At least half of us are every bit as dumb as they think we are!

        Bottled water is one of the most lucrative  scams ever. Can't you just see the first sales meeting, when someone proposed: "Hey, I know, you see that water that comes out of the tap for pennies per gallon? Let's bottle it and sell it for dollars per pint!"    "But, Roger, who would be stupid enough to buy it?"  "Anybody dumb enough to believe our advertising, that's who!"   Which as it turns out is a whole shitload of American consumers, many of who never read the label of those bottles and sees that the majority of bottled water is simply municipal water, filtered to about the same degree as any Walmart faucet filter.

  

      PepsiCo,  Coca-Cola,  and Nestle scam American consumers to the tune of  a combined $110 billion a year selling bottled water worldwide. Bottled water is big (and lucrative) business.  In the U.S. alone, more than half the population drinks bottled water, which accounts for about 30% of liquid refreshment sales. Water sales exceed that of milk or beer! Sadly, only soft drinks sell more.

       The real shame is that  the expensive water the beverage industry sells is no better — and possibly worse — than the water you get from your tap (and often, the water they sell is tap water). So just how do these companies fool over half of us canny shopper Americans  into paying a few bucks for something that costs a few pennies per gallon from a faucet?

        As it turns out , what they're  really selling you is fear. They spend millions of their ill gained profit  on marketing fear,  to convince consumers that tap water tastes bad, contains high levels of contaminants and poses a danger to human health. Municipal water, they claim, is a scourge, and the only way you get drink healthy water is to buy it through private beverage companies, at up to 2,000 times the cost of getting it from a tap. Sadly, it seems that their tactics are working. The U.S. has the cleanest and safest public water supply in the world. Yet polls have shown that that a great majority of Americans worry a great deal about the public water supply.

        To make matters worse, the supposedly healthy alternative is virtually unregulated. The water from a public utility is constantly monitored under Environmental Protection Agency standards, but bottled water does not have to meet those standards. In fact, independent testing of bottled water has indicated that microbiological impurities and high levels of fluoride and arsenic posed health concerns.

       Water fountains used to be everywhere, but they have slowly disappeared as public water is increasingly vilified, stigmatized and pushed out in favor of private control and profit. When towns and cities still didn’t have the means to provide all homes access to clean water, sanitary water fountains were a benefit to public health. The irony today is that public water is no longer viewed as a safe option, yet poorly regulated bottled water is.

        Nine years ago, the high-end bottled-water brand Fiji began a marketing campaign by bragging , “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.”  Public officials in Cleveland, considering that  they were being unfairly insulted,  took action. The city’s water utility  bought some bottles of Fiji and other top brands like Dasani, Evian and Aquafina and tested them against Cleveland tap water. And guess what? Cleveland’s tap water was the purest of them all. Moreover, Fiji had a 6.31 micrograms of arsenic per bottle. While under the amount of 10 micrograms allowed by the EPA and Food and Drug Administration, it was notably high in comparison. So pay more, get more Arsenic?

         Cleveland, however, tested only several brands  of bottled water. Unfortunately there are scads of off brand, lofty sounding labels out there and  consumers can’t be sure what they’re getting, as the contents can vary from bottle to bottle. That’s because bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA, doesn’t have to meet the stricter standards the EPA requires. It's sort of as if the EPA requirement is "Municipal water - it must meet strict purity standards!" while the FDA says of bottled water, "Bottled water - it shouldn't kill you!"

       Municipal (tap) water needs to undergo regular testing for bacteria and microbes such as E. coli, while bottled water doesn’t. Further, the EPA requires water suppliers to use certified labs to test their water, but there’s no such FDA requirement for water bottlers. The bottlers aren't even required by law to send off reports to regulators about problems they might find with their product !  I repeat for the poorer readers: A bottler has no responsiblilty to tell anyone if they find serious contaminants in their product. There are no requirements for disinfection or filtration for bottlers that water utilities must meet. Consumers are left at the mercy of a corporation to protect them from their product.

        And  the final insult? Watch this video clip from Penn and Teller's "Bullshit."  Elegant and probative, it should shame all you water snobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE&list=PLu7ib8D6dYeHXRrjlguyfF_f1ox-79JGN&index=34