More Disinformation in the Media About Water

It seems that every six months or so, another delusive study about bottle water is released. What is worse is that the mass media loves to broadcast and print the disinformation. The result is that thousands of intelligent citizens are treated liked idiots.

The latest report to make my blood boil was released this week. The Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group (who are they?)claim that consumers know less about the water they buy in bottles then the water that comes out of the tap. They say this is because bottles do not contain the same information that municipal water producers must disclose. Well, here is my first argument.

Does anyone know what their tap water contains? Do you know what the tap water your served in the restaurant contains? I don't remember a waiter ever offering me a water analysis when I'm in a restaurant. Maybe it was on the bottom of the glass!

The reality is that once a year municipalities are required to provide each customer with a water analysis. Most people would not understand them. Most people likely throw them away, I speculate. The labels on bottled water contain some information including the source of the water and some mineral content. They are too small to contain the whole 22 page water analysis. But mandatory on every bottle is a contact telephone number to call to request this information.

The Bottled Water industry is highly regulated and most reputable bottled water companies adhere to FDA regulations. Most are members of the IBWA, International Bottled Water Association which requires that their members adhere to their strict rules.

Because I defend the bottled water industry, as well as citizens rights to choose what ever beverage they please, you might think that I do not approve of tap water. Contrarily, I think the major municipal water utilities do a good job treating our water supplies and provide a safe product. A major problem that seems to be always overlooked by those that decry bottled water and recommend tap is that people do recognize that tap water has problems and is just not as convenient to obtain when away from home. The chief problem, particularly where I live in Florida, is the taste. The water contains chlorine necessary for sanitation but unfortunately departs a bad taste and odor. Many restaurants serve water with lemon for that reason. If you filter it with a carbon filter the water tastes very good. Yea for tap water. Unfortunately, most of use do not carry our filtration equipment with us when we travel to work, the park the gym etc. Much easier to buy a bottle of water.

Bottled water companies process water much the same way municipalities do. The difference is that one is a government entity and the other is for profit. If the for profit screws up they can be out of business. If the government entity screws up, we all boil water for a week but they keep on going. So we trust Nestle, Coke, Pepsi, Evian, Poland Spring and the many other well known brands to do the right thing.

When I watch video of government meetings I rarely see anything but bottled water on the table. When the GAO presented their report before a sub-committee of congress, I wonder what was on the table in front of every attendee, tap or bottled water?

Claims Against Bottled Water Unfounded

One claim is that bottled water is no different than tap water. Well, it is different in a lot of ways. One being it is in a bottle so the delivery system is completely different, which makes it a convenient option for people who are on the go. The package also ensures that it is sanitary. It is different than tap water, which travels through pipes and has other issues.

Environmentalists have said that bottled water is simply bottled tap water, but in reality 75% of bottled water is from springs and natural sources. The rest of it, if it is bottled from municipal sources, is treated and has to meet certain standards and regulations beyond what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulations are for tap water. The standards for bottled water are different—they basically meet EPA regulations plus packaging regulations, which are just as stringent, if not more.

Another claim is that bottled water is unduly wasteful, more wasteful than other products, but there is really no evidence for that. It is not a huge portion of solid waste, and putting taxes and bans on it is not going to have much of an impact on the amount of waste that goes into a landfill. Bottled water containers are recyclable and the part of the story that is not being told is that the 5-gal containers are recycled at nearly a 100% rate. They are used 30 to 50 times over, so they are an environmentally friendly product from that perspective.

There are also a lot of claims about the chemicals in the products, but a lot of times the chemicals referred to do not even appear in the bottles. BPA is not found in single-serving containers. It is found in the 5-gal containers, but at such a low level that it is inconsequential. There has never been a public health issue cited from [chemicals in bottled water containers], it’s just speculative and way overblown.

Bottled Water Is Here To Stay

Bottled Water, the fasted growing beverage category of the last 20 years is under attack. After being hailed as a natural healthy alternative to soft drinks and other sugary beverages, it is being maligned from environmentalists and those that seek favor in a "Green" sort of way. But all this shall soon pass.

