A Name Game: What's in Your Water?

Americans spent $3.5 billion last year on pricey, designer bottled waters. Surveys show that people like the convenience and think bottled water is somehow safer. They say it’s a more natural water. But is it? Chief Consumer Correspondent Lea Thompson reports some surprising findings for ‘Dateline NBC'.

Many bottled waters do come from natural sources. Evian is from the town of Evian, in the French Alps. Poland Spring is from a spring of the same name in Maine.

Ozarka spring water? It's also captured at a natural spring, but despite the name, Ozarka doesn't flow from the hills of the Ozarks. At least one of its sources is 250 miles away, in Henderson County, Texas.

Yosemite water -- it certainly conjures up a picture of the national park. But the makers of Yosemite will be the first to tell you that most of their water is drawn from wells in southern California.

At least most of those waters do come directly from natural sources. There are a lot of bottled waters on the market that don't even do that.

What's in your bottled water?

Artesian well water: Water from a well that taps a confined aquifer, a water-bearing underground layer of rock or sand.

Drinking water: Water sold in sanitary containers, with no added sweeteners. Drinking water must be calorie-free and either sodium-free or very low in sodium. Flavors, extracts or essences may be added, but they must comprise less than one percent of the product or else it will be considered a soft drink.

Mineral water: Mineral water must have a fairly constant level of mineral and trace elements - no less than 250 parts per million of total dissolved solids - where it emerges from the source. No minerals can be added.

Purified water: Water produced by distillation, deionization, reverse osmosis or other processes that bring it to meet the chemical definition of purified water. It may also be labeled according to the process used to purify it; for example, "distilled water."

Sparkling water: Water that has the same amount of carbon dioxide as it did at the source. Soda water, seltzer water, and tonic water are considered soft drinks rather than bottled waters.

Spring water: Water that flows naturally from underground to the surface of the earth. Spring water can be collected only at the spring or through a hole tapping the underground flow arriving at the spring.

- Source: Food and Drug Administration.

Everest water? Rather than coming from the melted snowcap of the world's highest peak, Everest comes from the city water supply of one of the flatter places on earth. It uses the Corpus Christi, Texas, municipal water supply as a source.

Despite the icy images of bears and mountains used in their commercials, the makers of Alaskan Falls admit right on the bottle that they use Worthington, Ohio's municipal water as a source.

In fact, 25 percent of all bottled water is tap water drawn from city water treatment plants, according to Bob Brady of the International Bottled Water Association.

“A bottled water company that takes municipal water does some further processing to it that's not required of municipal water,” Brady explains.

Each company has its own methods. Most bottlers remove chemicals like chlorine with activated charcoal filtration and disinfect it with ozonation. Others actually purify it with processes like deionization or reverse osmosis.

One product, Aquafina, usually starts out as municipal water. Pepsi Cola then purifies it at one of its plants. But Pepsi says the water is cleaned to a point that it no longer resembles the original source.

Most bottlers we spoke with say they aren't trying to trick consumers with their play on words and images. They say what they are doing is just good marketing. As one pointed out, those Keebler elves don't really make the cookies.

Regardless, the boom in bottled water has not escaped the people who bring tap water into your homes.

“We do produce a superior quality water that's equal to any that's produced in this country,” says Jimmie Shindewolf, the former head of Houston's municipal water system. He's the one who decided to bottle Houston's well water and call it Houston Superior.

“We know that people are going to drink bottled water. So then it's a question of whether they drink ours or whether they drink someone else's.”

Shindewolf says Houston's water is good “as is” -- good enough to bottle straight from the plant. It's not for sale yet to the general public, only to city workers.

And Houston isn't the only city that sees a way to raise some much-needed revenue by just making its water more portable.

How about Muddy Moe in a bottle? Kansas City started bottling the Missouri in May.

Is bottled water regulated?

State agencies inspect, analyze, and approve local sources of water. They also certify the laboratories used to test the water, and perform unannounced inspections of the bottling plants. Meanwhile, the federal Food and Drug Administration sets and maintains the standards for processing bottled water as a food product:

Quality standards: These ensure the safety of bottled water products from production to packaging to consumption.

Labeling regulations: The FDA's labeling rules for bottled water establish standard definitions for terms found on bottled water labels such as "distilled," "mineral," and so on.

Good manufacturing practices: These are detailed regulations governing plant design, sanitary operations, equipment construction, production and process controls, and record keeping.

