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The Bottle Boom — Why Buy Bottled Water?
Part 2: Bottled Water Cleanliness
Occasionally, one sees reports in the news of pesticides, bacteria or toxic
metals in the public water supply. Many think that this is a good reason to
change to bottled water. But is it?
The 1989 United Kingdom Water Act requires that tap water is
tested at every stage of its treatment. Tap water usually comes from reservoirs
and other surface water sources. Even here it is tested daily. Then it is
pumped to filter beds where layers of graded sand or carbon filters remove all
particles of matter and microbes, and it is tested again. At this stage the
water is checked in laboratories against 57 parameters which can detect 80-90
different substances. After this the water is chlorinated to ensure that any
remaining bacteria are killed. If any unwanted substances do manage to get
through all these tests and into the public supply, they will be in such small
quantities as to be quite harmless. Detailed analyses of public tap water are
available on demand.
Are bottled waters as clean? We just don't know. Bottled waters
are split in law into two types: 'Mineral' and 'Spring' waters. The Natural
Mineral Waters Association claims that the regulations which apply to them are
draconian and expensive. But the parameters call for mineral waters to be
tested for only 13 chemicals and bacteria - less than one quarter as many
substances as are tested for in tap water. There are also no requirements that
mineral water be tested daily or even weekly. A mineral water manufacturer can
test when conditions suit him and when a clean result is likely. But the public
still cannot know what those tests say, as the results of tests of mineral
waters are not available to the public. The regulations on 'Spring Waters' are
even more relaxed - there is no specific legislation at all! Anyone can go to
any water source, bottle the water, call it 'Natural Spring Water' and sell it
in shops without doing any analyses at all. And it is likely to be contaminated.
The Hereford and Worcester Public Analyst tested many of springs
in his area and found that over half were unfit for human consumption. He
considered that without safeguards, many of the bottled spring waters were
unsafe.
Mineral contamination
Scientists at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth led by Dr Ron Fuge tested
81 bottled waters, selected at random, for their mineral content using a plasma
mass spectrometer. Many were found to have levels of potentially harmful
minerals which were above the legal regulation levels for tap water. In some
cases they were considerably higher. The legal limit for sodium in tap water is
150 mg/litre. The amount of sodium in Vichy Saint-Yorre, for example, was seven
times that limit. For anyone on a low-salt diet, this is much too high. In
Hépas, calcium was nearly twice the limit and fluoride in Mattoni was
more than twice the limit. Uranium is rarely seen in tap water. Where it is, it
is less than 2 micrograms per litre. There are no specific limits set down for
uranium but uranium is a very toxic metal and the probable prudent limit is
about 4 micrograms per litre. Perrier's level was 4 micrograms, San Pellegrino
was 8 and Radnor Hills 12. Uranium in Badoit, however, was a massive 24 times
the prudent limit. Badoit's label states 'Constant analysis shows that there is
a low level (97 micrograms per litre) of uranium present and this is a natural
component.' Natural it may be, but low level it is not. Of the 81 waters
tested, 17 exceeded mineral limits for tap water as defined in the UK Act and a
further 29 exceeded guidelines laid down elsewhere.
Italian scientists studied the cause of kidney stones in the city
of Parma. They compared the diets of stone formers with people free of the
complaint and found that there was only one difference. 'It was deduced that
stone patients did not follow a different dietary style from the rest of the
population except for a high consumption of uncarbonated mineral water'. The
amount consumed was less than two litres a day.
Man-made chemical contamination
Contamination from man-made chemicals is potentially more of a problem than the
minerals. The chemicals can be split into two classes: organic and inorganic.
The organic chemicals likely to be found are residues of pesticides and
herbicides used by the farming industry, and industrial detergents used both by
farms and the water industry.
Until fairly recently there were no limits set for organic
chemicals in tap water. That has changed and there are now stringent limits in
which allowed amounts are in the order of only 1 part in ten billion. Such a
low level can be difficult to achieve; Thames Water alone is spending £350
million to remove these chemicals. If you hear of tap waters breaking these
limits, and it does happen from time to time, and are thinking that you might
be better off with bottled water, you might reflect that in many cases, the
same aquifer is used for both tap and bottled water - and there are no tests
for pesticides required to be done on bottled water. The bottled water
manufacturers don't test for organic chemicals and, as it is expensive, there
has been no independent study of the problem in Britain. However, the Suffolk
County Study in the USA tested 88 bottled waters and what they found was
horrifying. It was this study which discovered the cancer agent, benzene, in
Perrier and caused it to be withdrawn, but they also found: Freon, kerosene,
toluene, trichloroethylene, and xylene in a number of other bottled waters.
Another American team in Pennsylvania analysed 37 brands, 28 of
them from Europe, for: alkalinity, aluminium, barium, beryllium, boron,
cadmium, calcium, chloride, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluoride, iron, lead,
lithium, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, nitrate, pH,
phosphate, potassium, silver, sodium, specific conductance, sulphate, tin,
vanadium and zinc. Twenty-four of the 37 did not comply with drinking water
standards in the USA. With the exception of Mountain Valley, a United States
water, every one of them failed to pass EEC or WHO limits on at least one count.
In Britain, manufacturers use similar techniques to those used in
the USA. Although there have been no comparable studies conducted here, there
is no reason to suppose that a similar problem does not exist. The only
monitoring that is done, is done by the water companies themselves - and they
don't publish the findings.
Bacterial contamination
There are bacteria all around us: in the air, in the water, on our hands and on
bottling equipment. In tap water, bacteria are killed by the chlorine or
ultra-violet light with which the water is treated. Although the limit for
bacteria in tap water is 100 bacteria per millilitre, the normal level found is
around 2 bacteria per millilitre. The situation with bottled waters is quite
different. In a test of 51 bottled waters taken at random, Chester Public
Health Laboratory found only 22 with a bacterial content within the limits set
for tap water. Only Purefect 95 and the sparkling waters bottled in glass had
levels comparable to tap water. Ten of the other waters had levels of up to
1,000 bacteria per millilitre, eight had between 1,000 and 10,000, while a
further eleven were in the 10,000 to 100,000 bacteria class. One bottle was
found to contain 188,000 bacteria per millilitre - a massive 1,880 times the
limit for tap water.
Once again there are no legal limits for bacteria in bottled
waters, although there is a legal requirement that no bacteria must be
introduced during the bottling process. The bacterium usually found is
Pseudomonas fluorescens
, found widely in fresh-water springs and not considered to be a contaminant.
But while the presence of this bacterium is not considered dangerous in bottled
water, when it is found in meat products it is described as potentially
pathogenic and is a cause for concern.
There are no regulations governing the number of bacteria in
bottled water at point of sale. However, there is a legal requirement that none
must be added at the bottling stage. It is disturbing, therefore, that Hunter
and Burge found 7 cases of
Staphylococcus
which originate on human skin. They say that over 11% of the bottles contained
bacteria that are unlikely to have been present in the source water and
conclude: 'at least in some cases standards of hygiene may not have been as
high as one would hope'. These levels of contamination are clearly at odds with
bottled water's clean image.
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