{"id":2402,"date":"2011-03-01T09:19:21","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T17:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.functionalps.com\/blog\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2011-03-01T09:19:21","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T17:19:21","slug":"bottled-water-2011-summary-of-findings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.functionalps.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/01\/bottled-water-2011-summary-of-findings\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottled Water 2011: Summary of Findings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Study authors: Nneka Leiba, MPH, Analyst; Sean Gray, MS, Senior Analyst; Jane Houlihan, MSCE, Sr VP for Research<\/small><\/p>\n

Overview<\/h3>\n

The bottled water industry routinely fails to provide information to consumers about the water\u2019s specific geographic source, purification methods and the results of purity testing, a new EWG investigation shows.<\/p>\n

Overall, more than half of the 173 bottled water brands surveyed in 2010 flunked EWG’s transparency test.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many brands fill their labels with vague claims of a pristine source or perfect purity \u2014 but no real facts. If people are willing to pay up 1,900 times the cost of tap water in order to buy water in a plastic bottle, they deserve better than that1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

EWG’s last label survey (2009) found that only two of 188 bottled water brands provided the three most basic facts about their water \u2014 source name and location, treatment and purity. Since then, the Government Accountability Office has taken the industry and the federal Food and Drug Administration to task for lax inspection and disclosure practices. During a heavily publicized Congressional hearing on the GAO and EWG reports, House subcommittee chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., declared, “Just because it comes in a bottle, we assume it’s healthier, but it’s not the case.”<\/p>\n

EWG\u2019s 2010 survey shows that 18 percent of bottled water brands still fail to reveal their water’s geographic source; 32 percent are mum on treatment methods and purity testing; and 13 percent publish “water quality” reports that lack any actual testing results.<\/p>\n

More than half of the brands EWG surveyed either made no improvements in transparency \u2014 or revealed even less in 2010 than in 2009.<\/strong> Bottled water sales continue to be fueled by expensive marketing and misinformation, while many companies stubbornly hide the truth about what’s in the bottle.<\/p>\n

When it comes to transparency about bottled water, here are the best and the worst:<\/p>\n