Think bottled water is healthier? Friend, you are being soaked!
http://jewishworldreview.com/0505/stossel051805.php
$5/gallon for water. 
many of the bottled waters are just plain old municiple tap water taken through filtration. For a LOT less money, you can put a PUR or Brita filter on your faucet and get the same effect.
Plus, there are compounds that can eventually leach out of the plastic bottles into the water - thatâs why there is a âuse byâ date on them.
I personnally do not like our tap water âstraightâ because it tastes and smells like a swimming pool to me (high chlorine content). But I grew up on cistern water (back then, pure rain water - or maybe really dilute HCl? 
).
Weâll use bottle water for convenience sake - when traveling, etc. But for most uses, my PUR does just fine.
Missy
No, I do not think bottled water is healthier than other water. I do think it is more expensive, though.
Ahhhh, donât ya just love filthy stinking rich Americans? Our geography teacher was telling us once about this book called The Latte Effet (sp?- the coffee kind of latte) that talks about how Americans pay $14 for a cup of Starbucks coffee.
Now, whereâs the emoticon that is throwing upâŚ
I donât want to inadvertantly change the subject, so uhâŚnever mind.
I donât think itâs healthier, but I buy bottled water here and there because I guzzle it like a Hummer and havenât developed the habit of filling a bottle before I leave the house.
Thanks for posting this reminder, thoughâŚperhaps I will work on remembering to bring my own.
I am an American, but I am by no means wealthy. I have lived below the poverty line my entire life, but I am extremely rich compared to 5.95 billion other people on this planet.
I wasnât saying that you were. I was just expressing impatience with the type of people who waste so much money when there are over 6 billion, I think the latest number is, people on the world. Almost all of them are so poor. Image making under $150 U.S. each year.
Edited to say- I am not cursing Americans, just those who are rich enough to do things like spend $5 a gallon on water, drive Hummers, spend $14 on coffee, etc. I guess that I am a little disgusted because the U.S. pop. is like 5% of the worldâs, and yet we use 80% of the resources.
Iâm done.
Never mind.
I buy a fairly inexpensive spring water for drinking (not one of the fancy ânameâ ones) for a very good reason: The pipes in my home are old and rusting (I think) and the water that comes out of my taps is filled with an orange-colored residue that sinks to the bottom of cups, pans, etc. creating orange stains if left to sit. I wouldnât drink it on a bet.
Susan
Hmmm. Chlorine is a dehydrating chemical when ingested, so, in areas with highly chlorinated
water, people actually have to drink twice, three times as much water to get the same amount
of hydration. Of course, the chlorine will evaporate out of the water over time, so in such
a situation, one could for much less money simply let water sit in a pot or a pitcher for a
day or two before consuming. Generally, this only is a concern at all if your water is so
chlorinated that a bath smells like a swimming pool and/or your water runs blue out of the tapâŚ
Iâm not sure any modern American city is actually at this level anymore.
In my area we have extremely high iron content in our water. I donât know how unhealthy
it is, but we canât use bleach because of it - bleach will set the iron into our clothes turning
them new and rustier colors. It also smells bad and tastes bad. A pundit may say that itâs
the same as vitamin pills, but a pundit may have no clue what heâs talking about. Organic
iron is iron in organic molecules, not metallic iron or iron-oxide, which are not really digestable.
They may not be harmful either, I donât know that, but I do know iron, at least, is not digestable
this way. We need plants to put them into more useful molecules first. Other minerals may vary.
I also had a city apartment before this, where a drink of the tap water was enough to give
the drinker a stomach-ache, and getting the shower water in your eyes stung painfully.
I think the chances that that water was âjust as healthyâ as bottled water are somewhere
between slim and none.
All that said, Iâm not big on bottled water, though I drink it sometimes. I do use a water
filter though.
PS: As a coffee drinker, and one fond of -good- coffee, I have to say that $14 is a high
price for a -pound- of coffee, never mind a -cup-. Starbucks coffee is only moderately
good anyway (it is all-Arabica, but otherwise unimpressive.), and I mostly dislike the
companyâs business practices. They are good recyclers, though.
A latte made for you usually costs closer to $4, but I canât speak to starbucks in particular,
though, since I avoid it. I generally prefer actual coffee to the espresso drinks anyway, cost
aside.
$5/gallon!
