Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants: EWG’s Guide to Safe Drinking Water Page 1

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants: EWG’s Guide to Safe Drinking Water Page 1


Drinking plenty of good, clean water is important for a healthy body. Read EWG researchers' top tips to learn how to stay hydrated while cutting down on your exposures to common drinking water pollutants.
BOTTLED WATER
Drink filtered tap water instead. You can read the bottle label, but you still won’t know if the water is pure and natural, or just processed, polluted, packaged tap water. EWG found 38 contaminants in 10 popular brands.
TAP WATER
Learn what’s in it. Tap water suppliers publish all their water quality tests. Bottled water companies don’t. Read your annual tap water quality report. Look up your city’s water in EWG’s National Tap Water Atlas. (Private well? Get it tested.)
FILTERED TAP WATER
Drink it, cook with it.
Carbon filters (pitcher or tap-mounted) are affordable and reduce many common water contaminants, like lead and byproducts of the disinfection process used to treat municipal tap water.
Install a reverse osmosis filter if you can afford it, to remove contaminants that carbon filters can’t eliminate, like arsenic and perchlorate (rocket fuel).
FILTERS
Change them. Change your water filters on time. Old filters aren’t safe – they harbor bacteria and let contaminants through.
ON THE GO
Carry water in safe containers. Hard plastic bottles (#7 plastic) can leach a harmful plastics chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) into water. Carry stainless steel or other BPA-free bottles. Don’t reuse bottled water bottles. The plastic can harbor bacteria and break
down to release plastics chemicals.
WHILE PREGNANT
Stay hydrated with safe water. It’s especially important for women to drink plenty of water during pregnancy. Follow all the tips
above, and take your doctor’s advice on how much to drink.
INFANTS
Use safe water for formula. Use filtered tap water for your baby’s formula. If your water is not fluoridated, you can use a carbon filter. If it is, use a reverse osmosis filter to remove the fluoride, because fluoridated water can damage an infant’s developing teeth. If you choose bottled water for your infant, make sure it’s fluoride-free. Learn more at www.ewg.org/babysafe.
BREATHE EASY
Use a whole house water filter. For extra protection, a whole house carbon filter will remove contaminants from steamy vapors you
and your family inhale while showering and washing dishes.

The Environmental Working Group's bottled water testing turned up a surprise finding: bottled waters from Walmart (the Sam's Choice brand) and Giant Foods (Acadia brand) showed high levels of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) known as trihalomethanes, chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. These chemicals are common pollutants in municipal tap water.
Walmart’s Sam’s Choice bottled water purchased in the San Francisco bay area was polluted with disinfection byproducts called trihalomethanes at levels that violate the state’s legal limit for bottled water. These byproducts are linked to cancer and reproductive problems and form when disinfectants react with residual pollution in the water. The legal limit is 10 parts per billion (ppb) in bottled water in California (CDPR 2008); Walmart's bottled water purchased in Oakland and Mountain View contained more than double the limit (21 to 37 ppb). Las Vegas tap water was the source for these bottles, according to Walmart representatives (EWG 2008).
Also in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand, lab tests found a cancer-causing chemical called bromodichloromethane at levels that exceed safety standards under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65, OEHHA 2008). EWG is filing suit under this act to ensure that Walmart posts a warning on bottles as required by law: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer." The limit for this chemical under Proposition 65 is 2.5 ppb, using the state's standard assumptions for water consumption; levels in Walmart's water from Mountain View and Oakland ranged from 7.7 to 13 ppb.
These same chemicals also polluted Giant's Acadia brand at levels in excess of California’s safety standards, but this brand is sold only in Mid-Atlantic states where California’s health-based limits do not hold sway. Nevertheless, disinfection byproducts in both Acadia and Sam’s Choice bottled water exceeded the industry trade association’s voluntary safety standard (IBWA 2008) of 10 ppb for trihalomethanes, for samples purchased in 5 states and Washington DC. Acadia water with levels exceeding the industry's safety limit was purchased in 3 states (Maryland, Delaware and Virginia) and Washington, DC and was bottled from municipal tap water supplies in Maryland's DC suburbs, according to the bottle label. The Walmart water was purchased in California and North Carolina and was bottled from municipal tap water supplies in Las Vegas and Georgia, according to Walmart representatives (EWG 2008).
Most developed nations have guidelines to control disinfection byproducts in drinking water so as to minimize consumers' exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals while maintaining adequate disinfection and control of water-borne bacteria (Richardson 2007). EPA tap water regulations allow some quantities of these byproducts, which form when residual organic pollutants combine with chlorine and other water disinfection chemicals. Yet, largely unknown to consumers is the fact that FDA, the agency charged with overseeing bottled water quality, permits the same level of DBPs in bottled waters as allowed by the EPA for tap water (FDA 2008b). FDA-sanctioned presence of known carcinogens in bottled water highlights the woeful insufficiency of federal regulations over bottled water production. As a result of the FDA's hands-off approach to bottled water standards, quality among brands and even among different bottles within a single brand varies tremendously. As uncovered by EWG, while some bottled waters appear to be purified or treated more than tap water, others contain excessive levels of chemical pollutants.
EWG analysis of bottled waters sold by the Walmart and Giant Foods stores, discovered that every one of five Acadia brand waters and four out of eleven Sam's Choice brand waters contained disinfection byproducts, especially trihalomethanes (THMs), such as chloroform and bromodichloromethane, chemicals considered carcinogenic to humans (Richardson 2007) and included as such in the California's Proposition 65 list (OEHHA 2008). The trihalomethane levels detected in the nine samples are below the weak and nearly meaningless FDA limit of 80 parts per billion (ppb) for these chemicals in bottled water. However, all samples exceeded the bottled water industry self-proclaimed maximum level of 10 ppb for total THM contamination, with average trihalomethane levels of 25 ppb in Acadia's brand waters and 24 ppb in THM-containing Sam's Choice brand waters (Tables 1 and 2). These findings clearly demonstrate that in the absence of strong, enforceable federal standards, voluntary industry guidelines do not provide uniform bottled water quality promised to the consumers.