Bottled Water Quality vs Municipal Drinking Water Quality Essay

If we paid as much for tap water as we do for bottled water, most people would have a monthly water peter of over $9,000. - -Andrew C. Revkin - The New York TimesIt is very common for research groups to commemorate up a bottled water taste test. The results are everlastingly the same without a label, there is no obvious difference among any(prenominal) kind of bottled water or even tap water. Yet millions of Americans routinely buy bottled water and re-filter their tap water. The Clean Water Act of 1972 was sibylline to ensure on the whole water sources were pure and safe for drinking or swimming. Enforcement simply did not go far enough, and public information on contaminants grew much faster than purification programs did. A series of laws followed the 1972 Act in an attempt to stem the general aversion to tap water, including the 1974 and 1996 Safe potable Water Acts (SDWA). These laws are a step in the right direction, tho bottled water still maintains an advantage founde d not in superior spirit but in more effective marketing. Years ago, the concept of inter shift water was laughable. Why would anyone pay for something they can get for free almost anywhere? Plumbing and free drinking water fountains are as old as Western Civilization. Selling water to a piece of music with a faucet, or even a well, resembles the clich of selling ice to an Eskimo. Consumers were natural enough to recognze that evian, the name of the pioneering French drinking water bottler, was simply nave spelled backwards. Yet by 1988 evian sold over 1 billion liters of water, all still bottled at the source in Evian-les-Bains, France(1). Competitors and entrepreneurs sensed a change in consumer tastes. In 1987 Suntory Ltd of Japan established Suntory Water Group in the US. It quick... ..., http//www.epa.gov9966/envirodcd/owa/sdw_report.first_table?report_id=639191&pwsid=CA3010092&state=CA&source=Ground%20water%20&population=150000 EPA, http//www.epa.gov/owow/cwa/history. htm fall in States Code, Title 42, Chapter 6A, Subchapter XII, Part B, Section 300g-3, a-1-B, as listed at http//www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ Great wet of France, http//www.perrier.com/history.html Great Waters of France, http//www.perrier.com evian, http//www.evian.com/ Suntory Water Group, http//www.water.com/polar/ Suntory Water Group, http//www.kidzwater.com/ EPA, http//www.epa.gov/OGWDW/wot/howwill.html Bottled Water is evidence for Concern, Environmental Advocates Claim by Penny Stern, MD, for Reuters, reprinted at http//www.gue.com/news/1999-04A.html EPA, http//www.epa.gov/safewater/dwsrf.html EPA, http//www.epa.gov/safewater/dwh/who.html