Bet Your Bottled Water? — Wellness Wire

Bottled water companies, whose product comes under the jurisdiction of the Food And Drug Administration (FDA), aren’t required to report water contaminants. By contrast, municipalities are required to report dangerous chemicals or bacteria within 24 hours. Does this make municipal water safer to drink than bottled? The FDA doesn’t even know which food manufacturers produce bottled water, a vivid assessment of how unregulated bottled water is. The Government Accountability Office recently urged the FDA to require bottlers to use labels that would, at the least, tell consumers how to get comprehensive information. Consumption of bottled water last year totaled 28.5 gallons per person in the U.S., nearly double the amount in 1998.