is also plenty of bottled water than comes from municipal water systems - it's not always straight from a spring somewhere.

Well, let's not all run for the hills just yet. At least not those of us in North America.

This was a German study and all of the bottle waters used in the study were from France, Germany, and Italy. There's no evidence within that study that bottled waters from the US/Canada have the same issues. Ours might have its own issues and there may be studies out there showing it. But not this study.

Much like when a newspaper tries to cover scientific studies, the title of this thread is misleading, as its wording implies "all bottled water" instead of just "bottled water produced in three specific European countries."

Well, I'm screwed in this case. My area's tap water smells horrid and is atrocious and makes me sick. What to do? What to do?

Opty said:

Well, let's not all run for the hills just yet. At least not those of us in North America.

This was a German study and all of the bottle waters used in the study were from France, Germany, and Italy. There's no evidence within that study that bottled waters from the US/Canada have the same issues. Ours might have its own issues and there may be studies out there showing it. But not this study.

Much like when a newspaper tries to cover scientific studies, the title of this thread is misleading, as its wording implies "all bottled water" instead of just "bottled water produced in three specific European countries."

Click to expand...

Interesting. Good to know.

zarada said:

Using bottled water has become the norm around the world. Wherever I travel (countries on three continents over the past year) I run into bottled water at airports, hotels, restaurants, friends, businesses... Is it safe?

Click to expand...

As a side note, there are soldiers who serve in Afghanistan that I interact with on the intertubes. They once told me that Afghani nationals prefer: a) to squat over a toilet instead of sit on it, and b) to use water to clean their anuses after a BM instead of toilet paper. And so when a US serviceman goes to use one of the porta-potties on-base, as soon as he opens the door he can tell it was recently used for taking care of "Number Two" by one of the nationals because of two tell-tale signs:

1) there are foot prints all over the seat where someone was standing on the seat and squatting over the hole,

2) there is a splattering of water droplets everywhere around the seat and on the floor, and also there will be at least one empty water bottle rolling around on the floor of the porta-potty --but the thing about the empty water bottle is it will have one of those "squirty" tips on it which allows the toilet-user to mimic a bidet/douchette. (YouTube. 4 minutes. Safe for work.)

Some servicemen have told me they find dozens of discarded squirt bottles all over the ground outside of the on-base porta-potties every morning.

That said ...

Some people around the world are obviously toileting their nether regions with bottled water (at least according to my servicemen cyber acquaintances). While I'm sure that drinking such bottled water poses a far greater EDC hazard than toileting with it, this revelation is still a worrisome thing considering the toileting practice I just described seems to be VERY wide-spread throughout some parts of the world (The YouTube video I pasted above concerns a French household. But during the video an unclear reference was made to Muslims. I guess the implication being inferred in that YouTube video is that Muslims in particular are well-known in Europe to toilet in this manner.)

This is more a tribute to the power of modern analytical instruments than anything else.

Wilde_at_heart said:

There is also plenty of bottled water than comes from municipal water systems - it's not always straight from a spring somewhere.

Click to expand...

I guess you missed this part of my post that you quoted.

considering that I've heard a lot of that bottled water comes from municipal systems.

Click to expand...

Slow down. Speed-reading costs lives.