Anyone Avoid Drinking Bottled Water?
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Of all of the things in this life that have a chance to end up killing me, I'm pretty confident that bottled water isn't one of them. I'll take my chances.
We live deep in chemicals the human body is not equipped to digest or excrete, so though not willing to panic, I do not like water from plastic bottles when I can unquestionably taste the plastic I'm drinking. Further, drinking bottled water increases the plastic in the drinking water in general, in the ocean where it is a vast waste stream covering millions square miles of sea surface, and in our food, soil, and bodies. I'm sure I have as large a body burden of plastic and associated chemicals as the next person, but I'm not going to pay companies for the honor. I was stationed on Midway Island in the years before the plastic plague and it had the appearance of pristine atoll ecology -- albatross, sea turtles, seals, pristine beaches, tiger sharks. Today the beaches have an unending accumulation of plastic waste and the skeletons of albatross chicks dry in the sun full of plastic bits they have ingested as squid. So water bottles are anathema to me.
It's Naegleria fowleri. I had to look it up, the description "a brain eating amoeba" was all that stuck in my head.
No pun intended.
I don't blame you! People go to all this trouble to provide clean, drinkable (for the most part) running water right into your house, no disposable bottles required, and we figure out a way to create a huge market around buying more of it from the store so we don't have to drink the same water goes in the toilet.
Some people out there, who have probably never experienced life with indoor plumbing, just have a village mudhole where, if you've avoided death by machete that day, getting "water" involves the risk of being eaten or mauled by something. And we think WE have problems!
The "secret" most bottled water company don't want you to know....
Most bottled water is just tap water that has been run through a more robust filtering system.
Not all, but the majority of the store and less expensive brands use the same water supply as the local community.
Most bottled water is just tap water that has been run through a more robust filtering system.
Not all, but the majority of the store and less expensive brands use the same water supply as the local community.
tap water, refrigerated in re-purposed juice bottles. and before that well water...45 (cough) yrs.
I'll drink bottled water if there is no other choice.
In the early 90's, a friend from high school came to me and some other friends with yet another of his money making schemes. This time it was bottled water from Fiji. $5,000 grand would have gotten me in the company as a major share holder. We all laughed and told him water was free, no one would ever pay for bottled water. So, we passed. He went on to found Fiji water and later sold the company. He lives like a King now...
In the early 90's, a friend from high school came to me and some other friends with yet another of his money making schemes. This time it was bottled water from Fiji. $5,000 grand would have gotten me in the company as a major share holder. We all laughed and told him water was free, no one would ever pay for bottled water. So, we passed. He went on to found Fiji water and later sold the company. He lives like a King now...
Some is even labelled "Bottled at municipal sources".
I pick up a couple cases of bottled water every hurricane season for portability. Otherwise, it's Brita-filtered for me; mostly due to all the minerals in the local water that give it a funky taste.
A lot of plastic bottled water has a taste I don't like. I think it's the ozone. Our municipal water tastes better and it's free. I definitely drink bottled water in small towns with nasty well water, and when travelling in developing countries where quality is doubtful, or in unexpected places where it just tastes bad, like in Athens, for example.
Most of the time I drink water the filtered from the door of my refrigerator because it’s quick and I’m lazy and it tastes fine to me. If I’m really feeling fancy or trying to not drink alcohol I’ll go for a Pelligrino, Topo Chico, or sparkling water from Sedona that I got from Whole Foods. No offense, but I think it seems a bit odd to fret about nano particles and other various health/cancer concerns on a forum dedicated to smoking.
Not "trying" to drink alcohol? I try to drink alcohol all the time, but my wife won't let me because I tend to run my tractor into buildings
That aside, I don't think the OP's intention was fretting about plastic bottles, I think he was just bringing up an odd observation he made of people who might be overly paranoid about plastic water bottles...I could be wrong though 
I'm with mso on this one. It boggles the mind the amount of pollution that we create. But let's leave that for our children and grandchildren to deal with. Food for thought.
I have a well so I just drink my tap water, although I have never avoided bottled water.
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