Is bottled water healthier than tap water?
All that aside, while most bottled water is a good quality product, the regulations for quality are actually tougher for tap water. Under current law in most countries, once water is purified (filtered) you dont have to be told where it came from. And although most bottled water does come from springs or wells and is quite pure, these sources are often inspected less frequently than municipal water supplies. Apparently, in most countries, bottled water regulations are inadequate to assure consumers of either purity or safety, despite having bottled water safety programmes in place. Bottled waters are generally subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards, than those that apply to tap water. In addition, bottled water rules usually allow for some contamination by E.coli or fecal coliform (which indicate possible contamination with faecal matter), contrary to tap water rules, which prohibit any confirmed contamination with these bacteria. This leaves open the possibility that so
One contributing factor to the popularity of bottled water is that people commonly believe that bottled water is “healthier” than tap water. Calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg), in particular, are important minerals we would want in our water. Death rates tend to be lower in areas with tap water containing higher levels of Ca and Mg. It has been shown that deficiencies in magnesium are capable of producing heart disturbances, including 215,000 fatal heart attacks in the U.S. each year, and as many as 20,000,000 fatal heart attacks worldwide! However, sources say that few brands of bottled water offer a significant amount of minerals. Below is a comparison of calcium and magnesium in bottled and tap water in a few major cities. The numbers represented in this table are the percentages of FDA recommended daily intake per liter for adults.