- Source: International Bottled Water Association.

And Milwaukee -- a city still trying to recover its water's image after a 1993 deadly bacteria scare -- well, it's floating the idea.

That doesn't sit too well with others in the industry.

“Cities, I think, are trying to make a point that the water out of their tap is equal to the water that's bought in a store, and that's simply not the case,” says Bob Brady, from the bottler's association.

Houston's Shindewolf disagrees.

“We're proud of the water we produce in Houston, Texas. It is a superior water. So it's an opportunity for us to have another avenue to provide that superior water to our customers.”

The bottom line is, if you're trying to drink-in nature, look past the mountains to the fine print to see where your bottled water really comes from.

Health Effects of Drinking Water Contaminants

People are increasingly concerned about the safety of their drinking water. As improvements in analytical methods allow us to detect impurities at very low concentrations in water, water supplies once considered pure are found to have contaminants. We cannot expect pure water, but we want safe water.

The health effects of some contaminants in drinking water are not well understood, but the presence of contaminants does not mean that your health will be harmed. In North Carolina, drinking water is generally of high quality and free from significant contamination. Public water supplies are tested, and regulated to ensure that our water remains free from unsafe levels of contamination. Small private water supplies, including wells, are not regulated by drinking water standards, and the owner must take steps to test and treat the water as needed to avoid possible health risks.

What is in your drinking water? The only way to know is to have it tested.

Drinking water can become contaminated at the original water source, during treatment, or during distribution to the home.

If your water comes from surface water (river or lake), it can be exposed to acid rain, storm water runoff, pesticide runoff, and industrial waste. This water is cleansed somewhat by exposure to sunlight, aeration, and micro-organisms in the water.

If your water comes from groundwater (private wells and some public water supplies), it generally takes longer to become contaminated but the natural cleansing process also may take much longer. Groundwater moves slowly and is not exposed to sunlight, aeration, or aerobic (requiring oxygen) micro-organisms. Groundwater can be contaminated by disease-producing pathogens, leachate from landfills and septic systems, careless disposal of hazardous household products, agricultural chemicals, and leaking underground storage tanks.

Possible Health Effects

The levels of contaminants in drinking water are seldom high enough to cause acute (immediate) health effects. Examples of acute health effects are nausea, lung irritation, skin rash, vomiting, dizziness, and even death.

Contaminants are more likely to cause chronic health effects -- effects that occur long after repeated exposure to small amounts of a chemical. Examples of chronic health effects include cancer, liver and kidney damage, disorders of the nervous system, damage to the immune system, and birth defects.

Evidence relating chronic health effects to specific drinking water contaminants is limited. In the absence of exact scientific information, scientists predict the likely adverse effects of chemicals in drinking water using human data from clinical reports and epidemiological studies, and laboratory animal studies.

Drinking Water Standards

The Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974 directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure that public water systems (systems serving more than 25 people) and noncommunity water systems (hotels, campsites, restaurants, migrant workers' encampments, and work sites) meet minimum standards for protecting public health. Its main provisions directed the EPA to establish minimum drinking water standards to limit the amounts of various contaminants found in drinking water. Because of growing concerns about the safety of the water supply, amendments were made to strengthen this law in 1986. These amendments required the EPA to do the following:

	Develop a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) and a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for all regulated contaminants. MCLGs are nonenforceable health-based goals and represent the maximum level of a contaminant that is expected not to cause any adverse health effects over a lifetime. MCLs are enforceable contaminant levels. They are set as close to the MCLG as possible and are based on protecting public health within economical and technical reason.
	Increase the number of regulated contaminants to a total of 83 by June, 1989. MCLs must be set for an additional 25 contaminants every 3 years thereafter.
	Set required schedules for water systems to monitor for contaminants in drinking water.
	Identify best available technologies (BATS) for removing excess contaminants from water, based on efficiency, availability, and cost.
	Issue variances and exceptions to systems that cannot comply with MCLs despite the application of BATS, unless an "unreasonable risk'' to health exists. "Unreasonable risk'' has not yet been defined.
	Provide for public notification when drinking water standards are violated.
	Ban the use of lead pipes, solder, fittings, and flux in public water systems.
	Bolster enforcement of penalties for violators of drinking water standards at the state and local level.
	Provide for protection of groundwater sources.

