By the author of Be Ready for Anything and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted
Many people try to make a better choice by drinking bottled water instead of tap water since the municipal water from our faucets is loaded with all sorts of chemicals and pollutants. Unfortunately, bottled water may not be that much better.
It’s old news that some brands of bottled water are little more than tap water, but now there’s new research that tells us it gets even worse than that. Each bottle of water could be contaminated with hundreds -or even thousands – of plastic particles, which we ingest every time we take a sip.
A study was performed on 250 bottles of water purchased in 9 different countries at the State University of New York in Fredonia.
The results of the bottled water testing
93% of the water bottles had some contamination from plastic particles. The plastic particles were identified as 54% polypropylene, 16% nylon, 11% polystyrene 10% polyethylene, 6% polyester, and 3% other types of plastic.
An Australian news outlet posted the following chart with numbers on the highest and lowest counts of plastic in certain brands. Look at Nestle’s high.
LOWEST/HIGHEST NUMBER OF PARTICLES FOUND PER LITRE, PER BRAND:
-
- Aquafina: Lowest – 2, Highest – 1295
- Dasani: Lowest – 2, Highest -335
- Evian: Lowest – 0, Highest – 5230
- Nestle Pure Life: Lowest – 6, Highest – 10390
- San Pellegrino: Lowest – 0, Highest – 74
Interestingly, some bottles from the same case included widely varying amounts of plastic.
Orb Media, who performed the test, said:
Some of the bottles we tested contained so many particles that we asked a former astrophysicist to use his experience counting stars in the heavens to help us tally these fluorescing constellations. Sizes ranged from the width of a human hair down to the size of a red blood cell. Some bottles had thousands. A few effectively had no plastic at all. One bottle had a concentration of more than 10,000 particles per liter. (source)
What are the effects on human health?
It’s actually the smaller particles that you have to be more worried about, according to this chart by Orb Media.
photo credit: Orb Media
While you may be drinking bottled water to avoid contamination such as that found in the water of Flint, Michigan, it looks like you may be consuming a completely different type of contaminant.
Although we don’t fully understand yet the health implications of consuming micro-plastic Abigail Barrows says the preliminary results of this study are clear: “People are directly ingesting plastic particles when drinking most types of bottled water.” (source)
I seriously doubt that drinking plastic particles is good for you, considering all the concern that plastic could be a major contributing factor to the cancer boom in the first world. (Learn more about what’s in our water in my book, The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide.)
Bottling companies refuted the findings
The BBC contacted some of the bottling companies to ask them what they thought about the tests performed by Orb Media.
Nestle told us its own internal testing for microplastics began more than two years ago and had not detected any “above trace level”. A spokesman added that Prof Mason’s study missed key steps to avoid “false positives” but he invited Orb Media to compare methods.
Gerolsteiner also said it had been testing its water for microplastics for a number of years and that the results showed levels “significantly below the limits for particles” set for pharmaceutical companies. It said it could not understand how Prof Mason’s study reached its conclusions. It also said its measures exceeded industry standards but added that microparticles are “everywhere” so “the possibility of them entering the product from ambient air or packaging materials during the bottling process can therefore not be completely ruled out”.
Coca-Cola said it had some of the most stringent quality standards in the industry and used a “multi-step filtration process”. But it too acknowledged that microplastics “appear to be ubiquitous and therefore may be found at minute levels even in highly treated products”.
Danone said it could not comment on the study because “the methodology used is unclear” but added that its own bottles had “food grade packaging”. It pointed out that there are no regulations on microplastics or a scientific consensus on how to test for them, and it also highlighted a much smaller German study last year that found plastic particles in single use bottles but not above a statistically significant amount.
PepsiCo said Aquafina had “rigorous quality control measures sanitary manufacturing practices, filtration and other food safety mechanisms which yield a reliably safe product”. It described the science of micro-plastics as “an emerging field, in its infancy, which requires further scientific analysis, peer-reviewed research and greater collaboration across many stakeholders”. (source)
Some articles noted that the plastic in the water was environmental, and not occurring at the factories, but isn’t the reason people buy bottled water to get the environmental contaminants filtered out?
How can you ensure your water is safe?
