Bottled Water Contaminants

Do you ever think bottled water is safer than tap water? You would be wrong. According to "Bottled Water: The Wrong Choice paragraph 4", it states that the city tap water companies must follow safe strict rules to make sure nothing in the water harms us. The bottles water

It would be assumed that it would be the least that bottled water companies could do is make sure that all pollutants are out of the water. “Alas, some bottled waters contain the same chemicals anyway- and they are, in any case, unavoidable”. (Standage, 663). It is said that contaminants are more likely to build up when it is transported in very hot conditions. (Diduch, Polkowska, and Namiesnik). “The presence of organic contaminants in water is becoming a more common problem, mainly because of the impact that human activities are having on the natural environment”. (Diduch, Polkowska, and Namiesnik). It is clear that it takes a lot of work to remove all contaminants from water. One slight error is all it takes for someone to be contaminated by harsh chemicals or bacteria. “The plastic components or additives in water can modify the organoleptic properties and, if present at high concentrations, may trigger health problems because of the potential toxic properties of some chemicals”. (Diduch, Polkowska, and Namiesnik).

Plastic water bottles are considered one of the healthiest beverages you can find in any shop. But are they really all that healthy for the environment, or is there a fine line between a plastic bottled water drink and what’s best for everyone? Let’s take a look at bottled water from the very start to find out. To manufacture plastic bottles, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used, and to produce PET, crude oil and natural gas is required. If one fills a plastic water bottle 1/4th full with oil, they will be looking at how much oil was used to make that one bottle, so how much oil does it take to make all of America’s water bottles? According to the Pacific Institute, in 2006, making plastic water bottles

One of the biggest harms to the world is pollution caused by people. Most of the plastic materials used by people are left to pollute. Bottled water is one of the biggest plastic materials produced. Some people say that bottled water is safer, convenient, and provide jobs to workers in many ways. The reasons for buying bottled water differ. Some people buy bottled water because they don’t like the taste or smell of tap water, while others on the other hand buy it because of health concerns with water contamination. Pollution is one of the biggest problems hurting the environment today, and water bottles that are thrown out after each one-time use, contribute greatly to its increasing buildup. Bottled water is not only expensive to us, but also to the environment. Bottled water is hurting the economy, harming human lives, and damaging the environment.

There are many impacts that bottled water has on the environment. The choice of packaging determines many impacts. The bottles, which are either plastic, aluminum, or glass, that are not recycled are thrown into landfills and buried. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86% of plastic water bottles in the United States become garbage. If water bottlers would have used 10% recycled materials in their plastic bottles in 2004, they would have saved the equivalent of 72 million gallons of gasoline. If they used 25%, they would have saved enough energy to power more than 680,000 homes for a year (Jemmott, 2008). Incinerating used bottles produces toxins such as chlorine gas and ash. Water bottles that get buried can take up to thousands of years to biodegrade. The most common type of plastic is polyethylene

Many of people have not realized that the creation of bottled water affects our environment. The production of water bottles requires a large amount of water plus the water that is needed to fill the bottle. Considering there is a shortage of water in several places, water should be better handled and not wasted on plastic bottle making. Of the eighty million single serve bottles of water consumed daily, thirty million ends up in landfills (Soechtig, 2009 qtd. in “Bottled Water: The Risks to Our Health, Our

According to a four-year, detailed investigation to evaluate the quality and safety of bottled water conducted by an environmental advocacy group, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), traces of various chemicals (THMs such as chloroform and BDCM, both probable human carcinogens) and arsenic were discovered in high levels. Another chemical found in PET plastic bottles is antimony that is harmless in small doses but in larger doses can cause nausea, vomiting, and death. (Ban the Bottle, 2014) A senior scientist at the NRDC, Dr. Gina Solomon told The New York Times that “there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water.” (Ban the Bottle, 2014) Public water in the U.S. is heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because they require numerous tests for bacteria daily which are available to the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water and only require tests on a weekly basis and does not share their discoveries with neither the public nor EPA. (Ban the Bottle,

From helping the daily jogger stay hydrated during a run to that mom and family trying to stay hydrated at the amusement park, bottled water has had a lot of good to it. However do those goods outweigh the bad? In “Bottled Water: Friend or Foe?” by Christopher Castillo, Diana Goettsch, Angela Reid, and Catherine Sterling argue bottled water are our worst enemy, reasons being the bottle itself has harming chemicals within it which we are drinking, bottled water damages our environment, and lastly we are spending more on bottled water when we have the same water coming from our sinks.

