Updated July 9, 2020

Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. Before then, too many public waterworks produced and distributed unsafe water. Now, the US has some of the safest public drinking water distribution in the world.

The act requires all public water utilities to provide annual water quality reports to their customers. Take a look at yours some time. You’ll learn exactly what contaminants the water has.

All drinking water either travels over the surface of the ground or through it. Untreated water has picked up some or all of the following contaminants:

• Microbial contaminants: bacteria or viruses
• Inorganic salts and metals, naturally occurring or otherwise
• Pesticides and herbicides
• Organic chemical byproducts of industrial processes
• Radioactive materials, naturally occurring or otherwise

Water treatment doesn’t remove every trace of these contaminants. Both public tap water and bottled water contain small amounts of some of them.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations prescribe upper limits of more than 120 substances in the water supplied by public systems. The systems monitor the water as it leaves the treatment plants, it’s flow through mains and pipes, and at the customers’ taps. And every year, they report how well they’ve met the standards.

Did you know that bottled water isn’t subject to the same standards? You don’t know where it came from or what’s in it.

In exploring bottled water vs tap water, let’s consider four criteria: safety, flavor, cost and availability, and environmental impact.

Safety

Tap water

In March 2019, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler bragged, “I want to make sure the American public understands 92% of the water everyday meets all the EPA requirements for safe drinking water.”

That’s not cause for complacency. It means that 8% of the water doesn’t meet EPA requirements. On average, 327 million Americans drink between two and eight glasses of water every day. The substandard water makes 209 million glasses of water. That’s 2.3 million gallons of unsafe tap water. Every day. Too many non-compliant systems fail to deal adequately with germs in the water.

Our infrastructure is aging.  That includes water treatment and distribution systems. We don’t spend enough money to maintain and update them. As water plants deteriorate, the safety of tap water suffers.

Some new threats didn’t exist when the Safe Drinking Water Act became law. For example, recent research indicates that 43 states have sites with water contaminated by PFAS. That’s a group of manmade toxic fluorinated substances.

Flint, Michigan’s system experienced a major breakdown in its treatment processes not long ago. Other tap water safety problems have made nationwide headlines. A chemical spill in Charleston, West Virginia comes to mind. Various natural disasters can also make local water unfit to use.

In those cases, people must turn to bottled water. It’s the only available alternative.

Bottled water

But let’s not forget: a lot of bottled water is nothing more than tap water with some extra filtering. What about bottled water safety?

Processing of bottled water can include one or more of reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, distillation, ozonation, and ultraviolet light. Ozonation and ultraviolet light both provide better disinfection against bacteria and viruses than chlorination.

Bottled water is sold in containers sealed under sanitary conditions. In emergencies, such as natural disasters, bottled water provides a safe alternative to compromised tap water.

Bottled water is not subject to EPA regulations. It is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

EPA water regulations require testing in a certified lab. FDA water regulations do not. EPA regulations require that utilities report lab findings both to the EPA and the public. FDA regulations do not even require reporting to the FDA. Not even if testing reveals contaminants that exceed standards.

In short, you can find out what’s in drinking water if it comes from the tap. Not if it comes in a bottle.

Oddly enough, the EPA sets standards for DEHP, a chemical used in the manufacture of some plastics. The FDA does not!

The FDA seldom inspects bottled water plants, but it has found contamination in two brands serious enough to issue recalls.

Microplastics have recently become a cause for concern. Among other things, they disrupt the endocrine system in both humans and animals, including marine life. And they’re everywhere. Plants take them up, too. So we have microplastics in our vegetables and in our tap water.

But bottled water contains double the amount of microplastics as tap water. The bottling process adds plastic to it.

Taste

When researchers conduct blind taste tests, they consistently find that most people can’t tell the difference between bottled water and tap water.

These tests don’t just compare one bottle of water with one local tap water. One study in 2010 used six brands of bottled water and chlorine-free tap water from six different cities. Only 36% of participants correctly distinguished the bottled water from the tap water.

Very often, bottled water is nothing more than tap water with some additional treatment. When it comes from another source, the FDA approves the following labels:

• artesian well water
• spring water
• mineral water
• well water

I mentioned ozonation under safety. It can also reduce concentration of some undesirable minerals, including sulfur. Therefore, it also improves taste. The chemically unstable ozone does not remain in the water.

Bottled water can certainly taste better than some tap water. Perhaps that tap water has a high or low mineral content. Most people prefer medium mineralization. Or, perhaps some cities don’t fully remove the chlorine from their water. Some ice or lemon can make it taste better. Or people can filter it to remove some of the minerals, including chlorine and fluorine.

Bottled water comes in various flavors. It’s also available as sparkling water. If most people can’t tell the difference between plain bottled water and tap water, anyone can distinguish flavored bottled water or sparkling water from tap water. Some people prefer those tastes.

Cost and availability

Most municipalities charge for water by units. Most households should expect to use one unit. Excessive water use may indicate a leak somewhere, a lot of water used to irrigate the lawn, a swimming pool, or otherwise have nothing to do with drinking tap water. Consider tap water from your own faucets as essentially free.

When you go to a restaurant or if you can find a public drinking fountain, you don’t pay for water. That is, unless the restaurant brings you a bottle.

If you drink enough individual bottles of water to make a gallon, you have paid about $9.50. That’s almost three times the national average price of milk. It’s expensive. Outrageously expensive, once you stop to think about it. Some estimates conclude that bottled water costs almost 2,000 times what tap water costs.

Environmental impact

We don’t drink directly from lakes and rivers. Our water––tap water or bottled water­––undergoes treatment that requires chemicals and energy. Therefore, drinking water carries an unavoidable environmental impact.

But tap water flows through pipes that last for decades. Drinking it from a disposable paper cup adds some trash to our landfills. Drinking it from a glass simply requires washing and reusing it.

Bottled water, on the other hand, requires the energy equivalent of 64 million barrels of oil every year just for packaging. Bottlers use 4 billion pounds of plastic. Manufacturing that plastic has its own energy cost and environmental impact. Including that of drilling for oil, its primary raw ingredient.

And let’s not forget the cost of transportation of the raw materials, the finished plastic, the empty bottles, and the bottled water from bottling plant to stores. It’s considerably more than the distribution cost of tap water.

Americans alone throw out more than 60 million water bottles every day. Little of it gets recycled. Too many of them end up as litter. And too much litter eventually makes its way to the oceans.

Reusing plastic bottles carries its own risk. Bacteria can grow in them, and plastic can leach from them.

Some flavored waters come in aluminum cans. Even as litter, aluminum has a more benign environmental impact than plastic. But mining, processing, and transporting aluminum carry the same kinds of problems as making, processing, and transporting plastic.

Bottled water vs tap water: the bottom line

Bottled water may be more convenient when you’re away from home. You may enjoy flavored or sparkling water. But in general, tap water has all the advantages when it comes to safety, cost, and environmental impact. Excluding flavored or sparkling water, you probably can’t taste any difference.

Avoiding bottled water is probably one of the easiest ways to reduce our environmental impact.

Sources:
Bottled water vs tap water / International Bottled Water Association
The US drinking water supply is mostly safe, but that’s not good enough / Joan Rose, The Conversation. May 29, 2019
Which is better: bottled water or tap water? / Jayne Leonard, Medical News Today. January 2, 2020

Photo credits:
Tap water. Source unknown.
Bottled water. Wikimedia commons

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels