Actual flowchart for turnkey mineral water processing plant
Tap water beats top brands at Decanter tasting – decanter.com – the route to all good wine — Does this actually surprise anyone?
A glass of tap water has been rated superior to mineral waters costing thousands of times as much in a Decanter blind tasting.
Decanter’s panel – made up of Masters of Wine, top sommeliers and some of the most experienced palates in the country – voted the tap water supplied by utility company Thames Water third equal in a tasting of 24 waters.
The top-scoring water was Waiwera, from New Zealand, which sells for £9 a litre at Claridges. This was followed by Vittel, £0.39 in Tescos.
Joint third was Thames Water’s standard tap water, drawn from a kitchen tap in South Kensington, London, costing less than one penny (£0.09918) per litre.
related FDA appraisal of tap water
Waiwera? But they’re geothermal hotpools & a tourist trap just up the coast a bit from Auckland.
I would never thought of drinking the stuff…
They go through all the trouble of filtering the water, then they add minerals (dirt) for “flavor.”
I’ve got a little First Need pump filter that I take backpacking. I prefer the tasteless, refreshing water it pumps over any tap or bottled water.
Just because it tastes better, does NOT mean that it’s healthier for you.
When this happens in GOUSA, the tap water is from a 200 mile pipe that brings in water from pristine reserved mountain resevoirs as in San Francisco or NYC.
So, where does South Kensington get its water??
And yes, I assume trace mineral elements and oxygenation “taste” bettter than pure flat water.
This is not at all surprising. However, the results probably vary based on where one lives. In NYC, barring bad building pipes, the water is delicious. In parts of NJ, you can choke on some of the tap water.
That said, we should also point out that the reduction in use of all of the plastic bottles that will still be here in 4.5 billion years when the planet is engulfed by our expanding sun makes it a far better decision to drink tap water.
And, it’s easier on your wallet.
JPV,
It depends on which bottled water you drink. Some are filtered tap water and meet the same standards as tap water precisely because they are tap water.
Some bottled water is “natural spring water”. There is no legal requirement for this all natural source of water to be tested at all. It is often far less healthy for you when labs actually bother to test it.
… what it means to be from Maine … Less deer pee; more moose pee.
Oh, and I should also point out one of the reasons NYC water is so great. Most of it is not filtered at all.
This was one of the cases where a good economic decision also meant a good environmental one.
NYC water was getting bad in the 50s & 60s from farm run off (I may be wrong about the exact time). They had two choices: 1) Put in a filtration system. 2) Buy the land around the reservoirs and preserve the quality of the watershed.
Choice 2 was about half the price. Our reservoirs just recently passed the test once again, thus preventing NYC from having to put in expensive filters. Another part of the result is that there are some really beautiful spots around our reservoirs in the Catskills.
Sometimes being an environmentalist just makes sense (and cents).
I think the mindset of bottled water has always been that it was safer then tap water. Trouble is that the spring water some bottled water manufactures use has more problems then some tap water. If I buy water which I do for home because our city has a Radium problem. I prefer a reverse osmosis treatment versus the spring water. I certainly don’t want to drink somebody else’s problem. In fact I am looking at installing a reverse osmosis system in my house and eliminating bottle water.
As a professional in the water industry, I can assure you that you are far more likely to get safe drinking water from a tap than a bottle (in the GOUSA, but not true in very many other parts of the world). Bottled water has virtually no testing requirements and when water sits in a PET bottle for for 2 months, some of the plasticizers in the bottle leach out into the water, meaning you drink a lot of organic chemicals.
Tap water has a rigorous testing requirement, including the requirement that the water company visit a certain number of homes, depending on the size of the utility, and test the water, particularly focusing on lead and copper, but also typically they perform the complete gambit of testing.
There are documentation requirements for water systems that bottlers also do not need to meet. Water plants log the treated volume and all treatment process performance. It is a very scientific process.
Bottlers often have problems, such as the Perrier benzene issue of the 1980s. 1990 Milwaukee was a huge incident for municipal water supplies, but as a result of the problem the rules for treatment changed, not just for Milwaukee, but for every plant in the country. There are still bottlers that use the same processes that were used by Perrier.
Home systems also have issues. You as a home user are less likely to document and maintain your home treatment system than a plant that is required by law to test and document.
This is why I rely on the municipal supply.
No wonder my cat prefers it from the tap. One time I gave him bottled water and all he did was put his feet into the dish. I’ll drink to that.
