Bad to the Last Drop
By Tom Standage
It's summertime, and odds are that at
some point during your day you'll reach
for a nice cold bottle of water. But
before you do, you might want to
consider the results of an experiment I
conducted with some friends one summer
evening last year. On the table were 10
bottles of water, several rows of
glasses and some paper for recording
our impressions. We were to evaluate
samples from each bottle for
appearance, odor, flavor, mouth, feel
and aftertaste - and our aim was to
identify the interloper among the
famous names. One of our bottles had
been filled from the tap. Would we spot
it?
We worked our way through the samples,
writing scores for each one. None of us
could detect any odor, even when
swilling water around in large wine
glasses, but other differences between
the waters were instantly apparent.
The variation between waters was wide,
yet the water from the tap did not
stand out: Only one of us correctly
identified it. This simple experiment
seemed to confirm that most people
cannot tell the difference between tap
water and bottled water. Yet they buy
it anyway - and in enormous quantities.
Globally, bottled water is a $46
billion industry. In 2004, Americans,
for example, drank 24 gallons on
average, making it second only to
carbonated soft drinks. Ounce for
ounce, it costs more than gasoline,
even at today's high gasoline prices;
depending on the brand, it costs 250 to
10,000 times more than tap water. Why
has it become so popular?
It cannot be the taste, since most
people cannot tell the difference in a
blind tasting. Much bottled water is,
in any case, derived from municipal
water supplies, though it is sometimes
filtered, or has additional minerals
added to it.
Nor is there any health or nutritional
benefit to drinking bottled water over
tap water. In one study, published in
The Archives of Family Medicine,
researchers compared bottled water with
tap water from Cleveland, and found
that nearly a quarter of the samples of
bottled water had significantly higher
levels of bacteria. The scientists
concluded that "use of bottled water on
the assumption of purity can be
misguided." Another study carried out
at the University of Geneva found that
bottled water was no better from a
nutritional point of view than ordinary
tap water.
Admittedly, both kinds of water suffer
from occasional contamination problems,
but tap water is more stringently
monitored and tightly regulated than
bottled water. New York City tap water,
for example, was tested 430,600 times
during 2004 alone.
What of the idea that drinking bottled
water allows you to avoid chemicals
that are sometimes added to tap water?
Alas, some bottled waters contain the
same chemicals anyway - and they are,
in any case, unavoidable.
Researchers at the University of Texas
found that showers and dishwashers
liberate trace amounts of chemicals
from municipal water supplies into the
air. Squirting hot water through a
nozzle, to produce a fine spray,
increases the surface area of water in
contact with the air, liberating
dissolved substances in a process known
as "stripping." So if you want to avoid
those chemicals for some reason,
drinking bottled water is not enough.
You will also have to wear a gas mask
in the shower, and when unloading the
dishwasher.
Bottled water is undeniably more
fashionable and portable than tap
water. The practice of carrying a small
bottle, pioneered by supermodels, has
become commonplace. But despite its
association with purity and
cleanliness, bottled water is bad for
the environment. It is shipped at vast
expense from one part of the world to
another, is then kept refrigerated
before sale, and causes huge numbers of
plastic bottles to go into landfills.
Of course, tap water is not so abundant
in the developing world. And that is
ultimately why I find the illogical
enthusiasm for bottled water not simply
peculiar, but distasteful. For those of
us in the developed world, safe water
is now so abundant that we can afford
to shun the tap water under our noses,
and drink bottled water instead: Our
choice of water has become a lifestyle
option. For many people in the
developing world, however, access to
water remains a matter of life or death.
More than 2.6 billion people, or more
than 40 percent of the world's
population, lack basic sanitation, and
more than 1 billion people lack
reliable access to safe drinking water.
The World Health Organization estimates
that 80 percent of all illness in the
world is due to water-borne diseases,
and that at any given time, around half
of the people in the developing world
are suffering from diseases associated
with inadequate water or sanitation,
which kill around five million people a
year.
Widespread illness also makes countries
less productive, more dependent on
outside aid, and less able to lift
themselves out of poverty. One of the
main reasons girls do not go to school
in many parts of the developing world
is that they have to spend so much time
fetching water from distant wells.
Clean water could be provided to
everyone on earth for an outlay of $1.7
billion a year beyond current spending
on water projects, according to the
International Water Management
Institute. Improving sanitation, which
is just as important, would cost a
further $9.3 billion per year. This is
less than a quarter of global annual
spending on bottled water.
I have no objections to people drinking
bottled water in the developing world;
it is often the only safe supply.
But it would surely be better if they
had access to safe tap water instead.
The logical response, for those of us
in the developed world, is to stop
spending money on bottled water and to
give the money to water charities.
If you don't believe me about the
taste, then set up a tasting, and see
if you really can tell the difference.
A water tasting is fun, and you may be
surprised by the results. There is no
danger of a hangover. But you may well
conclude, as I have, that bottled water
has an unacceptably bitter taste.
Tom Standage, author of ''A History of
the World in Six Glasses,'' is
technology editor of The Economist.
