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+--- Thread: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . (/showthread.php?tid=37265)
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - M A V I C - 07-28-2007
[quote zachdog]I always grab a Nalgene botttle and take it everywhere you go. I have a water purifier on my tap at home and refill my bottle daily. One of my bottles has been to Canada, Dominican Republic, the Continental Divide, the ocean (several times), and on many hiking and rafting trips. It has a bunch of stickers on it.
I'm a professional and have this awesome bottle sitting on my desk everyday. It's a great conversation piece and I love to talk to people about it. Water is so important, as is waste management. Go green, and take a bottle with you if you can't stand the tap water.
http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/
How do you know if the water you're putting in the bottle is safe or that your portable water filter (if you have one) is appropriate for the particles that need filtering?
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - zachdog - 07-28-2007
[quote M A V I C]
How do you know if the water you're putting in the bottle is safe or that your portable water filter (if you have one) is appropriate for the particles that need filtering?
The tap water in my Kansas City suburb is quite good. The filter on my tap makes it better. In the Dominican my hosts have a large 5-gallon water cooler and I regularly refill my bottle from that. In Canada I use a water filter to pump water from the Boundary Waters lakes (although the water there is so clean the water filter is just a precaution). I also use a hiking filter in the mountains.
In many other cities I usually just fill it from the tap. I do, however, travel to Phoenix many times a year and their water is heavily chlorinated. In that situation I'll buy a gallon jug of purified water from the grocery or gas station and use that for a day or two.
I do remember, however, that no matter how bad the water is in many of our city's taps, it is much, much worse in 90% of the world. I visit the Dominican every year and I'm appalled at how good we have it here in the US.
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - IronMac - 07-28-2007
A lot of people here talk about taste and variance in quality but let's get serious. How many people, over the past few decades, have actually died from drinking poor water? C'mon, not everyone drinks bottled water, there must be a lot more people who do not drink bottled and they're not dropping like flies are they?
Just poor excuses to spend money on something that, in the end, harms the environment. If you're so concerned about the quality of your local water supply, go to your municipal government and demand that they hike taxes in order to improve the water supply.
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - mattkime - 07-28-2007
>>How many people, over the past few decades, have actually died from drinking poor water?
So you should drink the water if it takes like poo but won't kill you??
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - IronMac - 07-28-2007
[quote mattkime]So you should drink the water if it takes like poo but won't kill you??
Where do you live where the water tastes like poo? If it tastes like poo, I very much doubt that the place would even be settled in the first place!
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - M A V I C - 07-28-2007
[quote IronMac]A lot of people here talk about taste and variance in quality but let's get serious. How many people, over the past few decades, have actually died from drinking poor water? C'mon, not everyone drinks bottled water, there must be a lot more people who do not drink bottled and they're not dropping like flies are they?
Just poor excuses to spend money on something that, in the end, harms the environment. If you're so concerned about the quality of your local water supply, go to your municipal government and demand that they hike taxes in order to improve the water supply.
I've been in a couple hundred cities in the past month. Do you really expect me to go to each that had poor water quality and ask that they hike it?
I doubt very many people have died directly as a cause of poor water quality in the US, but there have been many problems that are caused by it. When I was in elementary school, the well was polluted from having the septic system above the well, and from being right next to a cement plant. No one died drinking the water, but some of the problems that could occur within five years included various forms of cancer, sterility, birth defects... The well had been contaminated for years before they tested it. I didn't like the taste or smell of the water, so I wouldn't drink it.
Also take into account the rate of problems like cancer is increasing. We need to stay as healthy as we can, and drinking clean water is one way to do that.
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - davester - 07-28-2007
US drinking water standards and monitoring requirements are strict, and generally stricter than standards on bottled water. There have been quite a few studies of this issue, and the findings have generally indicated that most tap water is of similar or sometimes higher quality than bottled waters (this is particularly true here in the SF Bay Area where most cities have excellent tap water quality and no need whatsoever to drink bottled water). The problem with bottled water is that the bottling process itself is subject to sanitation and contamination issues. Hence, we get occasional reports of things like benzene, coliform bacteria and various other organic chemicals and metals (not to mention phthalates leached out of the bottles) showing up in bottled waters. NRDC did a study a few years ago that showed many bottled waters to have some degree of contamination, some quite serious.
This is not to say that ALL municipal water is of higher quality than bottled water, and there have been some significant issues with some small and poorly regulated local supplies in the US, but it is pretty rare to have unsafe municipal drinking water sources. As for aesthetic considerations (odor, taste), there are some areas of the country where the natural water quality has issues, but these can in most cases be dealt with easily by simple home filtration.
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - M A V I C - 07-28-2007
[quote davester]This is not to say that ALL municipal water is of higher quality than bottled water, and there have been some significant issues with some small and poorly regulated local supplies in the US, but it is pretty rare to have unsafe municipal drinking water sources.
I was at one place where I was advised not to drink the tap water. It was okay to shower in, but that's it. The reason being that the water supply came from a cistern that had no quality checks and hadn't been looked at in over a year. The contents largely came from rain water off the roof of the building.
I was at another place where the water upstream was considered so high risk, that swimming wasn't even allowed. So the taps that were fed by the same water were also off-limits.
I've been to hotels where I found out certain parts of the building had plumbing problems which contaminated the tap water.
Sure if you go to a medium or large city, the supply the send out is probably okay. But just because the original supply is safe doesn't mean what comes out of the tap is. You can be in a city and not be getting city water.
Edit: I tried to find the version of this sign like I was seeing, but can't. The ones I saw were brown with white markings. A cup with water in it, and a circle with a line through it. It's tap water, but it's not safe to drink.
When the only taps around that have water have signs like that, the only option is bottled water.
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - IronMac - 07-28-2007
[quote M A V I C]I've been in a couple hundred cities in the past month. Do you really expect me to go to each that had poor water quality and ask that they hike it?
Do you drink bottled water at home then?
[quote M A V I C]I doubt very many people have died directly as a cause of poor water quality in the US, but there have been many problems that are caused by it. When I was in elementary school, the well was polluted from having the septic system above the well, and from being right next to a cement plant. No one died drinking the water, but some of the problems that could occur within five years included various forms of cancer, sterility, birth defects... The well had been contaminated for years before they tested it. I didn't like the taste or smell of the water, so I wouldn't drink it.
Also take into account the rate of problems like cancer is increasing. We need to stay as healthy as we can, and drinking clean water is one way to do that.
Are you trying to say that municpal water causes cancer? Why aren't you then insisting that your local authorities increase water taxes as a health issue?
Re: WATER, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!. . .Bottled water source revealed. . . - IronMac - 07-28-2007
I've been in some places where the water was not potable but that is no excuse for people going around drinking bottled water when their local supply is perfectly safe. Sure, if your water is unhealthy for you...go ahead, drink bottled but if you have a clean local supply then why are you still drinking bottled?
And if your local supply isn't potable then go and ask for higher water taxes. You're paying for clean water either way.