What is the difference between bottled water and tap water?
These are some of the many differences: Sources Bottled water is generally drawn from protected sources. You could drink directly from the spring without further purification (although extra steps are taken to ensure the water has no lurking impurities). Other sources require more thorough processing. In the case of raw tap water, the purity of the source is often in question. Due to the uncertainties of impurities in raw tap water, you might find metals, herbicides and pesticides, trihalomethanes (created when organics interact with chlorine usually used to treat tap water), and microscopic parasites such as cryptosporidium. Volume Municipal water systems generally do a good job processing drinking water, the very volumes of water that they must process every daymillions of gallonsmakes it cost-prohibitive and impractical for theme to use multiple barrier systems. Also, after tap water is processed, it still has to travel through pipes (sometimes 5 to 10 miles or moresome as old as 10
I believe I can explain that to you and answer a few other questions, as well. In the US, the FDA requires that bottlers provide something equivalent to, not better than tap-water. In some cases, they can’t even do that. Independent surveys have shown that a number of those bottles have contaminant levels higher than those allowed by public treatment facilities. With the exception of a few bottlers that actually own wells, the water in those bottles was someone else’s tap water. Sometimes they use effective purification methods. Most times, they don’t. That brings me to this question. What is the difference between bottled water and tap water, when you are looking at brands like Aquafina, Dasani and Pure-life? All three of these popular brands use the local source. If Coca-cola has a bottling plant in your area and you are buying Dasani, you are buying your own tap-water in a plastic bottle. For your health and that of your family, you actually need another choice for drinking water. D
