Bottled Water vs. Drinking Fountains

I’ve always enjoyed the taste of tap water and look forward to traveling to get a taste of the local water supply (with a few obvious exceptions).

Well, apart from the lead pipes issue, in the US tap water is safer than bottled water because it is tested rigorously every day for MANY different contaminants. You can only have so many parts per million before they shut stuff down to treat it for disease or chemicals. And since bottled water is often just bottled tap water, it’s pretty much just a ripoff.

But good for them for fighting all the waste. =)

Lack of lead causes autism? Do we have less people with mental defects since 1985? It certainly doesn’t seem that way… Why isn’t our health improving from all these new things? Yet we have obesity, autism, diabetes, asthma, etc..? Bring back smallpox, it seems safer. At least it killed off the whiners.

Having cut out old pipes I was quite convinced that the inevitable scale after even a few years would completely block any possible contact between the lead and the water. And in the USA the lead has been phased out of solder for plumbing for more than that few years. But researchers have been making an effort in Washington DC and other places to do actual PPM lead level measurements, and a water-fountain that measures fine this week can be way over the limit next week. Globs of solder can finally break off into the flow, becoming eroded as they lodge in a bend or aerator, putting the lead way over safe limits.
The problem is not the water being supplied, but contamination from old pipework on the premises of the home, apartment, or school.
For a school in an older building, complete replacement of the plumbing from the water-main would fix the problem, or they can do consistent lead testing of all drinking water fountains. One is really disruptive and expensive, the other merely very expensive. Or they can install point-of-use filters, but these need expensive replacement of the filter media at regular intervals. Priced water filters for your fridge lately? Mine should have been replaced a year ago.
On the other hand, they can pull out the fountains and put a office water cooler in the position of each one. In most cases this is what is meant in the news report about a school using bottled water. Not individual bottles of Evian, but bulk 20-Liter bottles with a dispenser. But they can’t use little paper cups like every office, because every elementary student knows that that makes Gaia cry.

Douglas2 – that’s true in hard water areas; the few lead pipes I’ve seen have been like that, with the exception of one from a very soft water area which was naked lead inside. Some areas have quite acid water which will carry lead away in dangerous amounts.