Bottled Water Quality vs Municipal Drinking Water Quality Essay

If we paid as much for tap water as we do for bottled water, most people would have a monthly water bill of over $9,000. - -Andrew C. Revkin - The New York TimesIt is very common for research groups to set up a bottled water taste test. The results are endlessly the same without a label, there is no obvious difference among any kind of bottled water or even tap water. Yet millions of Americans routinely debauch bottled water and re-filter their tap water. The Clean Water Act of 1972 was supposed to ensure all water sources were pure and safe for drinking or swimming. Enforcement simply did non go far enough, and public information on contaminants grew much faster than purification programs did. A series of laws followed the 1972 Act in an attempt to stem the world-wide aversion to tap water, including the 1974 and 1996 Safe Drinking Water Acts (SDWA). These laws are a step in the right direction, but bottled water still maintains an advantage founded non in superior quality but in more effective marketing. Years ago, the concept of selling water was laughable. Why would anyone pay for something they can derive for free almost anywhere? Plumbing and free drinking water fountains are as old as Western Civilization. Selling water to a man with a faucet, or even a well, resembles the clich of selling ice to an Eskimo. Consumers were intelligent enough to recognze that evian, the name of the pioneering French drinking water bottler, was simply nave spelled backwards. Yet by 1988 evian sold over 1 billion liters of water, all still bottled at the source in Evian-les-Bains, France(1). Competitors and entrepreneurs sensed a change in consumer tastes. In 1987 Suntory Ltd of Japan established Suntory Water Group in the US. It quick... ..., http//www.epa.gov9966/envirodcd/owa/sdw_report.first_table?report_id=639191&pwsid=CA3010092&state=CA&source=Ground%20water%20&population=150000 EPA, http//www.epa.gov/owow/cwa/history.htm United States Code, Title 42, Chapte r 6A, Subchapter XII, start up B, Section 300g-3, a-1-B, as listed at http//www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ Great Waters of France, http//www.perrier.com/history.html Great Waters of France, http//www.perrier.com evian, http//www.evian.com/ Suntory Water Group, http//www.water.com/polar/ Suntory Water Group, http//www.kidzwater.com/ EPA, http//www.epa.gov/OGWDW/wot/howwill.html Bottled Water is Cause for Concern, Environmental Advocates Claim by Penny Stern, MD, for Reuters, reprinted at http//www.gue.com/news/1999-04A.html EPA, http//www.epa.gov/safewater/dwsrf.html EPA, http//www.epa.gov/safewater/dwh/who.html