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Bottled water warning

Cuddles said:
Food has to be standard. If a label says "0.1g calcium", the bottle has to contain 0.1g of calcium, within certain error limits. Water coming straight out of a spring has no such regulation and so different bottles could contain thousands of times more or less than is claimed, which is illegal in most places and could be very dangerous. This isn't a problem for some mineral water, where the minerals are simply added in production. For water that is advertised as containg naturally occuring minerals however, the water must genuinely contain them naturally, so taking them out and then putting them back in standard amounts is the only solution, or at least the only one that I know of. I can't guarantee this is true for all mineral water, but it certainly true for a lot of it, and it seems a reasonable explanation for the wording on the Armenian label.

It is indeed very silly, but with the hang-up people have with the word "natural" these days it is presumably still profitable.
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One of the things that tickles me about mineral water is that (at least here in Germany,) bottled water doesn't have to meet the same standards as tap water. Most folks still prefer mineral water here, though.

One of my favorite incidents with the mineral water/tap water thing occurred here in a small village. The local water supply was from a well that was drilled in the village. The water was piped to all the houses, so it falls under the tap water laws. The water wasn't clean enough to meet those regulations, so the federal government told the folks they couldn't use their tap water for drinking or cooking. The tap water did meet the less strict bottled water requirements, though, so the folks just got themselves some bottles, labeled them "Natural mineral water" and filled them from the tap. When anybody came to check, they'd find the village folks all drinking and cooking with bottled water - all copacetic.

This story was on a TV program about ten years ago, and the program was about highlighting stupid bureaucratic non-sense. I expect the situation has been changed, but it was funny.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Wasn't there a notable explosion in england because of this very issue I remember seeing something about it on an engineering disaster show
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I've never heard of that incident. Even so, I doubt the bottlers would have been advertising that they had natural gas (flammable stuff) in the water. Since the bottling plant exploded, it seems more like the gas snuck when the bottlers weren't expecting it.


I did some searching, and couldn't find anything about a bottling plant explosion in England. I got about gazillion hits on "water bottling England explosion." Too much crap do sort through.
 
#14 Cuddles

I am always rather puzzled by bottled water. In England I never buy it as tap water has nothing wrong with it and tastes fine to me. I do not travel as much as I used to, but when I was in Egypt a while back I did, as advised, use only bottled water. Do you know where this would have been bottled? How would I know if it was properly purified I wonder? Are there a few simple links which would provide information on this? I'd appreciate any comments.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
#14 Cuddles

I am always rather puzzled by bottled water. In England I never buy it as tap water has nothing wrong with it and tastes fine to me. I do not travel as much as I used to, but when I was in Egypt a while back I did, as advised, use only bottled water. Do you know where this would have been bottled? How would I know if it was properly purified I wonder? Are there a few simple links which would provide information on this? I'd appreciate any comments.
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I would guess that you would have to contact specific manufacturers or their regulatory bodies to find that out. The British regulations are here, but that does not say anything about other countries, or whether regulations have actually been followed. I think that most mineral water is international, so it will tend to be safe. For example, Evian comes from the French alps. Whether you buy it in Egypt or Britain you get water from France, so it is likely to be safer than either potentially unsafe local water, or local bottled water with unknown safety procedures.

One important thing to note is that "Natural Mineral Water" and "Spring Water" are very specific phrases that refer to water that genuinely is straight from the spring without any processing allowed. Waters labelled with these (hopefully) do not go through the processing I've described. However, many advertise themselves as "Water naturally rich in minerals" or similar, which sounds the same but does not carry the same regulations. Interestingly I found this article in New Scientist from 1997 about the problems with mineral water. The current regulations are part of a law from 1999, so it is possible that the situation with taking stuff out and putting it straight back in is not as common now and so things are not as silly as I thought they were.
 
Well this is deffinately disconserting! As the water here is only barely drinkable, much of the water that is consumed is bottled, and I'm rather surprised this wasn't caught earlier. Arsenic is rediculously easy to detect, you'd figure it'd be near the top of the list of things to test for in drinking water. Around here, arsenic was used at one time very heavily as an insecticide, so a lot of soil and water is contaminated, and has to be checked, but I guess it's not as major of a concern on the other side of the ocean?

And the natural gas thing is funny! :D
 
Crazycowbob said:
Well this is deffinately disconserting! As the water here is only barely drinkable, much of the water that is consumed is bottled, and I'm rather surprised this wasn't caught earlier. Arsenic is rediculously easy to detect, you'd figure it'd be near the top of the list of things to test for in drinking water. Around here, arsenic was used at one time very heavily as an insecticide, so a lot of soil and water is contaminated, and has to be checked, but I guess it's not as major of a concern on the other side of the ocean?

And the natural gas thing is funny! :D
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"Drink Jermuk, fortified with natural gas for heavenly Blue Angels!"
 
I am fortified with natural gas. It comes from eating a lot of fiber. Does that make me classy?
 
