Bottled water may make sense in a crisis, but don’t assume it’s always better than tap water

Philadelphians rushed to buy bottled water on Sunday after city officials announced that the water supply could be compromised by a chemical spill in Bucks County.

But drinking water out of plastic jugs is not a sure way to avoid pollutants.

“Bottled water has this reputation of being pristine, and pure, and a lot of people think it’s from glacial water,” said Erik Olson, senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy nonprofit. “A lot of it is not any better than run-of-the-mill tap water.”

In this case, bottled water would help to avoid a specific source of contamination like the spill last week involving the Trinseo plant upstream on the Delaware River. Regardless, city officials did not recommend bottled water for long. Within hours on Sunday, they proclaimed the tap water safe for a few more hours, and then a few more, and now until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

» READ MORE: Panic and confusion fuel a run on bottled water in Philadelphia, even in areas unaffected by the chemical spill

Environmental advocates worry the spill undermined confidence in the city’s water system.

In fact, tap water is subject to stricter regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency and by states, Olson said. Bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and he has not seen the agency make it a priority.

When Olson says that bottled water is sometimes just like tap water, he’s not exaggerating. It’s perfectly legal to bottle and sell tap water, as long as the label somewhere says it’s from a municipal source.

In 1999, Olson and his colleagues tested water from more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands. He found that about a third had contamination.

Two decades later, Consumer Reports tested 35 brands of bottled water and found cancer-causing “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS, at high levels in two brands of bottled water. Testers also found high levels of arsenic in a third brand.

The recent chemical spill should not give people pause about drinking Philadelphia’s water, said Beth Yount, a water educator with Penn State Extension, where she helps inform about water and interpret test results from water sources in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania. She called the response a “triumph of the agencies that protect our water.”

Immediately after the spill happened, federal, state, and local agencies responded with testing, monitoring, and containment. And while some have criticized the messaging, Yount said that information got out relatively early.

“This is a really discrete incident,” Yount said, noting that bottled water can have similar issues. “Bottled water also from time to time has recalls.”

The FDA did announce recalls of water bottles in the past, including in 2021 after reports of more than a dozen cases of acute non-viral hepatitis.

Last month, jugs of water bottled about 25 miles from the toxic train derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, found their way to the shelves of Giant supermarket in Philadelphia. Water from that source wasn’t recalled, but another Pennsylvania supermarket chain voluntarily pulled it from shelves.

» READ MORE: A Philly Giant grocery store is selling bottled water from near the Ohio train derailment, even after a Western Pa. chain pulled the product

Clean-water advocates have other concerns with bottled water, such as the impact on the climate from all the plastic bottles and microplastics in the water.

”It is leaching plastic chemicals that occur at far higher rates than what comes out of our tap,” said Stephanie Wein, a clean-water advocate with PennEnvironment, a statewide environmental advocacy group.

For many it boils down to this: Each bottled drop costs hundreds of times more than what comes out of the tap. In Philadelphia, America’s poorest big city, many can’t afford to pay more for a product that isn’t much cleaner.

”Expensive bottles of water, if you can even find any, is not a great solution for a lot of Philadelphians,” Wein said.