NRDC Report:
The National Resources Defense Council
Report on Bottled Water
Pure Drink or Hype?

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
More than half of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly. Sales have tripled in the past 10 years, to about $4 billion a year. This sales bonanza has been fueled by ubiquitous ads picturing towering mountains, pristine glaciers, and crystal-clear springs nestled in untouched forests yielding absolutely pure water. But is the marketing image of total purity accurate? Also, are rules for bottled water stricter than those for tap water?

Not exactly. No one should assume that just because he or she purchases water in a bottle that it is necessarily any better regulated, purer, or safer than most tap water. NRDC has completed a four-year study of the bottled water industry, including its bacterial and chemical contamination problems. We have conducted a review of available information on bottled water and its sources, an in-depth assessment of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and all 50 states' programs governing bottled water safety, and an analysis of government and academic bottled water testing results. We have compared FDA's bottled water rules with certain international bottled water standards and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that apply to piped tap water supplied by public water systems. In addition, NRDC commissioned independent lab testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 types of bottled water from many parts of the country (California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas). Our conclusions and recommendations follow.

An Exploding Bottled Water Market

• There has been an explosion in bottled water use in the United States, driven in large measure by marketing designed to convince the public of bottled water's purity and safety, and capitalizing on public concern about tap water quality. People spend from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they typically do for tap water. 

• Some of this marketing is misleading, implying the water comes from pristine sources when it does not. For example, one brand of "spring water" whose label pictured a lake and mountains actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards. 

• According to government and industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled water is bottled tap water (and by some accounts, as much as 40 percent is derived from tap water) -- sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not.

Major Regulatory Gaps

• FDA's rules completely exempt 60-70 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States from the agency's bottled water standards, because FDA says its rules do not apply to water packaged and sold within the same state. Nearly 40 states say they do regulate such waters (generally with few or no resources dedicated to policing this); therefore, about one out of five states do not. 

• FDA also exempts "carbonated water," "seltzer," and many other waters sold in bottles from its bottled water standards, applying only vague general sanitation rules that set no specific contamination limits. Fewer than half of the states require these waters to meet bottled water standards. 

• Even when bottled waters are covered by FDA's specific bottled water standards, those rules are weaker in many ways than EPA rules that apply to big city tap water. For instance, comparing those EPA regulations (for water systems which serve the majority of the U.S. population) with FDA's bottled water rules:
  • City tap water can have no confirmed E. coli or fecal coliform bacteria (bacteria that are indications of possible contamination by fecal matter). FDA bottled water rules include no such prohibition (a certain amount of any type of coliform bacteria is allowed in bottled water).
  • City tap water from surface water must be filtered and disinfected (or the water system must adopt well-defined protective measures for the source water it uses, such as control of potentially polluting activities that may affect the stream involved). In contrast, there are no federal filtration or disinfection requirements for bottled water -- the only source-water protection, filtration, or disinfection provisions for bottled water are completely delegated to state discretion, and many states have adopted no such meaningful programs. 

  • Bottled water plants must test for coliform bacteria just once a week; big-city tap water must be tested 100 or more times a month. 

  • Repeated high levels of bacteria (i.e., "heterotrophic-plate-count" bacteria) in tap water combined with a lack of disinfectant can trigger a violation for cities - but not for water bottlers. 

  • Most cities using surface water have had to test for Cryptosporidium or Giardia, two common water pathogens that can cause diarrhea and other intestinal problems (or more serious problems in vulnerable people), yet bottled water companies don't have to do this. 

  • City tap water must meet standards for certain important toxic or cancer-causing chemicals such as phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic, including plastic bottles); some in the industry persuaded FDA to exempt bottled water from regulations regarding these chemicals. 

  • Any violation of tap-water standards is grounds for enforcement -- but bottled water in violation of standards can still be sold if it is labeled as "containing excessive chemicals" or "excessive bacteria" (unless FDA finds it "adulterated," a term not specifically defined). 

  • Cities generally must test at least once a quarter for many chemical contaminants. Water bottlers generally must test only annually. 

  • Cities must have their water tested by government-certified labs; such certified testing is not required for bottlers. 

  • Tap water test results and notices of violations must be reported to state or federal officials. There is no mandatory reporting for water bottlers. 

  • City water system operators must be certified and trained to ensure that they know how to safely treat and deliver water -- not so for bottlers. 

  • City water systems must issue annual "right-to-know" reports telling consumers what is in their water; as detailed in this report, bottlers successfully killed such a requirement for bottled water. 

• FDA and state bottled water programs are seriously underfunded. FDA says bottled water is a low priority; the agency estimates it has the equivalent of fewer than one staff person dedicated to developing and issuing bottled water rules, and the equivalent of fewer than one FDA staffer assuring compliance with the bottled water rules on the books. Although a small number of states (such as California) have real bottled water programs, our 1998 survey found that 43 states have fewer than one staff person dedicated to bottled water regulation. By comparison, hundreds of federal staff and many more state personnel are dedicated to tap water regulation. Directing disproportionate resources to tap water protection is warranted. At the same time, over half the U.S. public (including many immunocompromised people) uses bottled water, and many millions of people use bottled water as their chief or exclusive drinking water source. 

• FDA's regulations are less stringent than some international standards. For example, unlike FDA's rules, the European Union's (EU's) bottled natural mineral water standards regulate total bacteria count, and explicitly ban all parasites and pathogenic microorganisms, E. coli or other coliform bacteria, fecal streptococci (e.g., Streptococcus faecalis, recently renamed Enterococcus faecalis), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and sporulated sulphite-reducing anaerobic bacteria. Moreover, unlike the weaker FDA rules, the EU rules require natural mineral bottled water's labels to state the composition of the water and the specific water source, and mandate that only one water label may be used per source of water. Similarly, recent EU standards applicable to all bottled water also are far stricter than FDA standards. FDA's standards for certain chemicals (such as arsenic) also are weaker than certain World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.