Consider the Source

There's no question about it, bottled water has become a hot commodity. Americans pay $4 billion dollars a year for the privilege of drinking it. Sales of bottled water have grown nine-fold in the past 20 years, and tripled in the last 10, making it the fastest-growing segment of the beverage industry. A third of the people who buy bottled water do so because they trust that it comes from a clean source, according to a 2000 consumer usage survey. But is the fragmented system that regulates bottled water really able to give people the peace of mind they pay for?

While the quality of public water supplies is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), bottled water that crosses state lines is regulated as a food product by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). City water supplies must assess sources of potential contaminants, but federal rules specify no requirements, like setbacks from dumps, industrial facilities or underground storage tanks, for the protection of bottled water sources. What's more, if the bottles are packaged and sold within the same state, as 60 to 70 percent of U.S. bottled waters are, they are subject only to state standards, which vary widely from each other and from federal guidelines.

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