Lots of people buy water in individual size bottles.  If you look around, you see them for sale everywhere and you see people drinking them everywhere.

Why is this NOT good?

First, let me say that drinking water is definitely a healthier choice than drinking soda or other sugary drinks.  But there are a couple of issues with bottled water to consider:

1)  It may not be as pure and safe as you think.

2)  The bottles pollute the environment and cost energy resources to produce.

Facts:

Bottled water may not be contaminant free.  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found a total of 38 contaminants in the water of 10 popular brands.

Unlike public water utilities, the bottled water industry is not required to publicly disclose the results of any contaminant testing it conducts.

In 2007, 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water were consumed in the U.S.

In 2007, 1.64 million tons of bottled water packaging materials were produced in the U.S.; only 34% of those materials were recycled.

According to the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s resolution, it taks 1.5 million barrels of oil every year to facilitate the production of water bottles made for use in the U.S.  That’s enough oil to power 50,000 cars for a year!

How about bottling our own water?

The consideration we have with bottling our own water in re-usable containers is that our tap water may not be acceptable to drink as-is.  We may want to consider filtering it.

Contaminants in Drinking Water

An EWG study found a total of 316 contaminants, including 97 agricultural and 204 industrial contaminants, in the tap water of 45 states.  More than half of the contaminants detected have no drinking-water safety standards.

Chemicals such as pesticides, heavy metals and industrial pollutants can be in your water.  These harmful contaminants enter our water supplies and have the potential to create long-term health challenges.

The EPA says that the water we drink is responsible for up to 20% of the lead exposure in humans and at least 13% of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in each of the past five years.

And.. 20% of human lead exposure comes from drinking water (scary).

Reasons to filter your tap water:

When you turn on the water in your kitchen sink, will you see anything alarming?

Your water looks clean.

But how safe is it exactly?

Are there chemicals potentially harmful to your healthpresent in the water that comes from your tap?

The very same water that your family drinks?

What you can do:

When you filter water you can choose a filter that will reduce up to 99 percent of the lead.

A refillable carbon-block filter system can clean your water of chemicals that can be harmful to your health for pennies a gallon.

You can choose a filter that removes industrial and agricultural pollutants (many brands don’t)

Make sure your filter removes disinfection by-products

Environmental benefits:

Filtering your own tap water and drinking it instead of buying bottled water will save more than 2,400 plastic bottles from the landfills per filter.

Refillable carbon-block filter system reduces the amount of plastic to throw away (regular filters are housed in plastic that gets thrown away after each use).

To learn more about new technology in water filtering that reduces harmful contaminants and uses a refillable carbon-block filter system that is friendlier to the environment, visit http://antiagingbydesign.com/tap-water-filter.

*Source:  ewg.org/tap-water/