OT sort of; bottled water

[Frank]

I had dinner several years ago with a non-drinking coworker in Geneva. He said it was funny that his water and my beer cost about the same ;) Frank

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

Yes, and the joke was on him.

[Oren]

We have these small buildings around strip malls that sell water. Folks can go buy a five gallon jug. I see many construction workers filling the IGLOO coolers for the day. All this water is from an RO system in the water stand. Not sure how much it cost, though.

-- Oren

"If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me."

[<kjpro]

Bacteria

It&#39;s not wise to reuse a bottle for a prolong time by refilling it!!

[<kjpro]

There&#39;s medical people that will back this up....

[Rick Brandt]

But they will also tell you that the recommendation does not have to mean 8 glasses of "water". Everything that has water in it qualifies toward the daily allowance (even the food you eat).

That many people have perverted the advice to mean "I must drink 64 ounces of clear unadulterated H2O per day" is not surprising given that most people are clueless.

[aemeijers]

I&#39;ve lived in towns, and worked at job sites, where the water tasted terrible, due to mineral content. Probably safe to drink, but tasted like crap. Pure distilled water doesn&#39;t taste great either. ( of some chemical? Low &#39;free&#39; O2 content? Jump in here, fellow from the water treatment company.)

In situations like that, I could probably rationalize away buying bottle or jug water for drinking water purposes, the same as when they have an oopsie with the treatment plant, or a flood or something, and tell everyone not to drink the tap water. As for me, I only buy bottle water when traveling, to have something chilled to sip on the highway. (I never remember to pack a cooler, and pretty much all the soda pop they sell in the stations tastes like crap to me.)

My well water here is tolerable tasting, but not great. Had to put in a softener due to iron content. Fridge has a door dispenser with a filter, but the line is tea-kettled up, and a bottle takes forever to fill. If I dump the ice bin in the sink, after it melts, it leaves a white ring. Best tasting water I&#39;ve ever had was from wells, but you have to hit the right water layer- I&#39;ve seen subdivisions where everyone had deep wells that tasted like crap, but there was a layer of sweet water at less than 20 feet.

aem sends....

[Jim Redelfs]

Pepsico, parent company of Pepsi-Cola and Aquafina, is the company in question.

Here&#39;s an article from yesterday&#39;s Detroit Free Press:

This is a non-issue. I have known for years that so-called "bottled" water is, for many brands, purified tap water. Heck, years ago when stocking-up on gallons of "Drinking Water" for camping, the label said "Water source: St. Louis municipal water system."

The purification process listed was reverse osmosis. Recently, I purchased gallons jugs of distilled water from Wal-Mart. (Their "Drinking Water" gallons were out-of-stock.) The label says the source is the Kansas City, Kansas, municipal water supply. The purification process lists reverse osmosis, distillation, microfiltration and ozonation.

It&#39;s "good" water (to me) because it has virtually no taste. I do not like the flavor of natural spring water, probably because it has more minerals in it that the previously described water.

I work outside and drink lots of water during the summer. I try to use packaged ice with the store-bought water as the ice is made from virtually the same, purified water.

I don&#39;t expect any health advantages to drinking such water, and no such claims are made by the brands I use. In fact, I may be missing some good minerals. I don&#39;t care. When chugging a lot of water, I prefer the non-taste of purified tap water.

[trader4]

They may back it up with personal opinion, but beyond that there is zippo. A couple years ago some researchers did a very thorough search to see what basis there was for the 8 glasses a day recommendation. Their conclusion was that while it&#39;s often repeated as established fact, there was no research, no study, nothing at all to back it up. It&#39; just a number someone came up with a long time ago that keeps being repeated.

[Cam]

Aquafina and Dasani are made from concentrate. They take tap water, remove all the minerals and then add back exactly what they want. It&#39;s the same philosophy that they use for cola. The manufacturer ships concentrate across the country instead of shipping water. Coke is made from tap water too. Big deal.

Cam

[Pete C.]

I believe all of the "purified water" bottled water brands are produced from tap water. They most certainly are not "tap water" however as they are heavily filtered before bottling. Basically it&#39;s the exact same filtered base water that the bottling plant uses to produce the soda, just without the soda syrup mixed in.

The Coca Cola "Dasani" water is definitely produced this way (I spent several days at a CC bottling plant), as is the Pepsi "Aquafina" which is the one noted in the article. Also note that neither of these brands has ever even remotely implied that the water is "spring water" or from any special source. The labels have always called it "purified water" which is 100% accurate.

There has never been any deception as to what is in the "Aquafina" or "Dasani" bottles, the problem is our failing schools not giving people the skills to understand what the label says. Also, regular tap water, while certainly safe to drink in most every place, I don&#39;t believe is clean enough to have a reasonable shelf life if bottled.

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

The "purified water" like Aquafina and Dasani are produced locally and not shipped internationally, something the "green" types either don&#39;t understand or willfully ignore. They also ignore the shelf life aspect as well, try bottling tap water for your emergency kit (earthquake, tornado, hurricane, etc.) and then test it to see if it&#39;s safe to drink a year later.

Pete C.

[Pete C.]

I&#39;m afraid you don&#39;t comprehend the difference between the source of the water i.e. public water supply, and the end product that is bottled which is most certainly not the same thing any more than a bottle of soda which is made with the same base water is. That tap water goes through three or more stages of filtration generally including reverse osmosis which produces pure water that is significantly cleaner than municipal tap water. This filtered water is what is bottled for the Aquafina and Dasani products and also what is mixed with the various syrups to make the sodas, it is most certainly *not* tap water.

