If you’re turning to bottled water to try and avoid chemicals from your tap, your efforts may be for nothing.
A new study has found water in single-use plastic bottles has the same disinfectants in it as the stuff from the tap.
Researchers found bacteria, lead and byproducts of disinfectants in varying levels in tap, bottled and treated home tap water from San Francisco’s bay area.
Previous studies have linked consuming these contaminants in high amounts to neurological problems, cancer and liver damage.
However, the researchers cautioned nearly all the water tested was still below federal thresholds for drinking water quality set by the EPA – meaning drinking water from any of those three sources is probably safe.
Bottled water is popular in the United States, with the average American drinking 45 gallons of it per year in 2020
Still, the study results come amid a flurry of recent reports released by the EPA about a number of contaminants found in water – including microplastics, forever chemicals and arsenic.
Samantha Bear, a senior research scientist at SimpleLab and lead author of the study, told DailyMail.com: ‘We were kind of surprised to see that bottled water and the household treated were not significantly different. That was really surprising. And that tap water was kind of in a league of its own.’
Researchers analyzed drinking water from the San Francisco Bay area – including 100 bottled water samples, 603 tap water samples and 111 samples from treated household water (water that has been filtered at home using a Brita filter).
These included bottles labeled as spring, artesian, mineral, well and purified water and were purchased in July 2022. They did not specify which brands of water were purchased, but they said they were representative of choices in California.
The houses tested were those that purchased a water quality testing kit from SimpleLab Inc.
They analyzed it for contaminants and results of the study were published in the journal The Public Library of Science Water.
The team found in about 53 percent of bottled waters, 61 percent of home treated tap water and 98 percent of untreated tap water tested was linked to at least one health concern.
The most common pollutive agent they found were the byproducts of chlorine used to disinfect water- called trihalomethanes.
These were found in all three water sources – but it was highest in tap water.
Trihalomethanes get into bottled water when they are treated with chlorine to sterilize the product or when the water source that the company uses to bottle its water already has chlorine or its byproducts in it.
Consuming trihalomethanes in high amounts has been linked to developmental delays, reproductive effects, liver damage and an increased risk of cancer.
As such, the EPA has a threshold for the amount of these chemicals allowed into drinking water.
Eight bottled water samples exceeded the legal limits set by California, which is more stringent than EPA guidelines
Ms Bear said being exposed to chemicals, like disinfectant byproducts, is linked to an increase risk of some health conditions, but does not automatically mean you will be harmed by drinking them.
Climate change, aging infrastructure and pollution all contribute to the current struggles people have in securing pristine drinking water, but this has been mostly studied in tap water, Ms Bear said.
In response, Americans have turned to bottled water. The total amounts used have gone from 28 gallons per person per year in 2010 to 45 gallons per person per year in 2020.
But, Ms Bear and her colleagues at SimpleLab, a company that sells home test kits for water and soil, knew bottled water has some of the same additives found in other water sources, and felt people made the bottled water choice on a lack of evidence.
‘There is this overwhelming perception that, yeah, bottled water is pristine. It’s sterile. There’s no bacteria,’ Ms Bear said. ‘It definitely is generally quite clean, but it’s not necessarily… [THE] gold standard, best thing ever.’
Water authorities caution your risk for coming into contact with these chemicals is actually higher in untreated water than in water that’s been disinfected, simply because of natural stores of chlorine in the environment.
Untreated tap water had the highest amount of contaminants linked to health risks. Bottled water and household treated water (the same kind one would get from utilities) had about the same levels of chemicals within them, making them more or less equal, Ms Bear said
Other pollutants the researchers found in the water tested included heavy metals like lead.
Lead most commonly gets into water supply through aging pipes or infrastructure. It was detected in 30 percent of household treated tap water and 51 percent of tap water samples.
Frequent exposure to lead can cause neurological, developmental, learning and behavioral problems – most commonly in children.
The study wasn’t able to look into other factors that people may be concerned about like – forever chemicals or microplastics.
Ms Bear cautioned though these contaminants are linked to health problems, that’s not to say that your drinking water is unsafe.
Even if you find your house has high levels of a pollutant in your drinking water, there are cheap, effective filters you can buy that will significantly blunt your risks.
‘I’m a big fan of tap water. I think that it’s important that we all have this information so we can all choose what we want to drink and to each their own. Everyone’s risk tolerance is different,’ Ms Bear told this website.
She added: ‘I am glad I have the information about my water to make these choices.’
