Walmart removes the BPA but leaves the contaminants

Articles — By forcechange on November 7, 2008 1:26 pm

While Walmart was one of many companies that removed bottles containing BPA from their shelves, they forgot to look at what was inside those bottles.  In a report released last month by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Sam’s Choice bottled water, produced by Wal-Mart was found to have high levels of contamination including toxic byproducts of chlorination. After testing 10 different bottled water companies in North Carolina, California, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland, EWG discovered that both Sam’s Choice and Acadia of Giant Food supermarkets had higher levels of cancer-causing contaminates than the water industry’s voluntary standards, as well as exceeding legal-limits in California.

Currently, bottled water is not held to the same standards as municipal water.  Consumers are misled by appealing advertisements showing mountain tops and crystal clear lakes, but the quality is no better, if not worse, than your own tap water.  A lawsuit has been brought against Walmart by EWG filed under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986.  They are asking for the disclosure of all test results regarding contaminants, disclosure of all treatment techniques for purification process, and a ruling that the specific location of the water source must be disclosed on the bottle.

While the quality of Sam’s Choice water will not make you ill, the content is indistinguishable from tap water, and the only difference is that you are paying 1900 times the cost, and further polluting the earth with another non-biodegradable container.  Of the 36 billion bottles sold in 2006, only a fifth of the those bottles were recycled leaving the rest in landfills, rivers and oceans.  The problem of bottled water goes far beyond the source, but when the source is no better than the tap, what’s the point?