Bottled Water Full of Cancer-Causing Contaminants?

We’ve talked about bottled water before and all the plastic pollution that comes along with buying disposable plastic water bottles every time you need a drink of water.

Well, plastic pollution isn’t the only reason we should be staying away from bottled water. It’s also full of contaminants. Some of them may even cause cancer.

At 1,900 times (1,900 times!) the cost of tap water, you’d think bottled water would be purified, clean, and drinkable. Right? Wrong. Most bottled water is actually just tap water sold in a bottle. It has all the same contaminants as tap water – caffeine, chlorine, toluene (a cancer-causing chemical), arsenic – and some brands have even more.

A recent two-year study conducted by the Environmental Working Group on ten brands of bottled water in California, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware showed high levels of contaminants. While all brands met the federal regulations for tap water, two brands had 3 -5 times the amount of chlorine by-products allowed under California law. All in all, 38 contaminants were found in the ten brands, with about eight in each brand.

Study co-author Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer and Vice President for Research at EWG, said in a statement that consumers “can’t trust that what’s in the bottle is anything more than processed, pricey tap water”.

It gets worse. High levels of cancer-causing contaminants were found in Sam’s Choice water sold at Wal-Mart and Acadia bottled water from Giant Foods supermarkets. Both had three times the amount of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, as are legal under California health standards.

Water researcher Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment of the University at Albany, who had no role in the study, singled out trihalomethanes as the biggest concern because of strong research links to cancer in this article on MSNBC.

“These are levels that should not be in bottled water,” he said.

The study also said the Wal-Mart brand exceeded California’s health standard for another chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane, by five times. Chlorine byproducts are linked not only to cancer, but to birth defects as well.

The Environmental Working Group intends to sue Wal-Mart for selling contaminated water and insist they include a cancer warning on every label.

“In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better,” said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study.

Needless to say, it’s time we stopped falling for manufacturers claims that bottled water is somehow better for us than tap water. In most cases, this is not the truth (Evian and other high-end waters excluded).

Take your health into your own hands and purchase a carbon filter for your tap water. Getting water out of a bottle just isn’t working – for your health or the health of the planet.