Bottled water is a big, nasty corporate business and may contain disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and pain medication.

Bottled water is bad news for many different reasons. Many brands are contaminated with things you really do not want to be putting in your body, the discarded plastic bottles are polluting the environment, and too many companies who are bottling the water are greedy corporations without a thought to their impact on the environment or the rural communities surrounding their plants.

Take a look at some of the problems with bottled water.

A new EWG study shows that bottled water is polluted with a range of contaminants, including many of the same chemical pollutants typical in municipal tap water supplies. Laboratory tests – conducted for EWG at one of the country’s leading water quality laboratories – found that ten popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in nine states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand.

Two of ten brands tested, Walmart’s and Giant’s store brands, bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment — a cocktail of chlorine disinfection byproducts at concentrations that exceeded legal limits and industry-sponsored voluntary safety standards. Four brands were also contaminated with bacteria. These results show that consumers should have no confidence in the purity of the bottled water they buy. If the water at the source is contaminated, so will be the water in the bottle. And bottled water production itself can contribute additional chemical pollutants.

Read full EWG blog post at Enviroblog

Read full EWG press release on the bottled water study

Read full report on EWG Bottled Water Quality Investigation

And take a look at comments to Enviroblog’s post:

[Comment] Your study on Bottle Water is coming under fire for bad research methodologies. I hope you will be able to clear all this up or it could seriously damage your organizations credibility. Link to the news story.

[Answer] To see EWG response to the statements from the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), “IBWA Claims Tests Show No Contaminants, But Test Results Nowhere to Be Found,” go to link.

Note that the “expert” at Yale, Stephen Edberg, who refuted the EWG study for “bad research methodologies,” works as a consultant to the International Bottled Water Association and Nestle Waters North America. Nestle is accused by environmental and community groups for damaging water tables and ripping apart rural communities in the areas where they have their plants. Stop Nestle Waters says:

Why are we targeting Nestle Waters?

• Because Nestle’s predatory tactics in rural communities divide small towns and pit residents against each other.
• Because Nestle reaps huge profits from the water they extract from rural communities – which are left to deal with the damage to watersheds, increases in pollution and the loss of their quiet rural lifestyle
• Because Nestle has a pattern of bludgeoning small communities and opponents with lawsuits and interfering in local elections to gain control of local water supplies.
• Because the environmental consequences of bottled water on our atmosphere, watersheds and landfills are simply too big to ignore.
• Because no international corporation should have the right to pilfer the public’s water for profit.

And if you want to blow your mind about the problems of discarded plastic on the environment, go visit Fake Plastic Fish.

Best solution in regards to your drinking water? Drink filtered tap water and use a glass or stainless steel container when you are on the go.

Photo and graphic design by CowGummy at flickr