Host: Analies Ross-Dyjak | Head of Policy & Perspectives | Hydroviv
Category: 🔬 Research
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[1:05] “How safe is bottled water? […] The reality is, it's not as safe […] as tap water. So the reason […] [for that] is because the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, regulates bottled water and the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA regulates tap water. And so these standards are basically identical. […] There's one exception, and that's lead. The standard for lead in bottled water is just a little bit lower, because bottled water should never pass through any of the same infrastructure that it does for municipal tap water. […] Other than that, bottled water and tap water follow […] mirror image regulations and standards.”
[2:19] “That also means that bottled water could potentially have things like arsenic, PFAS, and then some regulated contaminants […] [in it]. PFAS also is unregulated […] for bottled water and for tap water. With that unregulated component, testing requirements are not enforced for bottled waters, similar to how they're not enforced for tap water.”
[3:04] “Consumer Reports […] did a study that tested a variety of different bottled water brands. […] And they actually found that seven of the carbonated brands had detectable levels of PFAS. And two of the still [water] brands also had PFAS as well. And so this was pretty shocking to people that were using bottled water because their municipalities had detectable levels of PFAS. And so the crux of this is basically that, just because you think you're eliminating PFAS by using bottled water that just isn't the case sometimes.”
[4:15] “Bottled water companies have really cracked the code on their marketing efforts. And so every company uses some image of […] a pristine lake or a waterfall or a glacier or something along those lines to make people believe that the water that they're drinking and buying is from this really pristine and clean source. And again, that's just not the case. So bottled water companies actually aren't required to disclose the exact source of their water. And so with tap water that is a requirement. […] Usually bottled water packaging will have where [the water] was either bottled, produced, manufactured, […] but not necessarily the actual source.”
[7:51] “25-45% of bottled water actually comes from a municipal source water. So […] it's usually not much better than what's coming out of your tap in terms of where it's being sourced.”
[8:12] “By 2050, the ocean will contain more plastic than fish by weight.”
[8:206 “91% of plastic isn't recycled. So that means that the majority of the single use plastic such as plastic water bottles ends up in landfills or the environment. It can take 400 years for one single plastic water bottle to fully decompose in the environment.”
Rating: 💧💧💧
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple
🕰️ 9 min | 🗓️ 09/29/2021
✅ Time saved: 7 min
Additional Links:
Hydroviv Blog
