Can boiling tap water get rid of the medicines, or would drinking bottled water solve the problem?
Boiling will not solve the problem, Janssen says. And forget bottled water as a way to escape the low levels of drugs found in some public water supplies. “Twenty five percent of bottled water comes from the tap,” she says, citing an NRDC report. Labels on bottled water, regulated by the FDA, help consumers know what they are getting, says Stephen Kay, a spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association. If bottled water companies use water from municipal sources and do not treat it further to purify it, the FDA views the source as legitimate but requires the label to state that it is from a municipal or community water system. Bottled water companies that use municipal source water, but then treat and purify it by using reverse osmosis, distillation, or other processes can label it as such using terms such as “purified water” or “reverse osmosis” water. Home filtering systems such as reverse osmosis may reduce the medication levels, says Timothy Bartrand, PhD, a postdoctoral f
