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Short Stories for Teachers

Bottled Water VS Tap Water - Which is Best?
By:Sherri Stockman

When you compare bottled water vs tap water, there really is no winner. Many of the major brands, Dasani, Aquafina, and Nestle Pure Life, for example, contain someone's tap-water. It might be yours or mine.

It all depends on where the bottling facility is located.

Advertising claims have led people to believe that what's in the bottle is somehow more pure or better for your health. Sometimes, it does taste better. But if you buy a store brand or a generic, you'll probably taste chlorine. You'll realize that - unless it's chilled - it really doesn't taste any better than what comes out of your faucet.

No matter which brand you buy, if it's packaged in a plastic bottle, you are consuming chemicals used to create that bottle.

We are already exposed to an overabundance of these chemicals on a daily basis. Many experts believe that this exposure is a partial cause of what has been called the "cancer epidemic" in our society.

Public safety and environmental groups have had laboratory testing conducted to compare bottled water vs tap water. The store brands are often the worst quality.

In one case, levels of carcinogens were found to be higher than those allowed for public treatment facilities. This finding was reported to the facility by the Environmental Working Group, but nothing was done about it.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the water that is in the bottle only has to be equivalent to, not better than tap-water, but regular testing to confirm that is not conducted.

If the bottles are not transported across state lines, no testing is required at all.

When you look at bottled water vs tap water from an environmental standpoint, there is a clear winner. The plastic bottles are a common source of pollution. The resources needed to create those bottles include water, oil, electricity, and petroleum fuels.

Three to five times as much freshwater as the bottle contains is used up during manufacturing and transportation. For each bottle that you drink, it's like you are pouring three to five bottles on the ground, along with about a half a bottle of crude oil.

Advocates of the bottling industry claim that it is needed for emergency situations and in areas where sanitation is a problem.

They say that if millions of people per day were not buying the bottles needlessly, then the industry could not survive. You may agree with that, but if the industry did not survive, why couldn't we just bottle our own water in glass containers at home?

If you compare bottled water vs tap water that has been purified at home, the quality of home purified water is much higher. There are far less contaminants and the taste is fresher.

Not all purifiers are the same, of course, but there are some affordable high quality purifiers on the market.

When you compare the cost of bottled water vs tap water that you purify yourself, the savings alone may be enough to convince you to invest in a home water purification system.

Sherri Stockman is a Naturopathic Practitioner and avid researcher of healthful living practices. Find out which drinking water purification systems she recommends by visiting her site now at http://www.Pure-H2O.net.






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