The main reason that tap water tends to taste bad is your own indoor plumbing will taint the water’s flavor by the time it gets to your glass. Old pipes can deteriorate, and may be old and moldy as well.
Try sampling some water from your front door hose tap (or rear depending where your source comes from) and see if it tastes better (with out the hose) than the skins inside your home.
One thing I really love about America is going to the tap and getting a great glass of water. It tastes great in many cities and is safe everywhere.
And Reagan conservatives still claim that government only makes things worse.
They need live in other countries where the tap water can literally be lethal.
Several brands of mineral water sold in the Netherlands plainly are bottled tap water.
My municipal tap water frequently (1-2 times per week) has a strong chlorine smell (as if someone opened a small bottle of Clorox and let the vapors waft around the room). I only drink the stuff if I have to take water with medicine, and am out of Aquafina.
I can’t guess why the water company must use so much chlorine, but guess the water comes from a river that other communities upstream use to dispose of their treated waste water (so I’m offered other peoples’ pee for free).
I buy bottled water just for the cheap bottle. Then I refill it from a filter on the tap water for a couple months until the cap starts to mildew and then I recycle the bottle and get a new one.
Oh and if I have to drink bottle water I stick with Aquafina it’s the only only one I think tastes like water. The other bottled waters on the market I’ve tried usually taste like a plastic bottle.
Maybe I’m just too cheap – I’ve probably bought bottled 2 or 3 times (I’m not sure – I do know the last time was over 2 years ago).
Bottled water is a great (but not nearly the only) example to show that people have too much money – I mean too much easy credit.
Is everyone nuts? or is it just me?
Penn & Teller did that routine on Bullshit…put hose water in fancy faked water bottles. The more expensive they implied it was, the better people liked it.
Evian is a big bottle water peddler and was named appropriately, if it is read backwards that is.
I live in Seattle, which has fantastic tap water from our mountain reservoirs. I never buy bottled water unless I just want something to drink in my car and I’m on the road, then I’ll grab a bottle from a cooler.
On the other hand, I grew up on the Mississippi river in Illinois and in the spring the water did smell of chlorine because they had to clean all of the organic ‘material’ that had slowly decayed over the winter and entered back into the water flow as the ice melted. That was some bad water.
We have among the best tasting water I’ve ever drank. Clean, crisp, refreshing. We have some new neighbors and I checked their water report. As perfect as ours was four years ago. (wells must be checked prior to buying a house) The town water is pretty good too.
Others I know of within only a few miles of here have water that tastes like sewage sludge. (as I imagine sewage sludge to taste) Others have too much iron which really can make for disagreeable water. You know which have iron because the toilets are all stained brown.
Those who blame the pipes for the taste may be a little off the mark. Most cold water pipes will actually build up a mineral coating inside the pipe that shields against contaminants. When the coating is disturbed problems can happen. In hot water pipes, the coating is more porous and the heat leaches out lead from the joints.
If it tastes bad coming out of the tap, let it run for a few minutes first to flush out anything in the pipes. If it still tastes bad, then it is coming into the house that way. And never drink from the hot water tap.
Most utilities use as little chlorine as possible. It is costly and dangerous to handle. Sometimes though they must increase the amount to compensate for the amount of organics dissolved in the water. This is often most noticeable after a heavy rain. Sometimes the chlorine reacts with the organics to produce a nasty taste even though the water is healthy to drink. I understand that ozone can also give a poor taste to water if there is too much dissolved organic matter.
#20 – Catshit,
Yup. You’re correct. Even so though, if your water tastes bad, it’s still likely to be fine from health perspective, especially if it’s town water not well water. Try a pitcher or faucet filter. If that still doesn’t solve the problem, at least consider getting a water cooler to waste fewer plastic bottles.
If you can avoid it though, drinking tap water is still most likely healthier for you and for the environment.
Imagine all of the bottles lasting forever, many of them just floating around in the doldrums of the ocean.
Imagine an incredibly long convoy of diesel powered tractor trailors carting in water from far away.
Imagine another equally long convoy of garbage trucks carting away the plastic.
Even if the bottles are “recycled”, they’re not glass or aluminum. They are not endlessly recyclable. They will be made into fleece or other garments. When thrown away, those will sit in landfills until the planet is engulfed by the sun. Plastics cause health problems. Plastics are forever (or, at least as forever as our planet, so close enough).