Why? Because bottled water fulfills our need to be mobile and hydrated. Or, if in a meeting, have a source of sealed safe water to quench our thirst. There are many ways bottled water serves as a convenience in our daily lives. One common way that comes to mind is the bottle of water in our car. Or maybe when taking the baby or dog or both for a long walk. On the way to work out or play a sport and forgot to bring your bottle from home, buy a bottle of water.

Do you coach kid sports? Do you fill 15 bottles in your kitchen sink or bring do you fill a 3 gallon jug, buy and bring them to the field for the kids? A case of bottled water costs less than $5 and fits in a cooler. Easy. Also sealed and safe.

Don't get the idea that I don't believe in bottling tap water, because I do. And I have been doing it for years. But that is because my tap water is filtered and dechlorinated and tastes great. Like bottled water. But most people do not have filters on their tap water and when tap water is not cold it often tastes bad as a result of the chlorine and organic content that is normally present.

Bottled water provides many other conveniences so I think that once the assault is over it will emerge as healthy and desirable as ever. Bottled Water is here to stay.
Purchase or learn more about bottled water.

Bottled Water: The Government’s Top Priority? Shouldn’t Be.

Sometimes, government actions are misinformed and misplaced, notes
Donald A. Mounce, the senior editor of Water Conditioning &
Purification Magazine.  (Not quite as well known as Newsweek, but
still…)

Yet Mounce knows firsthand about wrong government actions, as a
former elected - and currently appointed - local official.  “In some
cases, the egregious nature of government priorities is very clear and
becomes quite unbearable,” he writes. 

And Mounce continues:

This is where we find ourselves on the argument of
banning bottled water.  It is unconscionable that any level of
government or any bureaucratic unit would in any way find this a good
idea.

It is simply ridiculous.

Somehow the bottled water industry is targeted as the reason for
rising oil prices, improper waste management, the lack of complete
plastic recycling, global warming and probably, for some, the lack of
world peace…this is another case of unecessary government social
engineering for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. 

And as Mounce puts succinctly, in regard to tap, filtered, or bottled waters:

“Any way to get potable water in the hands of anyone
who needs it is an excellent method; there is no best, better, or worse
way.  It is all good and it all has value to our health and to our
global societies, whether for convenience of individual s or necessary
use in times of global dsiaster.”

City of Chicago Levies Tax on Bottled Water

I first learned of the tax several months ago when I received a letter from Tammy Steels, Executive Director of the Urban Sustainability Authority, based in Chicago.The Urban Sustainability Authority is a 5013c non-profit organization dedicated to environment and health.
The letter was sent to inform me that, effective July 1, 2008, the city had issued a special access tax on the sale of bottled water. The tax adds $1.20 to a case of bottled water purchased in Chicago. Urban Sustainability, www.urbansustain.org, is fighting to reverse this "misleading and unhealthy" tax. The group has created PROJECT H2GO as a way of saying no to Chicago's tax "on this planet's healthiest beverage".

It is assumed thast the tax was created to reduce the amount of plastic bottles in landfills. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, cardboard and yard waste are the top trash in landfills, not plastic bottles.

There are great many reason why water, essential to life on this planet, is not taxed in most of the world, except Chicago. I believe they are very obvious and that water in any form should not be taxed. What do you think? I'd also like to know how the Urban Sustainability Authority is progressing with PROJECT H2GO.

