Wednesday, October 15, 2008

New Report on Bottled Water by Environmental Group

A report published by the Environmental Working Group entitled "Bottled Water Quality Investigation: 10 Major Brands, 38 Pollutants" was released to the public on October 15, 2008. The report states, among other things, that some of the pollutants found in tap water were found in samples of some of the brands of bottled water tested. Of the 10 brands tested, only two were actually named in the report. DrinkMore Water is not one of the two brands named in the report, and we have no way of knowing whether our water was one of the 10 that were tested.

The main focus of the report is that Trihalomethanes (THMs) were found to be present in two of the brands tested (Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice and Giant's Acadia) at levels which exceed California's legal limit of 10 parts per billion (ppb).

THMs are formed in water during the chlorination process commonly used by public water systems. The chlorine reacts with organic material in the water to form chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane and bromoform, the four regulated THMs. The FDA's maximum contaminant level (MCL) for the sum of these four THMs is 80 ppb, and 80 ppb is currently the lowest standard which applies to the DrinkMore Water brand, since we do not distribute our product in California.

DrinkMore Water employs a proprietary 10 step purification process to produce our brand of ultrapurified water and we use as our source the domestic supply provided by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC). We employ, among other things, large tanks of granular activated carbon to adsorb organic compounds like THMs to dramatically reduce the levels found in the WSSC source water. The WSSC is required to test their water quarterly, and the average of these four tests for THMs must be below 80 ppb for them to be in compliance with the EPA. The latest water quality data available on the WSSC website is for 2007 and shows that the test results for THMs ranged from 8.44 – 113 ppb and the annual average was 43.8 ppb, which is well below the annual average limit of 80 ppb. DrinkMore Water's laboratory testing has shown that our THM levels have always been well below the FDA limit of 80 ppb and are typically below the California standard of 10 ppb.

Because the THM levels in the WSSC water have such variability, due to ever changing chlorination levels, concentration of organic material and water temperature, DrinkMore Water has decided, in an abundance of caution, that no matter the THM level in the WSSC source water, we want to ensure that our water not only meets or exceeds the most stringent standard in the land, but that the levels of THMs in our water are virtually undetectable. To that end, we have redesigned one of our pretreatment stages of the process and expect to have the final installation of the new equipment completed before the end of October. As usual, at DrinkMore Water, our customers can rest assured that our water is among the purest bottled water on the planet.

2 comments:

Ken Montville - The MD Suburbs of DC said...

I really like the new look and design of your blog!

Anonymous said...

Happened upon your website and blog while researching food/water and reusable plastics - found your commentary very informative - even a couple of laughs along the way! Am interested to know if you recommend water delivery companies in my area. Any thoughts of expanding south? Gaybie Pittman in Atlanta

Thanks for Reading!