I also was surprised to hear about the chemicals in the plastic. When you drink out of the water bottle you are consuming a chemical called PET. Overtime it could cause problems to your body. This concerns me because at one point, I would drink out of these bottles daily. It brings up the question what is really safer to use? The tap or the water? I think these companies are only interested in the money, not the consumer. If there are test showing the negative effects of the chemicals in the plastic, why are companies still allowed to use them?

In the online article, “How does Pollution Affect Humans” by The World Counts, “Breathing polluted air puts you at a higher risk for asthma and other respiratory diseases. When exposed to ground ozone for 6 to 7 hours, scientific evidence shows that healthy people’s lungs function decreased and they suffered from respiratory inflammation” (The World Counts par. 4 ). THose are just some of the health problems that pollution causes This information matters to me because it shows that bottled water not only affects the Earth by causing pollution, but that pollution also causes health problems. Not only does it affect the Earth by causing pollution, but bottled water can directly affect you. According to the online article “Bottled Water vs. Tap Water: Rethink What You Drink” by Priscilla Torres, “The EPA regulates tap water, while the FDA oversees bottled. Yet FDA oversight doesn’t apply to water packaged and sold within the same state, leaving some 60 to 70 percent of bottled water, including the contents of watercooler jugs, free of FDA regulation” (Torres pg. 2 par.5). This matters to me because it means if every student in the Natomas district drank from bottled water, some of their water might contain chemicals because it wasn’t checked. Chemicals are definitely a threat because Torres continues to say, “Scientists in Germany found that the longer a bottle of water sits around (in a store, in your home), the more antimony it develops. High concentrations of antimony can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea”(Torres pg. 3 par. 7). This information is important because it shows that just keeping water bottles for a long period of time can cause many health problems. If every student had to drink bottled water, they would constantly be getting sick and spreading their sickness to other students. So, bottled water causes many health problems, through pollution, and because there may be

Now lets move on to the effects of bottled water on our health. Water bottles are made of a special type of plastic called

“One of the biggest challenges facing the bottled water industry is how to respond to the environmental claims levelled against it” (Grocer). Every time someone throws a bottle away, they have taken up more space in a landfill for the next four hundred fifty to one thousand years. Besides the long decomposition rate, water bottles are the cause of several more environmental issues. Overfilling landfills, health hazards caused by refilling, and the economic stresses due to the constant and inconvenient repurchasing are just a few of the negatives water bottles have on us. These plastic pollutants are doing more harm to both the environment and their users than good.

The private corporation companies such as Nestle, Pepsi and Coca Cola take advantage over the people to control the water supply. Then, people pay more 1,900 times to have bottled water which is filled from their own water. Moreover, taking water from spring by the private corporation companies and filling the bottled water is one of the reasons of environmental issues such as global warming and drought. On the other hand, the private corporation companies make commercial advertisements to convince people that bottled water is healthier and purer than the tap water while drinking water from plastic bottles causes several diseases such as cancer. In fact, plastic bottles manufacturing also causes health and environment problems such as pollution. This plastic bottles manufacture and plastic trash seriously threaten our environment by polluting our local water which definitely affects aquatic organisms and ourselves. To reduce this threaten of our environment, recycling bottles will reduce the effects of the aquatic organisms and ourselves. In short, bottled water is unsuitable for regular use, it should be stopped to save our health and

Bottled water is one of the heroes of the 21st century. After all, one of the best feelings in the world is cracking the seal of an ice cold bottled water and drinking it without worrying about contaminants and diseases. Bottled water is one of the most accessible resources Americans have today. Elizabeth Royte states, “bottled water can pretty easily be dated back to 1977 when Perrier was introduced to urban areas.” This green glass is not what most Americans associate with bottled water today. Instead, our country views the portable plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate, more commonly known as PET plastic, as the modern day water bottle. With recycling rates on the rise, there is no need to worry about the “waste” water bottles are creating. Bottled water is the clear choice over tap water because it promotes marketing, enables Americans to recycle, and is portable. Loved by many for its sleek appearance bottled water has made its way into almost all American households.

Plastic water bottles are seen and consumed everywhere. Without knowing the deadly effects that water bottles have on the environment, consumers will keep buying them and contribute to the problem. About 17 million barrels of oil are used each year solely to make water bottles