Contaminants are regulated when they occur in drinking water supplies and are expected to threaten public health. Most levels established by the EPA allow a sufficient margin of safety, but acceptable contaminant levels vary widely among individuals and population groups. For example, high sodium levels, harmless for most people, can be dangerous for the elderly, people with high blood pressure, pregnant women, and people having difficulty in excreting sodium.

North Carolina has adopted EPA standards and the state has responsibility for enforcing drinking water standards.

Risk Assessment

Every day, you can be exposed to combinations of many toxic substances and these substances may interact.

What is in water may represent only a small part of your overall exposure to a specific contaminant. Scientists who investigate how contaminants affect human health get information in several ways. They may study how a toxic substance has affected people in a community over time. In some cases, this can show a relationship between exposure to a contaminant and a health effect They may also use animal studies to collect information on the acute and chronic health effects.

Research helps scientists determine toxic doses and levels below which toxic effects are not observed. For noncancer-causing toxic substances, scientists use "acceptable daily intake" to estimate risk. The acceptable daily intake is the amount of a contaminant or toxic substance that humans can consume daily for a lifetime without any known ill effects. It includes a margin of safety. For a cancer-causing substance, no safe level has been set. Toxicity is estimated by calculating a risk estimate, or the concentration of a substance that presents the least acceptable risk. In the case of cancer-causing toxins, regulations are based on a level of risk that is acceptable, not a safe amount or concentration of a substance.

Four Groups of Contaminants

Microbial Pathogens. Pathogens in drinking water are serious health risks. Pathogens are disease-producing micro-organisms, which include bacteria (such as giardia lamblia), viruses, and parasites. They get into drinking water when the water source is contaminated by sewage and animal waste, or when wells are improperly sealed and constructed. They can cause gastroenteritis, salmonella infection, dysentery, shigellosis, hepatitis, and giardiasis (a gastrointestinal infection causing diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and gas). The presence of coliform bacteria, which is generally a harmless bacteria, may indicate other contamination to the drinking water system.

Organics. People worry the most about potentially toxic chemicals and metals in water. Only a few of the toxic organic chemicals that occur drinking water are regulated by drinking water standards. This group of contaminants includes:

	Trihalomthanes (THMs), which are formed when chlorine in treated drinking water combines with naturally occurring organic matter.
	Pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.
	Volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), which include solvents, degreasers, adhesives, gasoline additives, and fuels additives. Some of the common VOCs are: benzene, trichloroethylene (TCE), styrene, toluene, and vinyl chloride. Possible chronic health effects include cancer, central nervous system disorders, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders, and birth defects.
	Inorganics. These contaminants include toxic metals like arsenic, barium, chromium, lead, mercury, and silver. These metals can get into your drinking water from natural sources, industrial processes, and the materials used in your plumbing system. Toxic metals are regulated in public water supplies because they can cause acute poisoning, cancer, and other health effects.
	Nitrate is another inorganic contaminant. The nitrate in mineral deposits, fertilizers, sewage, and animal wastes can contaminate water. Nitrate has been associated with ``blue baby syndrome'' in infants.
	Radioactive Elements. Radon is a radioactive contaminant that results from the decay of uranium in soils and rocks. It is usually more of a health concern when it enters a home as a soil gas than when it occurs in water supplies. Radon in air is associated with lung cancer.

Summary

As people hear about the possibility of contaminants in their drinking water, they worry about potential health effects.

Water supplies once considered to be pure may have various contaminants, often from natural sources. These are usually at levels below those considered to be harmful.

If you are concerned, test your water. For more information on water quality, testing, and treatment, contact the Extension Center or health department in your county or your physician.

References

"Home Water Quality and Safety." Haman, Dorata Z. and Boucher, Del B. Florida Cooperative Extension Service. University of Florida. Pub. No. 14M-86.1986.

"Health Effects of Drinking Water Contaminants." Stewart, Judith C., Lemley, Ann T., Hogan, Sharon I. and Weismiller, Richard A. Cornell University and the University of Maryland. Fact Sheet 2. 1989.

"Drinking Water: Present Problems, Future Directions." Nutrition Clinics. Woodruff, Sandra L. Vol. 5, No. 2, 1990: 1-21.

Prepared by Dr. Sandra A. Zaslow, Extension District Director, and Dr. Glenda M. Herman, Extension Housing Specialist, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C. This publication has been issued in print by the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service as publication he-393 (May 1992).