Your very best bet for safe water is water that you filter yourself using a high-quality device. Clearly, it’s impossible to trust the industry, which is probably of little surprise to most reading this website.
Sources for this article:
- https://orbmedia.org/stories/plus-plastic/
- https://www.9news.com.au/national/2018/03/15/11/10/bottled-water-brands-contain-plastic-particles-research
- http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43388870
Informative info on what is NOT good. Now, can you PLEASE tell us which one were rater the top 3 that are more safe than any of the rest. That’s what we need.
We know the bad, but we now need to know if there is anything good. Most people only have a BRITA filtering pitcher b/c fact is most of us can’t afford one of the nice more expensive Berkley Filtration Systems etc.
We’ll be looking for that information from you and THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Wandakate
it would be a good service to know the good brands for the people that spend money on such things…..but.
if you can afford bottled water, you can figure out how to afford a berkey system. the plastic units(i know, ironic) probably cost as much as a weeks worth of water(if you’re drinking enough). maybe two. or you could buy one of the small 22 oz sport berkeys at the least. they are only 40 bucks
better yet, i think beer is cheaper than water these days.
we have natural well water and live in a pristine area(not an accident). when we need water on trips, we take our own. except if it’s long term. we use one of the berkey plastic units.
no excuses when you are a prepper or care about your health.
Yess, I would like to know which bottle water is the best, now that we have, which ones are worse. Not that I ever drink bottled water, I just think it’s nuts, to pay for water. That’s like someone making us pay for bottles of air. It’s just ridiculous, and stupid! I go fill up 3-5 gallon containers every few weeks, with artisian water, to cook, and drink with. And oh YES, how much I’d love to have a Berkley, but being unemployed, I just can’t afford that price!
The one thing missing here is an analysis of tap water as a baseline to compare with bottled water.
This would require sampling the bottlers’ source before it was bottled and allow us to determine if the bottling process introduced the plastic contamination.
Could you email me the best bottled water you consider to be the one you would drink.
I filter all my drinking water and I wouldn’t drink any of the bottled water in plastic bottles as the bottles are filling up landfills and even the oceans according to what I’ve seen on tv.
We drank Dasani until a friend told us it wasn’t safe. I did some limited research and discovered that many people can’t tolerate Dasani because of the “additives” they put in it. Turns out we can’t either. Both my husband and I were experiencing nausea and upset stomach. When we stopped Dasani, it went away.
Thanks for your public service. Keep up the good work.
I read this post earlier and as I was thinking…If the big cola companies are bottling water with plastic in it are their sodas the same way?
The particles may be in the bottle before it is filled.
Daisy, you need to revise your list of brands tested and delete the quote from the Malaysian Digest. Both are inaccurate, apparently deliberately, and include brands which were NOT TESTED. Only eleven brands were tested, albeit gathered from nineteen countries. The Malaysian Digest article claims nineteen brands were tested, and then not only lists 19 brands, but invents a list of the worst, which includes at least two brands which were not tested: Fiji and Crystal Geyser.
You can verify my claims by reading the list of brands on any of your other linked sites, the orbmedia site, the BBC article and/or the Australian Channel 9 article. All three list the correct names of water brands in the study. I’ve also downloaded and read the original study in its entirety to make sure I’m giving you the straight scoop before calling you out for repeating the Malaysian Digest’s egregious errors.
It’s a very bad thing to claim that a water brand which was not even included in the study was proven to be among the world’s most contaminated. This is a serious misstatement of facts which could result in actionable tort claims against the Malaysian Digest. The sooner you correct your own article the safer you’ll be and the less credibility you’ll lose because of Malaysian Digest’s fake news.
Thank you. I appreciate your input and have made those corrections.
You’re welcome. I appreciate your site and the many helpful and sensible insights you’ve shared. Thank you for your time and effort creating and maintaining this site.
If plastic water bottles are contaminated I think it would be safe to assume soft drink bottles ate too…
if these things are filtered and being filled with cleaned bottles, there should be NO plastic in the water. after all, the bottles are not manufactured in the same building as packaging and some have their bottles shipped in from a separate plastics company. this is nothing short of deliberate poisoning.