Water Filtration

If you take a look at the label on any bottled water container, you will probably get the impression that the water comes from a mountain spring in some beautiful nature preserve. However, the truth is that the water is either from the tap or another questionable source. But is tap water cleaner than bottled water sold at stores? This is a question many consumers wonder about. Here are 5 facts you ought to be aware of.

1. 60 to 70 percent of the water you buy in bottles is exempt from federal standards. This is because federal regulations don’t apply unless the bottled water is transported across state lines. Many companies that sell water in bottles skirt the law by bottling and selling water within the same state.

So is tap water cleaner than bottled water sold at stores? It’s safe to say that at the very least, most water purchased in bottles is merely tap water in a bottle. Millions of dollars are spent in advertising to make you believe otherwise but the truth shall be known.

2. Tap water must be filtered and disinfected by law. On the other hand, no such law applies to the water you buy in bottles. So is tap water cleaner than bottled water sold at stores? It’s safe to say yes.

3. Tap water cannot contain any E-coli or fecal coliform bacteria. The same prohibition does not apply to the water purchased in bottles. In fact, a certain amount of fecal coliform bacteria is allowed in bottled water.

4. Tap water has to be tested for cryptosporidium and giardia but FDA regulations do not require the same for water purchased in bottles. These common water pathogens can cause diarrhea and intestinal problems yet the water you buy in bottles at the store can contain them legally!

5. Tap water has to meet certain standards for cancer-causing chemicals and toxins. Companies that sell water in bottles are exempt from testing for these chemicals. Phthalate is a chemical that leaches from plastic, including the plastic bottles used for water. It can lead to illness yet there are no regulations surrounding its use.

So is tap water cleaner than bottled water sold at stores? It might sound unbelievable but yes. At best, the water you buy in bottles is the same as tap water. Consumers pay $1 to $4 per gallon for the perception that they are getting safer, cleaner water when in reality they are getting water that is more dangerous than tap water.

Instead of wasting money on water sold in bottles, consider an option that will give you cleaner water, guaranteed. Carbon water filters are very effective and produce water that is free of all synthetic and organic chemicals. Best of all, carbon filters do not remove the beneficial trace minerals from tap water.

Another great aspect of carbon water filters is that they are highly affordable. At less than 10 cents per gallon, you can get up to 30 gallons of clean water per hour. So get out there and purchase a carbon water filter for your home.

Is tap water cleaner than bottled water sold at stores? Yes, but tap water itself is still not safe for consumption. Use a carbon filter to make it safe enough to drink.

An Ezine article

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1832045

Should you drink bottled or tap water? That is today’s question. Well, there is a third alternative.

Why not buy a home purifier and drink something better than bottled or tap water. Is bottled water safer than tap water? The answer is “no”, it’s probably the same thing.

Researchers for the Environmental Working Group or the EWG, for short, have shown that a third of all bottlers use “municipally treated waters”. That means tap-water, for those of you who don’t know.

Coca-cola, for example, makes Dasani. It’s more expensive than some of the other brands, depending on whether or not it’s on sale. Coke came up with Dasani to compete with Pepsi’s Aquafina. So, basically, the “Coke vs. Pepsi war” is on again. Only this time, they decided to use water.

Coke and Pepsi both use “municipally treated waters” and run them through a reverse osmosis system. So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that reverse osmosis does not remove chemicals, such as chlorine and all municipalities use chlorine to kill bacterial contaminants. Dasani was actually recalled in the United Kingdom because the level of a disinfection byproduct was too high.

You see, whenever waters are cleaned of bacteria through chemical disinfection, byproducts are created. Those byproducts are not removed by reverse osmosis and neither is chlorine. Here’s another question.

Is bottled water safer than tap water that has been run through a point-of-use or home purification process? The answer here depends on the purification method used.

If your home filtration system consists of single stage reverse osmosis, then you will still have chlorine and its byproducts. If, on the other hand, you have a multi-stage filtration device then the waters in your home will always be better than bottled.

When it comes to picking bottled or tap water, there are other considerations. If you have a good purification system and you drink from glass containers, then you know that there is no residue from the plastic bottle in what you are drinking.

Those residues include Bisphenol-A, a controversial chemical that may be banned in many countries and is already banned in Canada. They also include phthalates, which cause damage to the male reproductive system.

So, is bottled water safer than tap water that has been run through an effective purification process? Tell me. What do you think?