All is Born of Water, All is Sustained by Water

More than perhaps any other element of life on earth, water makes possible the existence of all living organisms. When two hydrogen atoms fasten to one oxygen atom, they create an asymmetrically shaped molecule. The hydrogen atoms are drawn together slightly on one side of the oxygen atom, creating a positive charge on one side of the water molecule and a negative charge on the other. The opposite charges create an effect similar to a magnetic attraction that bonds water molecules to neighboring water molecules and to other substances. This remarkable chemical circumstance knits together the fabric of life.
The aggregate accumulation of water molecules is a substance that flows at normal temperatures. Most other fluids i.e. milk and blood are water-based. They are made of non-liquids suspended in water.
Without the motion and the distribution system that moving water provides, the elements of life would never connect, their commingling under sunlight would not produce the complicated carbon compounds that lead eventually to cells, cells would not be able to gather as the moist organized and specialized cell colonies we call tissue, their aggregation would have no exchanging processes, no supply systems of food and breath, the eye would not see, the brain would not compute, the muscle would not move.
By and large, the characteristics of the water molecule that make it life-giving are freakish properties. They are, more often than not, exceptions to basic chemical rules.
Almost every other substance becomes heavier, smaller, and denser as it changes from a liquid to a solid. But water expands and grows lighter, so that ice floats. If that does not seem remarkable, it should. If water acted like other substances, its solid form, ice, would sink. The floor of the sea and the bottoms of lakes would accumulate ice. Gradually, winter after winter, the ice would lock up more and more water until there would be none running free on the planet. There would be no life on earth.
More substances can be dissolved by water than by any other material. The water molecule, with its magnet like opposite charges, is able to carry other substances suspended within itself, making it a nearly universal solvent.
Water is able to climb of its own accord, a feat that results in capillary action in soils and in plants. Without this characteristic, water would not travel from the deepest root tip to the highest leaf. There would be no internal flow of nutrients in complicated organisms, and thus no complicated organisms. The trick occurs because the attraction of water molecules to themselves and to other molecules is so strong that they are drawn upward from one foreign molecule to another, always pulling along the adjacent water molecules. The climb is halted only by gravity.
Great amounts of heat can be absorbed by water, making seas, rivers, lakes, and clouds vast energy storage banks. The release of stored heat from the ocean, for example, moderates climates, making coastal winters milder than those only a few miles inland.
Human blood, excluding the cells and proteins, has the same general composition as seawater.
Through a fortunate accident, Planet Earth is the right distance from the sun to make the existence of life-giving water possible. Closer to the sun the heat is so intense that water would be vaporized; farther away, water would be permanently frozen. Only Mars, of the other planets in the solar system, is in the narrow temperature band in which water can exist in all three states. But only Earth is blanketed by a living, water-built biosphere, in which the lifesource itself seems to issue from water's evaporation, precipitation, runoff, seepage, transpiration from plants, respiration from animals, melting, freezing, and flowing. Earth, as far as we know, is the only water planet.

The Great Flouride Debate - again.

Gosh, the debate over whether to add Fluoride, or not, into public water supplies seems to have been going on forever. It is almost like if you have seen the successful results then you are very much for it. If you live in a water district where Fluoride is being considered, then you may be against it. In the 50's antagonists called it a "communist plot". Since then it has been argued and feared that Fluoride in drinking water may cause almost every kind of malady.

Fluoride, in very very large doses, roughly four times the amount typically added to public water supplies, has been associated with dental Fluorosis, in which teeth become mottled and pitted, and could cause bone fractures. A separate study linked fluoride with a very rare bone cancer in boys.

But while a few isolated studies have raised such questions, there has never been any compelling evidence that fluoridation has any harmful health effects in over 60 years of research, according to the CDC. In fact, the ADA, AMA and WHO and also five US Surgeons General, have endorsed adding Fluoride to public water supplies because it cuts the rate of tooth decay 18 to 40%.

Personnel experience has me convinced. I was born in NYC before fluoride was introduced to the water supply. I had cavities all the time and going to the dentist was routine. No child should have to endure the procedures in that I had to. My father was macho and didn't believe in Novocaine. He insisted that I shouldn't use it either. That only lasted a short time and finally I was allowed the luxury of that big, really big needle inserted into my gums to inject the Novocaine. It was worth it. But by the time I was about 8 or nine years old, NYC began adding Fluoride to our drinking water. And guess what, "Look Ma, no more cavities".

I have since moved to Florida, Palm Beach County to be more specific where fluoride is added and kids get Fluoride applied to there teeth in school once a year. My kids have grown up without cavities. Loss of a revenue stream for dentists, big savings for me.

Here is a parting thought for your consideration. Why is there this fuss about fluoride and not the other chemicals added to our water by municipalities routinely, like Chlorine,sometimes added in great quantities, and Corrosion inhibitor which is added into the finished water to protect the pipes that serve our homes.