The other day in CVS I found myself thirsty, so I bought a bottle of water. As I gulped down the cool quencher I started thinking about bottled versus tap water. I’m a total sucker when it comes to bottled water. Probably due to marketing, I tend to believe bottled is better than tap. Pictures of remote mountain springs, glaciers or tropical rainforests attached to clean and clear bottles just seems so enticing. Of course I have heard and read that tap is better or that bottled water is tap water in disguise, so I decided to do a little research. Why do I have a picture in my head of a Poland Spring bottle wearing fake glasses and a mustache…?

Anyway, a quick Google search revealed some interesting information. For example, municipal tap water and bottled water regulations are governed by two different agencies. Bottled water follows FDA guidelines while tap water follows state and EPA guidelines. What about carbonated water? Governed by the FDA, it is exempt from bottled water standards and follows general sanitation rules only – basically those of a soft drink. Interesting. So what does this mean? Surfing through this somewhat complicated land of water purification and quality, can be confusing. What I’ve deduced is that the EPA and FDA have different sets of guidelines for water. The EPA, who regulates tap water, seems to have more stringent standards than the FDA – click here for more detailed information on this topic.

Ok, so all this water research got me a little excited and I decided to run my own test. Blame it on my recent chemistry class or a great idea for an Ohmygemini post. Actually, to be more accurate, I think I was driven by my wild imagination. What if I uncovered some great water conspiracy…..like a chemical bottled water companies put in their water to make people crave more. Something addictive that after years proves lethal. Just like the tobacco industry. I’d become the Jeffrey Wiggand of water.

Well, this is a perfect example of a dreamer gone wild. I went to home depot and bought a couple Pro-Lab home water test kits.

Nicki Testing Water

Thank you Nicki for posing. This kit tests for PH, total alkalinity, chlorine, hardness, hydrogen sulfide, iron, copper, nitrates, nitrites and iron bacteria. I took water samples of my Bridgeport tap, Brita filtered Bridgeport tap, and a couple bottled waters – Fiji, and CVS brands. The results were not as dramatic as I had hoped. No matter how I squinted my eyes or analyzed the strips under different light sources, each test produced safe results for all subjects. What I did find, however, was that my Brita filter reduced the chlorine level in my tap water from safe to a bit safer. Well….that’s good.

So, what did my rudimentary research prove? Tap water is just as good as, if not better than some bottled waters. In order to be sure, you should check the quality of your drinking water by looking at the water testing reports published by your water supplier. I found mine online. If yours is not listed, call your supplier and they will provide you with the report. If you have your own personal well water, you are your own water master – testing and purification are your responsibility. If you find something in your water that you don’t want, you can purchase a home water purifier – however, in order to know which one to get, you need to know what you want to get rid of first. Oh and one more thing, I should mention that going tap affords a great benefit…that of eliminating some plastic from your life. But, that’s a topic for another day.