Spring fresh (cancerous?) water!

It feels like we’ve all taken drinking bottled water for granted. Somehow the industry’s expanded and brands like Coca Cola have even jumped on board. But whether bottles are Eco-shaped with water “untouched by man,” or carry a higher mineral content, filtering tap water was -and still is – a healthy, green choice.

Today we drink twice the amount of bottled water we used to, according the Environmental Working Group, and pay almost 1,900 times the cost. Yet all it adds up to is just more corporate marketing gone out of control. Bottled water companies are creating plastic waste, using up resources to transport their products across large distances, and disrupting small communities by invading their reservoirs.

Furthermore, each year states are required to test their tap water quality and provide reports. But the health effects of bottled water have never been studied nor its source water or contaminants made public.

Well, recently there was finally some publicity over bottled water thanks to a new report by Environmental Working Group. EWG found less than half of the brands it looked at even say how they treat their water and where it comes from. Their report focuses on ten major brands, which unfortunately all exceed state standards for cancer-causing pollutants- disinfectant byproducts, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals, among others!

EWG reports, “One bottled water brand spurred a 78% increase in the growth of the breast cancer cells compared to the control sample, with 1,200 initial breast cancer cells multiplying to 32,000 in 4 days, versus only 18,000 for the control sample, indicating that chemical contaminants in the bottled water sample stimulated accelerated division of cancer cells. When estrogen-blocking chemicals were added, the effect was inhibited, showing that the cancer-spurring chemicals mimic estrogen, a hormone linked to breast cancer. Though this result is considered a modest effect relative to the potency of some other industrial chemicals in spurring breast cancer cell growth, the sheer volume of bottled water people consume elevates the health significance of the finding.”

EWG is now suing so that a warning label goes on these bottles saying they contain a cancer-causing chemical! This is why public health organizations matter.