As quoted fantastically
in the book Bottled
and Sold THE
STORY BEHIND
OUR
OBSESSIONWITH BOTTLED WATER
about how many water bottles are produced, used and thrown away, “Think about where you
are right now. How far away is…safe water? Probably not very far. Yet every
second… a thousand people buy and open up a plastic bottle of commercially produced
water, ... Eighty-five million bottles a day…”(Gleick
6). Still why does it really matter? It really does matter because of the fact
most, if actually not all bottled water can be bad for you. The water bottles
are usually made from harmful chemicals and our favorite tap water. To add to
the danger is the lack of knowledge on this subject and how high powered
organizations have no control in the matter and how this trend seems to just be
growing and growing year after year. So we will be investigating the so called
safety of our beloved water bottles.
To
start the investigation we will look at what water bottles are made from. Water
bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate also called PET for short is a
fiber that is easily used to create plastic containers such as “PET's ability
to contain carbon dioxide (carbonation) makes it ideal for use in carbonated
soft drink bottles…PET is also used to make bottles for water, juice, sports
drinks, beer, mouthwash, catsup, and salad dressing. It can also be found on
your food jars for peanut butter, jam, jelly, and pickles as well as in
microwavable food trays.” (medicinenet.com 2). With its varying uses
it might sound astonishing to think that it could be bad for people to drink
from or use. The highly believed opinion that soda is already bad for people
might be a reason to stop drinking sodas but the water is surely healthy for
people to drink. Ya right like the companies are actually putting spring water
in every bottle they sell to us an are not hiding anything from us. Well
actually the water you are drinking is actually tap water from most water
bottle brands.
What
really can be that harmful in tap water and the polyethylene terephthalate? The
tap water alone contains traces of nitrate, ammonia, heavy
metals, and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes. When also
looking at the top 10 water bottle brands they are just as bad as most city tap
water in the poorest of areas as well as a favorite brand of the 10 top sellers
having high rates of cancer-causing chlorination in it. To think that’s only
the tap waters influence on how healthy it is. The PET chemical influences are
that of obesity,
lower sperm count, and testosterone levels. And as
the bottles are reused more and more chemicals are released into the water
making them even more dangerous each time they are used as compared to when we
first started using them. Amazing how the side effects of drinking can give you
cancer and yet no one seems to even know about it at all.
People would assume that
the government or the FDA would stop bad water from being sold on the market.
The FDA actually has labeled most brands of water bottles safe to drink,
therefore allowing for people to drink it without knowing the danger of the
contents and the bottle. The government also can’t control water bottles that
re produced in the same state they are sold in.in fact few states even have
laws to help protect their citizens from the chemicals like water in the state.
The EPA seems to be a harder branched division of caring for people’s safety,
“the
U.S. EPA website clearly provides and describes the lack of quality assurance
for bottled water: “Bottled water is not necessarily
safer than your tap water.”( Evita Ochel, 1). So then if the EPA also
known as the Environmental Protective Agency has stated that
the bottles are not as safe as we were lead to believe then some might just
want to ask why people still use and drink from these bottles everywhere they
look left and right?
People
keep drinking from water bottles because there is a false premonition that they
are safe for us to drink from whenever we all get thirsty, just like Evita Ochel
stated clearly in her article” the majority of people out there today who drink
bottled water are under the false assumption that bottled
water is safer, better and/or healthier for them than tap water.”(Ochel 1). And so
with all this unawareness going around mothers
still give
children water bottles and juice containers to drink from, even joggers and other sportsmen carry water bottles
with
them as they run or play their sport and yet very few every decide to question
the water or the bottles safety. Most of
the bottle companies themselves help the unawareness by telling people the
water they sell is pure and yet it is usual old tap water that they fill the
bottles with and people believing so. As it
can be seen from charts in Bottled
and Sold THE STORY BEHIND OUR OBSESSIONWITH BOTTLED
WATER the number of water bottles sold are increased year round as
more and more people buy into the scheme of buying regular tap water. Even with
some awareness out there the sources are not trusted as the try to warn of us
of the danger, “It may be difficult to trust
environmental advocacy groups, but the GAO expressed many of the same concerns
about bottled water. With the lack of reporting mandated by the EPA, decreased
standards, and insufficient regulatory measures, standards may be no better —
and potentially worse — than tap water… nearly half of the U.S. population
served by tap water systems gets legally allowable, but from a health
standpoint potentially significant, levels of contaminants such as cancer-causing
trihalomethanes, radon, and/or arsenic in their tap water." Bottled water
does not appear to inherently reduce this risk.”(Stephens 1). So the ever looming secret of the water bottle
industries stays hidden as time goes by.
To bring this investigation of water bottle safety to an end we
can clearly see that we have all been lied to and our precious water bottles
are not so friendly as we thought they were. We can see how millions of people
are unaware of the dangers in water bottles even in other countries around the
world as well. We have useless government agencies do nothing to protect us,
with some that have no power to. And then there’s the bottles and there rich polyethylene
terephthalate and amazingly wonderful tap water just sit there and hold up
there toxins for us to drink as they smile with their evil grin.
