Alex Pedersen
Professor Ragan
Engl-1180
12/5/12 Bottled Water The trend of carrying and consuming water bottles has expenditly increased in recent years, and its popularity has hit an alltime peak. More and more people are using bottled water because of its easy assecability, and its conveince. Unaware to most, the useage of bottled water has dire effects on the environment, and itself can provide several health risks. Although bottled water can serve as a great convience, the harm it causes to the environment outweights its convience immensly and contrary to popular belief, bottled water is often no healthier than tap water. Despite perceptions that bottled water is healthier than tap water, more times than not, it is not amd bottled water has much more lienant rules when it comes to regulating their water. "Bottled water may be no safer, or healthier, than tap water in many countries while selling for up to 1,000 times the price," the World Wildlife Fund said. Bottled water continues to increase its revenue, and is the fastest growing beverage industry in the world, worth up to $22 billion a year. More than half of all Americans drink bottled water, and about a third of the public consumers bottled water on a regular basis. The increased sale of bottled water has been fueled by ads on television or in magazines of luxurious mountains and beauitful glaciers with cyrstal clear springs flowing with the so called "purified water." In reality tho, bottled water is not necessarily regulated better or safer than most tap water. The marketing of bottled water is often misleading, implying that water comes from pure springs, when it does not. According to government and industry estmates, about one fourth of botled water is bottled tap water, which is by some accounts as much as fourty percent tap water. The FDA's rules exepmt 60-70 percent of the bottled