Stop drinking bottled water: Experts warn of health and climate impacts
The reliance on bottled water results in significant health, financial and environmental costs, experts say
This may be one of the health effects they're talking about.
Iirc i read that this is a mistaken fact. I wish I had saved the article but saw it recently.
I've just done a quick search, and the only articles I'm seeing are reporting on 2 different studies, one about the olfactory bulb and one about brains, nothing about either being disproven.
"Stop drinking the tap water, it's contaminated from fracking"
"Stop drinking the tap water, it's contaminated by lead"
"Stop drinking the tap water, it's over-saturated with fluoride"
and now
"Stop drinking bottled water, there are microplastics in it"
Just filter your tap water. Then you can drink it from glass containers instead of plastic. I spent about $100/year on filters for my RO unit and it delivers bottled water quality drinking water at home.
Yea, we've got one. But when I lived in an apartment I wasn't allowed to install something like that, i'm gonna guess that most people aren't in a situation where they can use one.
I don't think there pitcher options that are as effective for fluoride or heavy-metals, but I don't actually know off hand
Fortunately for me, I live in a city with pretty good tap water and I have newish copper pipes (post 2000).
The biggest concern we have right now is the potential of PFAS contamination, but its under the EPA and European regulated limits.
Which given what I know about most bottled water sourcing (generally, it's just tap water from somewhere else) it is really the best I can hope for.
"Don't drink the water. They put something in it to make you forget"
-Random NPC in Half Life 2
Also if you want to drink something with a taste, always consider adding tap water to it. Most lemonades mix very well with tap water. Furthermore, not everything you drink requires carbonated water to taste good. Sirups that mix with water in a big ratio like 1 portion of sirup and 10 portions of water are nice too.
Carrying home 10kg of drinks every week seems like such a waste, I never understand people who do that.
Of course if tap water is contaminated because of a flood or some other accident it makes sense not to drink it. That said I think in many places tap water is usually cleaner than bottled water (some more so than others). I understand that I can't generalize, but I think everyone who hasn't should at least read up on the water quality of their region, ideally on official or trustworthy sources.
(edit: Note that I wrote the following paragraph without knowing tap water temperatures. Apparently it only holds true if your cold tap water is below 15°C.)
And since I'm already ranting: You don't need ice in your drinks! It doesn't make the drink tastier or more refreshing. It's just a waste of time and especially energy, and also a contamination risk. You also don't need tap water into the fridge. Just let your cold tap water run for a few second and it'll rinse out the stagnant water that warmed up to room temperature, replacing it with fresher, colder water. I guess in some place this might be more viable than in others. Always depends on the local availability of water and energy.
Yes, putting ice in water does make me enjoy it more, and no, letting the tap run doesn't do nearly as much to cool it down as ice cubes do.
I carbonate tap water all the time, it works great.
Most people i know that prefer bottled water prefer it because of the chlorine taste in their city tap water. Most bottled water goes through several processess including softening or reverse osmosis which can impact the taste quite a bit. They often remineralize the bottled water and add flouride as well. They do make undersink reverse osmosis systems for people who have taste or odor concerns from their tap water, essentially getting a similar quality to bottled out of a tap.
When they make tap water drinkable I’ll stop
A large number of inexpensive and effective filters exist already. This is a problem you can already solve for yourself.
Guess what’s in many of the disposable bottles…