#25 Cuddles

Thank you for your reply and the links which I have had a look at. It is reassuring to know that buying, say, Evian water anywhere means that it comes from France. I suppose it's a whole separate question about how much global warming is caused by such vast quantities of plastic bottles containing water being shipped around the world. One can only hope that the health benefits to the people drinking the water make it worth while.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
#25 Cuddles

Thank you for your reply and the links which I have had a look at. It is reassuring to know that buying, say, Evian water anywhere means that it comes from France. I suppose it's a whole separate question about how much global warming is caused by such vast quantities of plastic bottles containing water being shipped around the world. One can only hope that the health benefits to the people drinking the water make it worth while.
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Forget the global warming, how much extra lung cancer is out there from the added transportation exhaust? Mmmmmm... truck fumes are yummy. Or chemical residue from manufacturing the plastic bottles? Or from the chemicals needed to sterilize the water? Or from all the added pretty ink for the labeling which now leeches into my local groundwater supply and causing me to buy more water from France?
 
Too true, unfortunately. Recycling collection here includes plastic bottles of that type, but as I think I mentioned I am quite happy with the tap water.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
Too true, unfortunately. Recycling collection here includes plastic bottles of that type, but as I think I mentioned I am quite happy with the tap water.
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Recycling still takes energy, transportation costs, gas, fuel, chemicals to bleach and treat the plastic, etc., on top of the material and waste to originally create the plastic, vs. just opening a tap. It's a pet peeve of mine when people tell me that their bottled water is more healthy than the tap water. Healthier for who, the people dealing with all these extra chemicals from the plastic bottles? And besides, most bottled water is sourced from "<insert city name here> municipal water supply", so the water itself isn't that different.

Besides, I'm just a cheap bugger. If I'm going to spend any sort of money on a pint of beverage, it better have alcohol in it. :D
 
Baron Samedi said:
Recycling still takes energy, transportation costs, gas, fuel, chemicals to bleach and treat the plastic, etc., on top of the material and waste to originally create the plastic, vs. just opening a tap. It's a pet peeve of mine when people tell me that their bottled water is more healthy than the tap water. Healthier for who, the people dealing with all these extra chemicals from the plastic bottles? And besides, most bottled water is sourced from "<insert city name here> municipal water supply", so the water itself isn't that different.
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Yes, I've given up asking people why they think their bottled water is healthier.
Also I wonder about the water itself. If it goes into the bottle straight from some spring or other, then surely there must be bacteria etc in it. So why does it not go off in the bottle. I suppose the answer is because it is vacuum sealed or something.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
Yes, I've given up asking people why they think their bottled water is healthier.
Also I wonder about the water itself. If it goes into the bottle straight from some spring or other, then surely there must be bacteria etc in it. So why does it not go off in the bottle. I suppose the answer is because it is vacuum sealed or something.
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That's explained a bit in one of the links I posted, or somewhere that they link to. Bascially, most bottled water is processed to death, so it is sterile. Of course, exactly the same methods are used to sterilise it as are used with tap water, so there really is no difference between the two. "Natural Mineral Water" and "Spring Water" are legally not allowed to be processed at all. Instead they make sure the water doesn't contain dangerous amounts of anything and then put it straight in a sealed bottle so nothing else can get in.

Water can't really "go off" though. Things go off because they are eaten by mould and bacteria and the like, but water doesn't provide any food for them. There will be small amounts of organic stuff in it, but presumably not enough for bacteria to breed to dangerous levels.
 
Cuddles
Thank you. When the subject comes up in conversation, I shall in future be much more assertive about the pros and cons!
 
SusanB-M1 said:
Cuddles
Thank you. When the subject comes up in conversation, I shall in future be much more assertive about the pros and cons!
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Just don't forget location when arguing pros and cons, since they may not apply the same in civilized areas as they would in third world countries, Mexico, and Lubbock... :D
 
MortFurd said:
I've never heard of that incident. Even so, I doubt the bottlers would have been advertising that they had natural gas (flammable stuff) in the water. Since the bottling plant exploded, it seems more like the gas snuck when the bottlers weren't expecting it.


I did some searching, and couldn't find anything about a bottling plant explosion in England. I got about gazillion hits on "water bottling England explosion." Too much crap do sort through.
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Migrating landfill gas that seeped out somewhere and went boom would be my guess.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
Yes, I've given up asking people why they think their bottled water is healthier.
Also I wonder about the water itself. If it goes into the bottle straight from some spring or other, then surely there must be bacteria etc in it. So why does it not go off in the bottle. I suppose the answer is because it is vacuum sealed or something.
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Reminds me on an excursion I made with some _very natural living and very christian_ people to the "Ötscher Graben" (A beutyful narrow valley in austria).
It was summer. It was _really_ hot and dry. And it is a long way, about 15 miles, mostly upwards. Some of the participants had 1 litre bottles of bottled water with them (ways not enough, and others were drinking beer (!) at a resting station about half the way up) - and the bottles wer empty after 1/3 of the walk. I had a half litre bottle of normal water with me and refilled it at springs we found (there are little springs every few meters there, it's part of the chalk-alps) and had enough water for the whole time. Some of the participants suffered from thirst after half of the distance, but refused to take some of the spring water, which is filtered and mineralized through hundreds of meters of chalk rocks.
This water is cleaner than every water you can buy in bottles, but they refused, and one of them was very close to a breakdown whe we arrived at our goal.

Stupidity rules. :(
 
ponderingturtle said:
Wasn't there a notable explosion in england because of this very issue I remember seeing something about it on an engineering disaster show
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The only natural gas explosion in England (that I know of) was the Ronan Point explosion.
But that was nothing to do with bottled water - it was a gas leakage in a block of flats.
 
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