“I read the news today, oh boy” is the opening line from the Beatles song “A Day in the Life”. But yesterday it went well beyond “oh boy” when I was left dazed and confused by the stupidity in the news.

I mean there are some days when I read articles in the news and I just sit shaking my head mainly due to all the negativity. Yesterday’s shaking however, is an example of stupidity centering on an issue continuing to persist because of the news and questionable advertising.

The story from lovely old England was partly about the bottled water companies trying to wage war against tap water dues to falling sales.

Now I realize the story was merely reporting the state of bottled water industry trying to regain lost sales through advertising and marketing but sheesh!

The piece noted one of the tactics used by the bottled water industry was to attack the degrading water quality of municipal tap water.

Although some municipal water systems may have degraded water quality, those systems (at least in this country) are constantly monitored (not the case for the bottled water industry in most instances) and still have to make minimum water quality standards as set by the Safe Water Drinking Act (again here in the U.S.).

Does that really warrant spending $5.00 to $8.00 per gallon (even more in some places) for bottled water versus a few cents per gallon (unfiltered) and maybe up to $0.25 per gallon (if filtered) from our tap?

Not in my mind!

A few other issues with bottled water include:

• Greater than 25% of bottled water providers here in the U.S. are not from remote “pristine” springs but are actually filtered municipal water;
• There are many cases where bottled water quality has been determined to be degraded;
• Bottled water companies also process the water prior to bottling;
• Tap water is delivered via an existing piping system usually driven by gravity; bottled water has to be packaged and shipped to end user (often with several intermediate stops);
• Bottle water comes in bottles (usually plastic, sometimes glass) with most of them being discarded as trash; &
• It takes extra energy and resources to make the bottles (most of which end up as trash) and ship them as noted above.

So please ….. GIVE ME A BREAK!

In what alternate reality does anyone think bottled water is better than tap water?  (Assuming not in an under-developed country of course) ….

Only in the alternate reality of the news, advertising and marketing.

Today’s entry is the first in an ongoing series of green living hot news topics:

A recent study to quantify the increase of bisphenol-A or BPA in human urine excreted from people drinking water from hard plastic (polycarbonate)  bottles was recently completed by researchers at the Harvard Medical School.

The results of their study identified a 69% increase of BPA in the urine from test subjects drinking water from polycarbonate plastic bottles containing bisphenol-A (BPA).

There is an ongoing debate concerning the health effects of bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical additive to plastic bottles storing consumable liquids, in adults, though other studies have shown possible links to heart disease and liver toxicity.

Detailed information can be found on the original news post at Boston.com (The Boston Globe) by clicking the following link:

Harvard study backs bottle concern