Another primary consideration is strictly about money. It costs a family of four at least $1200 per year to buy bottles. It can cost even more depending on the brand that you choose. A multi-stage water filtration system costs $172.99 for the first year and as little as $48 for subsequent years. So, you have something cleaner and safer, while spending less money.

I can’t think of another area where this can happen. Usually, you pay more to get more, but not when it comes to bottled or tap water that has been purified. You pay less to get more safety.

An Ezine article

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1433298

Back-to-the-Tap Movement Gains Momentum

by Janet Larsen

From San Francisco to New York to Paris, city governments, high-class restaurants, schools, and religious groups are ditching bottled water in favor of what comes out of the faucet. With people no longer content to pay 1,000 times as much for bottled water, a product no better than water from the tap, a backlash against bottled water is growing.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents some 1,100 American cities, discussed at its June 2007 meeting the irony of purchasing bottled water for city employees and for city functions while at the same time touting the quality of municipal water. The group passed a resolution sponsored by Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, and R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis that called for the examination of bottled water’s environmental impact. The resolution noted that with $43 billion a year going to provide clean drinking water in cities across the country, “the United States’ municipal water systems are among the finest in the world.”

While the Mayors Conference fell short of moving to stop taxpayer money from filling the coffers of water bottlers, a growing number of cities are heading in that direction. Los Angeles, which has restricted the purchase of bottled water with city funds since 1987, now has more company. By the end of 2007, purchasing bottled water will be off-limits for San Francisco’s departments and agencies, saving a half-million dollars each year and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. St. Louis is poised to ban bottled water purchases for city employees in early 2008.

At the launch of Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign in October, Mayor Anderson of Salt Lake City described the “total absurdity and irresponsibility, both economic and environmental, of purchasing and using bottled water when we have perfectly good and safe municipal sources of tap water.” He urged city government departments and restaurants to stop buying bottled water.

In November, the city council of Chicago, beleaguered by swelling landfills and a stretched budget, placed a landmark tax of 5¢ on every bottle of water sold in the city in order to discourage consumption. That same month, Illinois state agencies were banned from purchasing bottled water with government funds. With 86 percent of used water bottles in the United States ending up as garbage or litter instead of being recycled, switching from the bottle to the tap helps to alleviate the trash burden.

New York City is urging residents to drink tap water, which is naturally filtered in the protected Catskill forest region. In Kentucky, the Louisville water utility hands out free bottles for residents to fill with “Pure Tap.” Dozens of other local governments are talking up tap water and are looking into banning the bottle.

Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed quaint a few decades ago, when water in bottles was a rarity. Now such endeavors are needed to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. When Pepsi announced in July that it would clearly label its Aquafina water as from a “public water source,” it no doubt shocked everyone who believed that bottles with labels depicting pristine mountains or glaciers delivered a superior product.

Despite the less-frequent quality testing and sometimes commonplace origin of the product, bottled water Read the rest of this entry »

 Many people prefer bottled water because of its taste. The taste of all water has to do with the way it is treated and the quality of its source, including its natural mineral content. Most bottled water comes from a ground water source, where water quality varies less from day to day, or is treated and immediately bottled. Bottled water from a dedicated source or plant may have a more consistent taste than tap water, which comes from surface sources and must travel through pipes to reach homes.

One of the key taste differences between tap water and bottled water is due to how the water is disinfected. Tap water may be disinfected with chlorine, chloramine, ozone or ultraviolet light to kill disease-causing germs. Water systems use these disinfectants chlorine and chloramine because they are effective and inexpensive, and because they continue to disinfect as water travels through pipes to homes and businesses. Bottled water that is disinfected is typically disinfected with ozone or other technologies such as ultraviolet light or chlorine dioxide. Ozone is preferred by bottlers, though it is more expensive than chlorine because it does not leave a taste and because bottlers do not need to worry about maintaining disinfectants in water sealed in a container. Untreated water, whether from a bottle or a tap will invariably have the characteristic taste of its source.

If you are unhappy with the taste of your tap water, but also have a problem with the cost and/or environmental issues related to bottled water, there are a number of water filtration systems on the market today that offer an excellent alternative to both tap and bottled water, from basic filter pitchers to high-tech reverse osmosis units, with the cost factor becoming more and more excessible to the average person.

From the EPA Health Water Series.