Pete C.

[HeyBub]

The Israeli Army did an experiment. They marched a company from the Sinai to Lebanon - some 300 miles - from dawn to dusk. Every soldier was required to drink some enormous amount of water - I recall it was one liter per hour - during the march. At the end, no one had dropped out and the soldiers were in superb physical shape.

Evidently, one can ingest too little water; we don&#39;t know yet if one can drink too much.

[Eigenvector]

Yes people can drink too much water. Runners get water intoxication all the time when they drink too much water and not take in sufficient minerals. I&#39;ve had it before - it sucks.

[Oren]

As participants in KDND-FM&#39;s water-drinking contest chugged bottle after bottle, a listener called in to warn the disc jockeys that the stunt was dangerous - and could be fatal.

"Yeah, we&#39;re aware of that," one of them responded.

Another DJ said with a laugh: "Yeah, they signed releases, so we&#39;re not responsible. We&#39;re OK."

California Sheriff Looks into Water-Drinking Death

-- Oren

"If things get any worse, I&#39;ll have to ask you to stop helping me."

[PaPaPeng]

I was always skeptical about bottled water and never buy any. I will drink off a water fountain in the mall or else get my usual coffee black. If I am very thirsty, then a large iced coke. Bottled water tastes exactly the same as my municipal tap water and I don&#39;t intend to pay more than a buck to drink a cuppa (bottle). Once I made a Sno-Cat trip up the Columbia Ice Fields in the Rocky Mountains. We were encouraged to drink the glacier melt water. I have to admit it was the sweetest water I had ever tasted. That&#39;s strange because it was pure water and the only difference was perhaps more than ten thousand years old.

There is another weird bottled water experience. I had assumed that demineralized water would be equivalent to distilled water. So I used some to top up a motorcycle battery. I clould have sworn I heard a "click" and the plates turned dark immediately. The battery went dead as a doornail and no amount of overcharging could restore even the tiniest flicker of life to it.

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SCIENCE NEWS July 27, 2007

labels to spell out source: tap water

Aquafina labels to spell out source: tap water Water drips from a tap at a home in Manchester, northern England, March 27, 2006. PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry. REUTERS/Phil Noble By Martinne Geller

NEW YORK (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry.

According to Corporate Accountability International, a U.S. watchdog group, the world&#39;s No. 2 beverage company will include the words "Public Water Source" on Aquafina labels.

"If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it&#39;s a reasonable thing to do," said Michelle Naughton, a Pepsi-Cola North America spokeswoman.

Pepsi Chief Executive Indra Nooyi told Reuters earlier this week the company was considering such a move.

Pepsi&#39;s Aquafina and Coca-Cola Co&#39;s Dasani are both made from purified water sourced from public reservoirs, as opposed to Danone&#39;s Evian or Nestle&#39;s Poland Spring, so-called "spring waters," shipped from specific locations the companies say have notably clean water.

Coca-Cola Co. told Reuters it will start posting online information about the quality control testing it performs on Dasani by the end of summer or early fall.

"Concerns about the bottled-water industry, and increasing corporate control of water, are growing across the country," said Gigi Kellett, director of the "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign, which aims to encourage people to drink tap water.

San Francisco&#39;s mayor banned city employees from using city funds to buy bottled water when tap water is available. Ann Arbor, Michigan passed a resolution banning commercially bottled water at city events and Salt Lake City, Utah asked department heads to eliminate bottled water.

Critics charge the bottled water industry adds plastic to landfills, uses too much energy by producing and shipping bottles across the world and undermines confidence in the safety and cleanliness of public water supplies, all while much of the world&#39;s population is without access to clean water.

But industry observers said such opposition is unlikely to drain U.S. sales of bottled water, which reached 2.6 billion cases in 2006, according to Beverage Digest. The industry newsletter estimated that U.S. consumers spent about $15 billion on bottled water last year.

"Consumers have an affection for bottled water. It&#39;s not an issue of taste or health, it&#39;s about convenience," the newsletter&#39;s publisher, John Sicher, said. "Try walking up (New York City&#39;s) Third Avenue on a hot day and getting a glass of tap water."

Dave Kolpak, a portfolio manager at Victory Capital Management, said the environmental objections will have little impact on the bottom line for either Pepsi or Coke, though he admitted it could slow the market&#39;s growth rate.

"Pepsi and Coke do not make a lot of profit" on bottled water, said Kolpak, adding that people may talk about the issue, but will likely continue buying some bottled water. Victory Capital owns about 3 million shares of PepsiCo among its $62 billion under management.

[Eigenvector]

Drinking glacial melt water can give you a different sort of problem than bad taste. Giardia poisioning comes to mind. I&#39;ve had that too, caught it on the Wonderland Trail when the water ran out and I had to resort to snow melt. That wasn&#39;t fun either, for the first few months at least. Trust me, I NEVER can have enough water purification tablets in my pack now-a-days.

Aquafina labels to spell out source: tap water

[David Starr]

Every time I see someone with bottled water, I think of someone sitting in the garage filling thousands of bottles with water coming from an old rubber garden hose, and giggling as he pictures his bank account growing.

I just can&#39;t figure out what the big attraction of bottled water is.

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[Oren]

CONveniences (cap locks intentional)

-- Oren

Hofstadter&#39;s Law - It [a task] always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter&#39;s Law.