Published by North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed in furtherance of the Acts of Congress of May 8 and June 30, 1914. Employment and program opportunities are offered to all people regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments cooperating. Electronic Publication Number, (June 1995--JMG)

Bottled Water FAQ

1. Isn't bottled water safer than tap water?

No, not necessarily. NRDC conducted a four-year review of the bottled water industry and the safety standards that govern it, including a comparison of national bottled water rules with national tap water rules, and independent testing of over 1,000 bottles of water. Our conclusion is that there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap. And in fact, an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just "tap water in a bottle" -- sometimes further treated, sometimes not.

2. Is bottled water actually unsafe?

Most bottled water appears to be safe. Of the bottles we tested, the majority proved to be high quality and relatively free of contaminants. The quality of some brands was spotty, however, and such products may pose a health risk, primarily for people with weakened immune systems (such as the frail elderly, some infants, transplant and cancer patients, or people with HIV/AIDS). About 22 percent of the brands we tested contained, in at least one sample, chemical contaminants at levels above strict state health limits. If consumed over a long period of time, some of these contaminants could cause cancer or other health problems.

3. How can I find out where my bottled water comes from?

A few state bottled water programs (e.g., Massachusetts and New York) maintain lists of the sources of bottled water, but many do not. Try calling or writing the bottler to ask what the source is, or call the bottled water program in your state or the state in which the water was bottled to see if they have a record of the source (your state's health or agriculture department is most likely to run the bottled water program). If you choose to buy bottled water and are concerned about its safety, buy brands with a known protected source and ones that make readily available testing and treatment information that shows high water quality.

4. How can I determine if bottled water is really just tap water?

Often it's not easy. First, carefully check the bottle label and even the cap -- if it says "from a municipal source" or "from a community water system" this means it's derived from tap water. Again, you can call the bottler, or the bottled water program in your state or the state where it was packaged.

5. What actions can I take to improve bottled water safety?

Write to your members of Congress, the FDA, and your governor (see below for contact information) and urge them to adopt strict requirements for bottled water safety, labeling, and public disclosure. Specifically, point out to these officials that they should:

set strict limits for contaminants of concern in bottled water, including arsenic, heterotrophic-plate-count bacteria, E. coli and other parasites and pathogens, and synthetic organic chemicals such as "phthalates";

apply the rules to all bottled water whether carbonated or not and whether sold intrastate or interstate; and require bottlers to display information on their labels about the levels of contaminants of concern found in the water, the water's exact source, how it's been treated, and whether it meets health criteria set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control for killing parasites like cryptosporidium.

Members of Congress and governors should also pass legislation providing the resources for the FDA and state regulators to actually enforce the law.

To take further action, you can encourage your bottlers and the International Bottled Water Association (a trade organization that includes about 85 percent of water bottlers) to voluntarily make labeling disclosures such as those above.

Contact information:

Congress Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 For detailed contact information see Contacting the Congress

Food and Drug Administration

Jane E. Henney, M.D.
Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857

See the blue pages of your phone book or the National Governors Association website for contact information for your governor.

6. If I drink tap water should I use a filter and what types of filters are most effective?

The real long-term solution is to make tap water safe for everyone. However, if you know you have a tap water quality or taste problem, or want to take extra precautions, you should purchase filters certified by NSF International (800 NSF-MARK). These filters remove the contaminants of special concern such as cryptosporidium. Such certification is not necessarily a safety guarantee, but it is better than no certification at all. It is critically important that all filters be maintained and replaced at least as often as recommended by the manufacturer, or they might make the problem worse.

7. How can I obtain test results on my tap water?

Under new "right-to-know" provisions in the drinking water law, all tap water suppliers must provide annual water quality reports to their customers. These reports must be sent to city water customers by mail no later than October 1999, and many cities have already sent them out. To obtain a copy, call your water provider (the one that sends your water bills).

You also can test your water yourself, though this can be expensive. There are state-certified drinking water laboratories in virtually every state that can test your water. Call your state drinking water program or the EPA Safe Drinking Water Hotline (800 426-4791) for a list of contacts. Standard consumer test packages are available through large commercial labs at a relatively reasonable price.

Based on "BOTTLED WATER: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" a March 1999 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC undertook the study as part of a formal petition to the Food and Drug Administration calling on the agency to strengthen national bottled water regulations and oversight. For an online version of the report, see Bottled Water on the NRDC Pro web.

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