I also buy the inexpensive spring water for drinking (and for cooking things that soak it up like rice and oatmeal). I donât trust our water here in the Ohio Valley (at least my part of it). I know of several âaccidentsâ where something wonderful was spilled into the water and since they really donât do much of anything to clean it anyway, I donât want to take a chance by having my children or myself drink it. The last thing, I believe, was benzeneâŚof course we werenât even alerted until MUCH later. I also donât trust all of the âextrasâ that they put into the water, like fluoride (which then tend to put way too much in). Since I pay for my water anyway, in the end Iâm not paying any more than if the kids turn on the faucet to obtain a glass of water. And I donât consider myself to be all that richâŚunless of course you are talking about things other than money, in which I feel I am a virtual millionaire! 
I only pay 58¢ a gallon
I donât think Americans have any special lock on wasting money. In most societies, youâre allowed to spend your own money however you want, within the constraints of the law. Many people, worldwide, spend it on things that would be considered frivolous to someone who is starving to death.
For example, a quick web search shows me that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is opening not just in places like the US (spendthrifts that we are), but also in the UK, Canada, and Australia, for instance.
And even in places like:
Aregentina (44% of population below the poverty level)
Mexico (40% below the poverty level)
Peru (54% below the poverty level)
Serbia (30% below the poverty level
Venuzuela (57% below the poverty level)
Facts on poverty levels from the CIA World Factbook
(A fairly complete list of countries opening Revenge of the Sith)
By your argument, one would imagine that rather than frivolously waste money on a movie ticket (which likely costs more than several bottles of Aquafina), the people of these countries could do more to help their own poor.
I did a web search to see how much Americans really giveâŚAccording to one report on charitable giving:
The importance of the charitable sector in America is greater now than at any time in our history. Total charitable giving in the United States was just below $241 billion in 2002 (AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy, 2003), or about 2.3 percent of the countryâs gross domestic product. Giving by individuals and households represents more than three-quarters of all charitable donations and is one of the defining characteristics of this country. National research indicates that well over 4 in 5 people in this country donate money each year to charity (Independent Sector, 2001
So, pleaseâŚlets keep this on the topic of water, rather than how stingy Americans are with their charity.
As for bottled water, I drink store-brand distilled water, at 50 cents a gallon. It definitely tastes better than municipal tap water here in Lewisville. I can even taste when coffee is made with unfiltered tapwater here. I also brew beer and wine with distilled water, because you can get a more consistent brew if you add your own minerals back in at exact amounts, rather than trusting to the winds of fate.
And, thereâs no municipal tap water that can be as free of off flavors as pure, distilled H2O.
I understand that Dasani (Coca-Cola brand bottled tap water) and other brands of âhigh class bottled waterâ are pretty wasteful. I donât buy them myself, but if thatâs what people want to spend their money on, thatâs their business. I donât tell them they canât buy expensive cars, either.
About a year ago or so I was watching some US program about bottled water, canât remember which one. One part of the story was interesting.
A mother in California had taken her three children to the dentist for a check up and the report came back that all three of them need extensive dental work for cavities etc. She states that she is very conscious of what her children eat every day like healthy meals, snacks etc and that they brush and floss every day. She was shocked to get such a report and couldnât couldnât figure it out.
It turns out to be the bottled water she put into her kids lunch pails and the bottled water they drank at home. Bottled water doesnât have Floride in it to prevent tooth decay.
MarkB
izza - if you are really worried about organics, the PUR and Brita filters remove these from the water, too (unless you are talking in the percentages, of course).
Cincinnati has a 7 day supply of water in reservoirs at any one time, so if there is a spill up river, they can shut the water supply off for that amount of time and be fine. Of course, other areas around here are on wells / aquafers - and one of these is contaminated from the Fernald Uranium Processing Plant.
Oh - and even with a filter, you should ALWAYS run the water in your tap for several minutes in the morning before you take a drink (or fill that coffee pot). Just in case you have lead or other contamination this will flush it out.
I grew up on cistern water, never had fluoride until I moved at age 21, and didnât have a single cavity until after I had kids.
Missy
Hi All
For those Chiffers in the UK with some spare cash to give to charity.
In most developed countries the water quality is regulated to such an extent that unsafe tap water is very rare. The cost of tap water in the UK is the rough equivelant of 1 US dollar per cubic metre (1000 litres / 220 imperial gallons) wholesale so at the equivelant of 1 dollar per litre for bottled water for no real benefit why buy it.
David
(Note of bias here I work for Scottish Water)
hereâs another story about delivering healthy water to world populations:
http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/archive/05may/mktg_pur.htm
and yeah - I work for P&G.
Missy
If you believe that fluoride stops tooth decay. Does Europe have Fluoride in their water?
Crap, is my tinfoil hat showing?
Something in my head wants to say that Christian Scientists also do not drink tap water with flouride, but I am not entirely sure. I know they allow the use of chlorine, though.