Water...bottled or tap!? (Week 8)

When I was a little kid we would drink water wherever we came in contact with it.  Whether it was from the garden hose or sprinkler system, we could care less where it came from as long as we were thirsty.  As we grew older we came to the realization that you were to only drink water that was "filtered".  This meant we had a decision to make.  Would our preference be bottled or tap water?  I decided to dig a little deeper into the actual differences between the two types of water.


The congress passed a law called the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 to protect the public's health by protecting sources of drinking water.  I live in Bothell, WA and the city of Bothell's website states that

"The City of Bothell  purchases 100% of finished water from the Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) and manages it by the scheduling of pump cycles, maintaining reservoir levels and water main flushing. SPU provides all existing treatment including disinfection, fluoride addition and corrosion control." 

When it comes to the standards of drinking or tap water, the Environmental Protection Agency sets standards that, when combined with protecting ground water and surface water, are critical to ensuring safe drinking water. EPA helps to protect public health through implementing the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The EPA sets certain limits on how many contaminants can be present in the drinking water so that it is safe for both human consumption and that can be easily achieved by technology.  The FDA regulated bottled water, and from doing a little further research, they have a lot of misleading elements to their standards.  The FDA says that water standards are exempt from those who bottle the water and sell them in the same states.  Other types of water such as carbonated water and seltzer are also exempt from these standards.  Also, bottled water is extremely misleading by their overpriced plastic bottled advertisements and names.  All in all, it seems as though the standards on the tap water is a lot more strict than those of the bottled water. 

The creation of plastic bottles for the use of water bottles has severely drained limited fossil fuels.  The producers suggested that plastic bottles be used numerous times to conserve the amount of bottles being used, however the plastic isn't able to with stand numerous uses and "reusing plastic bottles further compromises the quality of the water, due to the fact that more and more phthalate leaches its way into the water as the bottle gets older". 

Overall, it looks as though filtered water that you can drink from the tap seems to be a lot more health conscious and financially conscious versus the bottled drinking water.  Although bottled water can be a lot more easily accessible since it can be bought just about anywhere, in the long run the tap water is going to be a lot better for the environment as well as for human consumption.

To read more about the different water options see the following websites.

All about water
Bottle Vs. Tap
Bothell Water Services
EPA